Speaker 1: Texas Monthly.
Speaker 2: Okay, we are going on an adventure.
Speaker 1: Okay, I'm excited.
Speaker 2: The woman next to me made history, but you probably
don't know her. Now we're in a Starbucks parking lot
outside Irving, Texas, and we're going to drive to the
site of Texas Stadium.
Speaker 1: And is it depressive? That's what somebody said it might be.
Speaker 2: You know what we'll find out ill. Okay, For a
long time, I didn't know this woman either, but I
grew up staring at her on trading cards and calendars
and TV screens alongside other women in various shades of gorgeous.
Speaker 1: My name is Buzzil Baker, and I'm one of the
original seven professional Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders. The first time we
walked down that tunnel, we didn't know that we had
introduced something new to football.
Speaker 2: And what they introduced would change how we look at sports.
It would change how we see women on television, and
it would change countless childhoods of boys and girls like me.
Speaker 1: I I I just.
Speaker 2: Saw the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders became America's sweethearts, a very
Texas hybrid of pageant beauty, good girl etiquette, and come hitherslink.
But despite their fifty years as a global sensation, despite
being endlessly photographed, televised, commercialized, what's always been missing from
the story of the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders is the voices
of the cheerleaders themselves. It's about time we change that.
What the Cowboys gave me, nothing in my life will
ever compared to that time.
Speaker 1: Nothing.
Speaker 2: So then, where does the uniform come from?
Speaker 1: Well, it really came from my imagination.
Speaker 2: What words come to mind when you think of.
Speaker 1: The cheerleaders boobs, skins, flesh, sex, hair, big hair.
Speaker 2: It's not just about being beautiful or just about having
a rock hard body. It's about, you know, being smart.
And so I went on a search to understand this
legacy in all its complications. I saw their story as
part of an ongoing battle of a women's bodies, of
a women's behavior, over who and what determines our value.
It bothered me that I was supposed to sexualize myself
on game days and not allowed to any other days.
There was an awkwardness because I'm seeing my friends in
Playboy magazine. They're both major lawsuits for the cas and
they change the culture of being a cheerleader.
Speaker 1: Whatever you're doing, you're multitasking. You have so many things
to do, and then they're asking you to do this
five nights a week and not pay you for it.
Speaker 2: Over the course of eight episodes, you'll hear those voices
as they navigate all that came after that first time
they burst onto the field. This is a saga of
high kicks and scandal and cleavage and controversy. I'm Sarah
Hippola from Texas Monthly. This is America's Girls, Coming September
twenty eighth to Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen.