New From Texas Monthly: America’s Girls

One by Willie

John Spong

Willie Nelson, Music, Music History, Music Commentary, Guitar, Spong, Music Interviews, Society & Culture, Austin, Texas Monthly, Country Music, Arts, Americana, Songwriting, Outlaw Country

4.6 • 898 Ratings

🗓️ 6 December 2021

⏱️ 3 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The original Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders squad burst onto the field back in 1972—the same year Title IX passed, the same year Deep Throat came out, and a year before Roe v. Wade. Sarah Hepola digs into the untold stories behind the global pop culture phenomenon, from the stripper who allegedly inspired the squad’s creation, to a scandalous Playboy cover shoot that was partly a battle over fair wages, to the ongoing debate about sexuality and women’s bodies in a post-#MeToo world. The result is a vibrant mix of history, cultural criticism, and storytelling, featuring interviews with New Yorker writer Jia Tolentino, award-winning novelist Ben Fountain, Oscar-nominated director Dana Adam Shapiro, local television sports legend Dale Hansen, folk-writing hero Joe Nick Patoski, and a whole bunch of cheerleaders whose names you don’t know yet—but should.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Okay, we are going on an adventure.
0:03.0	Okay, I'm excited.
0:05.0	The woman next to me made history, but you probably don't know her.
0:09.0	We're in a Starbucks parking lot outside Irving, Texas.
0:13.0	And we're going to drive to the site of Texas Stadium, and is it depressing? That's what somebody said it might be you know what we'll
0:26.7	find out okay for a long time I didn't know this woman either but I grew up
0:32.3	staring at her on trading cards and calendars and TV screens alongside other
0:37.3	women in various shades of gorgeous.
0:40.3	My name is Vassil Baker and I'm one of the original seven professional Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders.
0:47.3	The first time we walked down that tunnel, we didn't know that we had introduced something new to football.
0:57.0	And what they introduced would change how we look at sports. It would change how we see women on television.
1:04.0	And it would change countless childhoods of boys and girls like me.
1:10.0	I just want to be pretty. I just want to feel alive. of boys and girls like me. The Dallas Cowboys Cowboys'
1:12.6	I just want to be love.
1:14.6	I just want to be funny.
1:17.6	I just want to be enough.
1:20.6	The Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders became America's sweethearts,
1:26.6	a very Texas hybrid of pageant beauty,
1:30.2	good girl etiquette, and come hither slink.
1:33.3	But despite their 50 years as a global sensation, despite being endlessly photographed, televised,
1:40.3	commercialized, what's always been missing from the story of the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders
1:44.8	is the voices of the cheerleaders themselves. It's about time we changed that.
	...

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