Feminism forgot about cheerleaders

Your trusted source for contextualizing the news. Sign up for our daily newsletter.

Lacy Thibodeaux Fields was one of the lucky ones. Out of thousands of people who audition every year, she had been picked to be an NFL cheerleader. 

But at home, she was just a young mom caring for her toddler, Scarlett, while trying to pay the bills and buy diapers — all the things that her paycheck as an Oakland Raiderette should have helped cover. Except, she didn’t get a paycheck all season, despite spending nine hours a week in practice, another nine on game days and doing at least 10 community events. All she was entitled to was $125 a game — little more than $1,000. It would arrive nine months later, at the conclusion of the 2014 season.

“It was my dream to be there, so I was soaking in every moment of pure joy. But then there was the frustrated young mom side of me that was actually living a totally different experience,” Thibodeaux Fields told The 19th recently. “Living in the truth of it was so different. That’s what really sparked the conversation in my household: This isn’t right.” 

Or, really: “This is bullshit.”

In 2014, Thibodeaux Fields became the first cheerleader to sue her NFL team, alleging that the Raiders were breaking state minimum wage and other labor laws. Her class-action lawsuit uncovered a system that has economically exploited young women for decades, exchanging meager pay for the promise of prestige and a spot in one of sports’ most exclusive clubs.  

Thibodeaux Fields’ lawsuit, covered in depth by ESPN, spilled the contents of her team’s “bible” — a follicle-to-fingertip guide on being a Raiderette. She was expected to cover her $150 hair treatment to sport loose auburn curls like actor Rachel McAdams, the celebrity she was instructed to emulate. She had to maintain a tan, a French manicure and her 103-pound frame. Straying more than five pounds over, or other mistakes like bringing the wrong pom poms to practice, could lead to fines starting at $10 and doubling with each subsequent infraction. The Raiderettes could easily find themselves “with no salary at the end of the season,” the “bible” read.

Other cheerleaders saw their own team policies reflected in Thibodeaux Fields’ lawsuit, and filed their own that year against the Buffalo Bills, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, the Cincinnati Bengals and the New York Jets. The allegations were similar: The Buccaneers cheerleaders were paid a flat fee of $100 per game despite long hours spent in training and at community events, their suit alleged. The Jets cheerleaders got $150 per game, according to their suit; the Bengals cheerleaders said they were paid about $2.85 an hour; Bills cheerleaders got nothing.

More lawsuits would come later, including several that would kick off a congressional inquiry following troubling accusations of sexual harassment against cheerleaders. State bills would be filed in California and New York to raise cheerleaders’ wages — and the California bill passed.

So why is it that, 10 years later, so little has changed?

The misogyny that surrounds cheerleading is made of durable stuff, even in a post-#MeToo era. Beliefs about what — or who — cheerleaders are for, and what they’re worth, have remained rigidly in place, even among cheerleaders themselves. Those attitudes shape everything from pay to how willing cheerleaders are to come forward about workplace abuses. In a sports world where men hold most of the power, the feminist movement has stopped short of the football field.

This summer, the pay issue exploded into the headlines once again thanks to the Netflix documentary “America’s Sweethearts” about the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders, the prom queens of the cheer world. In the first episode, former Cowboys cheerleader Kat Puryear says that her salary through 2022 was equivalent to that of “a substitute teacher” or a “Chick-fil-A worker that works full time.” She expanded later on TikTok: “It’s a full-time commitment, but part-time pay,” she said. “It’s a lot of work.” 

The pay discussion takes up just one minute and 46 seconds of the nearly seven-hour series that showcases the immense workload the women put in. Hundreds of applicants are whittled down to the final 36 chosen for the 2023 season, who pour hours into practice, fittings, community events and games. One cheerleader tells the camera crew that she works from 7:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. as a nurse, then goes to practice until as late as midnight. At one point, the women worked for 21 days straight.

Yet those two minutes have been some of the most talked about since “America’s Sweethearts” aired this summer. Social media is awash with comments from viewers wondering why the cheerleaders are paid “a pittance so they have to work second jobs,” and saying the pay discussion on the show made their “blood absolutely boil.” In Time, TV critic Judy Berman wrote that viewers would “think the Cowboys would at least compensate these performers at a level commensurate with their skills, responsibilities, and visibility,” but instead they are “casualties of a job market, a form of entertainment, and a society in which misogyny is so deeply ingrained.” Writer Anne Helen Petersen put it more bluntly: “The pay is shit.” 

But finding out exactly how much professional cheerleaders are paid today is difficult. 

The NFL teams are franchises, setting staff pay at their discretion. In the 2014 lawsuits, some teams argued they hired their cheerleaders through third-party contractors as seasonal workers. In most states, that makes the cheerleaders independent contractors rather than employees, placing them outside the protections of the Fair Labor Standards Act, the federal law that dictates minimum wage and overtime provisions. That means the third-party firms can set rates that may be lower than federal or state minimum wages. And unlike the players, who have secured higher pay through collective bargaining, cheerleaders have no union or governing body. If something goes wrong, they’re on their own to learn the law, hire an attorney and rally others to their cause.

The 19th reached out repeatedly to spokespeople for six teams, asking what their current pay rate is for cheerleaders, including the Cowboys and the teams that were named in 2014 lawsuits: the Raiders, Jets, Bengals, Bills and Buccaneers. Only the Buccaneers spokesperson, Nelson Luis responded, writing that the team doesn’t comment on employment matters but has “taken great measures to ensure that our compensation is in line with industry standards and that all our employees are compensated in accordance with applicable employment laws.” 

In a statement, NFL spokesperson Brian McCarthy told The 19th that the “league advises clubs that have cheerleading squads to comply with all applicable state and federal workplace policies.”

But if the floor for cheerleader pay is the federal minimum wage, that is $7.25 an hour. The minimum is a little higher in several states that host NFL teams. In Ohio it’s $10.45 an hour, in Florida and Nevada it’s $12 an hour and in New York it’s $15.   

Every now and then, some pay metrics turn up in the press or in lawsuits. According to journalist Sarah Hepola, who created the 2022 deep-dive podcast “America’s Girls” and is a consultant on the Netflix series, the Cowboys cheerleaders went from being paid $15 a game in the 1970s and ‘80s before pay rose to $50 in the ’90s. In 2018, Dallas Cowboys cheerleader Erica Wilkins sued the team, alleging she was being paid $8 an hour for some of the hours she worked but not all, including some of her time filming for the Cowboys cheerleaders’ reality TV show “Making the Team,” which aired from 2006 to 2021. At the time, Wilkins claimed, the team mascot, Rowdy, who was played by a man, was earning $65,000 a year. Wilkins’ pay was $5,800 in 2014 and topped out at $16,500 in 2016, according to her suit. 

“At the end of the day, prestige doesn’t pay my rent,” she told The New York Post. “I can’t walk down to my leasing office and hand them my uniform for the month.”

According to one report from NBC Sports Boston, the Cowboys cheerleaders’ pay is up to about $500 a game now, or roughly $75,000 a season, which would make it one of the highest rates in the NFL. But “America’s Sweethearts” director Greg Whiteley said in a June interview with Glamour that he “never got a clean answer” on the cheerleaders’ earnings, saying he suspects it’s because pay varies by seniority.

In the Netflix series, Charlotte Jones, the Dallas Cowboys co-owner, chief brand officer and daughter of team owner Jerry Jones, addresses the issue once: “There’s a lot of cynicism around pay for NFL cheerleaders, and as it should be — they’re not paid a lot,” she says. “But the facts are they actually don’t come here for the money. They come here for something that’s actually bigger than that to them. They have a passion for dance. There are not a lot of opportunities in the field of dance to get to perform at an elite level. It is about being a part of something bigger than themselves. It is about a sisterhood that they were able to form, about relationships that they have for the rest of their life. They have a chance to feel like they are valued, that they are special and that they are making a difference. When the women come here, they find their passion and they find their purpose.”

While it’s true that many of the cheerleaders make lifelong friends and connections that help some jumpstart careers, the same argument could be made of any coveted job. As one of Thibodeaux Fields’ attorneys, Sharon Vinick, said during court proceedings: “Well, it’s an honor to be a quarterback, but they don’t do it for free.” 

In fact, quarterbacks are doing it this year for at least $795,000 — the floor for rookies. The highest annual NFL quarterback contract is for about $55 million. 

Cheerleading is different. It’s one of the most gendered jobs in America, built on a history of sexualizing women. Those dynamics are so entrenched it may take more than a decade of lawsuits to shake them loose.

The current system leaves the NFL free to simply state its support of gender equity and move on. In 2016, after announcing a “Women’s Summit” to encourage young girls to take part in sports, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell responded to questions about whether he thought the league was sending a mixed message in the wake of half a dozen cheerleader lawsuits. “No, I don’t,” he said. “These are employees of each club. We encourage policies that properly compensate all employees and provide the correct benefits. … It’s not a new issue for us. It’s something that we think should be done so that everyone’s compensated fairly.”

But the league never mandated that its teams abide by an NFL minimum pay standard and ditch the third-party workarounds. All of the lawsuits from 2014 settled without the teams admitting any wrongdoing.

“Not once was there just like, ‘You’re right, I’m sorry, we should have done better,’” Thibodeaux Fields said. But she wouldn’t do anything differently. “Every lawsuit that’s successful, or every woman that is brave enough to be like, ‘This happened to me, and it needs to stop,’ … every little thing moves the needle just a little bit.”

(Sarah Porter for The 19th)

Officially, the story of NFL cheerleading goes back to the 1950s when the Baltimore (now Indianapolis) Colts became the first team to add a cheerleading squad. But the story really starts with a stripper. 

In 1967, Bubbles Cash captured the attention of news cameras when she danced in her miniskirt at the Cotton Bowl holding swirls of cotton candy. The Cowboys’ general manager, Tex Schramm, wanted to bring that kind of energy to his cheer team, which at the time was made up of teenagers and led by a local high school teacher. In 1972, he fired them all and hired young women who cheered clad in their now-signature tinier-than-tiny shorts and fringed crop tops. In 1975, one of those new-and-improved cheerleaders, Gwenda Swearingen, winked at the camera during a Monday Night Football broadcast. The mythology of the sexy, girl-next-door cheerleader was cemented. Today, 24 of 32 NFL teams have cheerleaders — all inspired by the Dallas Cowboys. 

Sex has remained part of the appeal, said Kimberly Archie, founder of the National Cheer Safety Foundation. “What sport has its own category on a porn website?” she asked. “Does lacrosse have a category for porn?” 

It should come as no surprise, then, that sexual harassment is a well-documented problem in the cheer world. For example, in 2018, news broke that the Washington Commanders had invited suite holders and sponsors to view a cheerleaders’ calendar shoot without their approval. Some of the shoot was done topless. According to a House oversight committee investigation, videos of the shoots featuring “nipple slips” were distributed among Commanders’ leadership. A Commanders’ spokesperson said in a statement to The 19th that the team has since worked “tirelessly” to establish an inclusive and respectful workplace. 

“We are deeply committed to cultivating a culture of accountability, guided by clearly defined values that empower all staff to voice concerns and openly share ideas,” the spokesperson told The 19th.

Although it’s been sexualized, cheer has also been viewed with a kind of nostalgic reverence, an American institution that is untouchable in many ways. It’s Americana. It’s Chevrolet. It’s apple pie, Archie said, which has reinforced the notion that you can’t change it because “that’s the only nostalgia we have left.” 

The combination of low pay, extreme competition and few worker protections has created an insular world where cheerleaders are encouraged to keep quiet about pay disparities, lest they destroy the system that picked them. It’s why it took decades before some cheerleaders were ready to speak up. Many are still not.

“You have a lot of Stockholm syndrome going on in cheerleading. People don’t want to come forward about safety, people don’t want to come forward about sex abuse, people don’t want to complain about not getting paid,” Archie said. “Because it’s an honor to be a cheerleader in American society.” 

Four months after Thibodeaux Fields’ lawsuit was filed, a second one popped up in Buffalo, New York. A group of Buffalo Jills, the cheerleaders for the Buffalo Bills, filed suit against the team and the subcontractor that hired them, alleging that the team didn’t pay them for at least twice-weekly practices, cheering at games and the vast majority of the 20 to 35 community appearances they were required to make. Their few paid appearances earned them very little, and several were outright exploitative, including one where the women were required to wear bikinis at a golf tournament, get dunked in a water tank and then “auctioned off” to a winner who rode around with them in a golf cart for the rest of the day. Groping and inappropriate comments from the public were common, the suit alleged, and the Bills cheerleaders were subject to strict appearance requirements, including doing jumping jacks while staff scrutinized their bodies — a “jiggle test.”

One of the cheerleaders who filed, Maria Pinzone, earned just $105 by the end of the 2012-2013 season. She was also working as an accountant, and she knew right away that such a low rate was likely illegal. 

Days after the cheerleaders filed, the Bills dissolved the cheerleading squad in what Pinzone believed was retribution for the lawsuit. Her peers turned against her. In a 2019 documentary about cheerleaders’ lawsuits, “A Woman’s Work,” Pinzone met with former Jills who were skeptical about joining the suit. She knew what she signed up for, they told her. And wouldn’t they be hurting the directors of the squad by siding with Pinzone? 

Looking back now, Pinzone told The 19th, she feels it was a kind of willful ignorance, a fear that complaining would mean that the Jills would never be reinstated. “A lot of people had turned away from what was really going on and didn’t want to see it for what it was,” she said. “If they thought there might have been something going on, they didn’t want to know anything else about it.” 

The suit didn’t get much support outside of the squad, either. As part of the deposition in Pinzone’s case, which stretched on for eight years and ultimately represented more than 50 cheerleaders, then-Bills president and CEO Russ Brandon said, “I couldn’t have cared less if the Jills existed.”

And in the documentary, when male fans outside a Bills game are asked what they think about the cheerleaders, one responds: “Nobody cares about the Jills. All they do is tramp themselves out for guys — drunk guys.”

Another says: “Which is you every time you go to a Bills game.” 

A third concludes: “In the grand scheme of things, you’re only going to get paid what you’re worth.”

For the plaintiffs in both the Jills and Raiderettes suits, the hardest part of the process was the vitriol from their peers. Many cheerleaders didn’t see themselves as being exploited.

Thibodeaux Fields deleted her social media because of the onslaught of negative comments from the public and other cheerleaders. She understood them, she said, because she knew that for many, it was an honor to make the Raiderettes squad. It didn’t, however, diminish her resolve. “To expose them in such a way that took that honor and turned it to shame and embarrassment — I took that from them without their permission, on their behalf, for the common good of all. But it came with a price,” she said. 

Thibodeaux Fields was ultimately joined by another Raiderette in her suit. Two more cheerleaders filed their own class action suit in the summer of 2014. That case went into arbitration with the Raiders but never reached a public settlement. 

“A Woman’s Work” director Yu Gu, who filmed Thibodeaux Fields and Pinzone over several years, said the legal process was harrowing: “The toll, the time it takes — getting lowballed and engaging in that process is constantly engaging with the idea that you’re worthless.” 

Lisa Murray, who used to dance with Thibodeaux Fields for the NBA’s Golden State Warriors, heard about these lawsuits in 2014 and started trying to unionize the NBA squads, raising awareness about their paltry pay. Over the years, she said, she’s been fascinated to see the ascension of women in sports and the messages about the importance of investing in and valuing women. “But,” she said, “no one wants to include the dancers — nobody.” 

“You’re going to be an archetype of exploitation, but we’re going to then use you to make money off of you, and then sort of convince you that you should be grateful to be here, that your beauty is going to get you to the next stage in life,” Murray said. “That is a real message that is pushed  that is so unbelievably damaging to women.” 

In 2015, Murray helped pass a California bill that required teams to recognize cheerleaders as employees, not contractors. That entitled them to at least state minimum wage, overtime pay and sick time. A similar New York bill first introduced in 2015 would have done the same but it died in committee. It’s been reintroduced every year since.

None of the five 2014 lawsuits went to a jury trial, and spokespeople for the teams would not comment about the allegations in the suits, nor what the teams have done since to improve pay and working conditions for cheerleaders.

But in September 2014, Thibodeaux Fields’ case settled for $1.25 million spread across nearly 100 cheerleaders who received between $2,500 and $6,000 for each season with the team. Thibodeaux Fields got an additional $10,000 for being a named plaintiff. The Raiders (now the Las Vegas Raiders) increased pay to $9 an hour plus overtime, with twice-monthly payments, reimbursements for expenses and no more fines. 

The Cowboys settled with Wilkins in 2019 and increased their hourly rate from $8 to $12 and the game fee from $200 to $400 — and possibly again later to $500. 

The other teams also settled their cases for smaller amounts. 

Several teams, including the Los Angeles Rams, added men to their cheer rosters. Others, including the Buccaneers, the Bengals and the Minnesota Vikings, changed the costumes to make them less revealing.

The Buffalo Bills didn’t settle until 2022, when they agreed to pay $3.5 million to the more than 50 former cheerleaders who took part in the suit.

(Sarah Porter for The 19th)

The Jills cheerleading squad was never reformed.

Today, the push for better cheerleading pay seems to have reached a standstill.

Cheer still suffers from a supply and demand problem, said David Berri, the co-author of “Slaying the Trolls! Why the Trolls are Very, Very Wrong About Women and Sports,” which dedicates a chapter to cheerleaders. 

“As long as they’re paying the minimum wage, there is no law that says you have to pay them more. And because there is such a huge supply of women who want to be cheerleaders, there is no free agency. There is no market,” said Berri, who is also a professor of economics at Southern Utah University. 

It’s not an excuse though, he said. Many people vie to be football players, top actors and journalists, fields where pay abuses abound and with limited ladders to the top. The difference with cheerleading is how much gender plays a role.

Suing the teams, experts said, has been an effective way of obtaining fair pay for individual cheerleaders, but hasn’t changed the system in its entirety. “The law is a blunt instrument that has limited uses. It can only do so much,” said Darci Burrell, one of the attorneys on Thibodeaux Fields’ case. “In order for real change to happen, it’s got to happen probably elsewhere.” 

For Murray who has been fighting for cheerleader and dancer pay for a decade, it always struck her how the lawsuits prompted some teams to put out statements about how much they value the women who were suing them. “The gap in what’s being said is: They acknowledge we are valuable, they acknowledge we are a huge part of the organization, but it doesn’t align with our compensation and our treatment,” she said. 

And, as Berri points out, the league could choose to end the subcontractor model. “The NFL could simply pass a ruling and say: ‘This is wrong, and no, you don’t get to hide behind a third party. These are people performing at our games,’” he said.  

McCarthy, the NFL spokesman, didn’t respond to The 19th’s questions as to whether the league would consider stepping in and issuing a pay standard. In 2017, the league was sued directly by another group of cheerleaders who filed a class action alleging a conspiracy among the teams to underpay cheerleaders. That case was ultimately dismissed.

Archie believes more lawsuits could help turn the tide, but taking on the powerful people who own the 32 NFL teams is a lot to put on the shoulders of women earning low wages.

In Murray’s view, the true solution is a union. The Jills tried unionizing in 1995 but failed, and nothing has taken off in recent years. People fear that teams will retaliate and disband cheer squads, Murray said, and entire industries, including choreographers, training camps and costume designers, could be affected if cheerleaders unionize.

“Unfortunately, I can go pass bills, Lacy can sue a team. But in the end, if the women keep showing up and aren’t willing to go on strike … it actually won’t change,” Murray said. 

Thibodeaux Fields is a little more optimistic. She has witnessed 10 years of shifting conversations, 10 years of women saying they were inspired by her lawsuit to file their own. And she can’t deny that something has changed: The Cowboys cheerleaders are reportedly earning more than she earns now as a kindergarten teacher. Is it enough? No.

She’s moved on in a lot of ways, but her core belief is still the same: “I fought for what felt like was the right thing. I feel really good about that.” 

Now, the toddler she cared for after Raiderettes practice is a teenager who spent her childhood watching her mom take on that fight. Thibodeaux Fields would have loved it if Scarlett had inherited her love of dance, but her daughter isn’t interested. She’s an analytical arguer who wants to fight for something. Instead, Scarlett wants to be a lawyer.

The post Feminism forgot about cheerleaders appeared first on The 19th.