The Beautiful Cult of Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders

A seven-part Netflix docuseries on the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders called America’s Sweethearts? Oh my god, WHAT a rich text. The uniform, the dances, the body norms, the coded language, the particular feminine ideals, the intersections with Texas culture and evangelical culture — there’s just so much there. And I was thrilled when Sam Sanders and Zach Stafford, two of the co-hosts of the indispensable Vibe Check, agreed to help answer all of your (excellent) questions. (We couldn’t get the rights to Thunderstruck, but you can just imagine it playing over the intro and on repeat forever.)

Show Notes:

• LISTEN TO VIBE CHECK, IT’S SO GOOD!!! Plus: Sam’s IG and Zach’s IG

• Caitlin Dickerson’s fantastic piece in The Atlantic that includes the “Who Am I….?” page from the DCC handbook that Sam reads in the episode

• The jump split that tears up the hips!

• How much money to NFL cheerleaders get paid? It’s complicated.

• Alex Sujong Laughlin makes the case for cheerleader unions in Defector

We’re currently looking for your questions for future episodes about:

• Why is Paul Mescal so hot

• Sydney Sweeney (and Gen-Z Stardom)

• Learning to craft / make things / hobby-around-the-house

• For our continuing series on romance novels: QUEER ROMANCE

• Artificial Intelligence (we’re gonna see if we can figure out an actually interesting theme here, so send us your weirdest or most mind-boggling questions)

• The economy, a.k.a. why is everything so damn expensive right now (my dream here is like an Odd Lots guest who doesn’t have private equity brain, please let us know if you have suggestions!)

• Contemporary ideas of self-care

• Buy Nothing groups and/or the current state of the secondhand market

• Anything you need advice or want musings on for the AAA segment

• You can submit them (and ideas for future eps) here (this is the subscriber-only form!)

For today’s discussion: What feels most cult-like about DCC? Or truly anything else you’d like to discuss re: DCC, performance of Southern evangelical femininity, the thin ideal, etc. etc. Also, can someone convince Melody to actually watch the show?

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