As Thousands Cheer
Ivins, Molly
SMALL FAVORS Molly Ivins As Thousands Cheer Some days you open the paper and it's kind of like finding Fidel Castro in the refrigerator, smoking a cigar. Hard to know what to think, for instance,...
...They all go hand in hand...
...Hard to know what to think, for instance, when the lead story is that fourteen Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders have resigned because they believe the team's new owner is trying to make them into sex objects...
...Sure it's purity—high moral standards...
...Here's the deal: The Dallas Cowboys, America's Team, got bought a few months back by a rich guy from Arkansas named Jerry Jones...
...There was even a rumor that he wanted the girls to make a beer commercial...
...That's why we were so popular...
...One of the more brain-spraining aspects of Texian culture is Baptist sex...
...And I would not want my daughter wearing the uniMolly Ivins, a columnist for the Dallas Times Herald, appears in this space every month...
...Tina Miller, a three-year veteran, said, "When you tell somebody you don't associate with the Cowboy players, they love that—they put you on a pedestal...
...He further said the girls could socialize with football players...
...Yes, I'm telling you...
...In Dallas, we like girls who will stand up against tanks for traditional virtues like that...
...Jones backed down and tried to claim it was all just a misunderstanding, but he also kept referring to "our girls" who he claims are "the pick of the litter...
...While the rest of the world has been following China's crushing of the pro-democracy movement, here in Texas we have been absorbed in the complex issues presented by the rebellion of the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders...
...The uprising, you might call it...
...Alas, how far we have fallen...
...That Baptists see nothing wrong with the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders, who are indisputably open-air coochie girls, is one of those anomalies we all live with here...
...Seemed like pretty much the end of the world at the time—the Dallas Cowboys owned by some Arkie...
...This display is considered not just decent but proper, as Jim Schutze put it, "as long as the presentation is locked inside a bulletproof sugar-coating of overdone, over-made-up, over hair-sprayed, ultra-exaggerated nicey-nicey wholesomeness...
...The girls (we all call them girls) want to retain their clean-cut, wholesome image...
...Alona Wood, a four-year veteran of the squad, said, "We wanted to be different from the other cheerleading squads...
...Toni Atwater, a rookie, said, "I feel like we are a sacred, sacred organization...
...It turned out to be a classic management-labor dispute...
...Carryin' on is the worst...
...He has named a new director of cheer-leading, and he's still going to change the uniforms...
...You may not have been aware until now that they had a clean-cut, wholesome image, but that's only because you have not studied the matter deeply...
...Says I to myself, "No doo-doo...
...form under the present regime...
...As we all know, Baptists (who stand here metaphorically for the entire Southern fundamentalist world view) are agin sin, which they define as drinkin', dancin', and carryin' on...
...It's image, reputation, standards, morals, character, principles...
...Well, is that any more irrational than most other American attitudes toward sex...
...That's why nobody could touch us...
...You can imagine—or, actually, you probably can't—the public outpouring of support and sympathy for the Cheerleaders...
...And then he fired Tex Schramm, the only manager the team has ever had...
...It is not a subject that has ever motivated people to do a lot of real clear thinking...
...He should probably shut up...
...Debbie Bond, director of the Cheerleaders for ten years, resigned, saying, "I couldn't ask these girls to do something which was against my beliefs...
...That's the George Bush influence...
...Then the new owner fired Tom Landry, the only coach the Cowboys have ever had...
...And he was going to scrap the rule that says the Cheerleaders can't perform where alcoholic beverages are served...
...No one is fooled...
...And now he's messing with the franchise...
...Objectively, there's no denying that what those girls do is dress up in costumes that would do credit to a strip-tease artiste and then prance about in front of hundreds of people shaking their bums and jiggling their tits...
...Because football requires the suspension of rational thought, just as theater requires the suspension of disbelief, we see nothing odd in such phenomena as the Kilgore Rangerettes, the Apache Belles of Tyler, and other noted practitioners of the close-order drill and baton-twirling arts...
...As the Fort Worth Star-Telegram noted in its caption under a particularly fine picture of two Cheerleaders jiggling up a storm, Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders Frequently Visit Nursing Homes...
...But the barbarian from Arkansas wanted the girls to wear revealing costumes—halter tops and spandex bicycle pants, as opposed to the Puritanical outfits they wear now...
Vol. 53 • August 1989 • No. 8
