People Are Furious At The Cowboys For Remarks About Not Paying Cheerleaders Well

Viewers of Netflix’s docuseries “America’s Sweethearts” are calling out the Dallas Cowboys over how an official for the NFL team tried to justify why its cheerleaders aren’t paid well.

In the docuseries, which premiered last week and follows the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders through a football season, Cowboys Chief Brand Officer Charlotte Jones tells the camera that there is a lot of “cynicism” around pay for NFL cheerleaders.

“They’re not paid a lot,” Jones, the daughter of Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, said on camera. “But the facts are that they actually don’t come here for the money. They come here for something that’s actually bigger than that to them.”

She continued: “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.” She added that women become Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders because it’s their passion and they get to be a part of the sisterhood.

People on social media expressed their anger at those remarks.

“I don’t think the show is reflecting positively on the Cowboys organization,” reads one comment with more than 1,200 likes on the cheerleaders’ Instagram. “These girls are overworked without appropriate pay and then Charlotte, who has her job because her daddy is a millionaire and handed it to her, defends it by saying it’s [a] privilege to represent the organization. Yikes. Not a good look on the Cowboys. If they’re such an important brand and the organization makes so much money off of them, then pay them accordingly.”

The docuseries never discloses how much the team’s cheerleaders make. Kat Puryear, a former Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader, said on the docuseries that she was paid about the same as a full-time