The Problem with AMERICA’S SWEETHEARTS: Faith, Modesty and Sextertainment

Published: July 22, 2024

The Problem with AMERICA’S SWEETHEARTS: Faith, Modesty and Sextertainment

By Michaela Gordoni, Movieguide® Contributor

The Dallas Cowboys sports franchise is valued at the glamorous amount of $9 billion.

But its financial success isn’t just due to the football games and the blue-and-white-painted fanatics. Part of its industry is the 36 cheerleaders that the national team keeps in rotation — arguably the most well-known cheerleaders in the world.

But, they’re not well-known for the right reasons.

Former Dallas Cowboys cheerleader and AMERICA’S SWEETHEARTS star Claire Wolford says never felt “ashamed” of her image while on the cheer team, referring to the Cowboy’s classic cheerleader outfit — boots, underwear-shaped shorts and a loose long-sleeve top tied below the breasts, exposing the abdomen and cleavage. That image also includes the dance routines, which feature an array of provocative choreography.

“When you put on the uniform, like you feel like you’re wearing a superhero costume, and it’s the most confident and beautiful like I’ve ever felt and not because of the way I look but because I know what I’m representing,” Wolford said on the “Happy and Healthy” podcast July 9.

“It’s…this like amazing billion dollar organization who has so much history and legacy,” she said, “but it’s like the women who came before me who’ve worn the uniform and like established the path for me to walk in it now, there’s nothing but like pride that comes from that. I’m just proud to you know, be a part of that legacy.”

The legacy of using bodies as a currency for male entertainment.

Cheerleaders do more than boost the team’s morale and pump up the crowd. They provide sexual entertainment. They’re there with their getups and provocative routines to give the fans a show and increase revenue and notoriety for the Cowboys franchise. And they’re female for a reason. According to Bookies.com, 78.5% of the Cowboy’s audience are male.

This female objectification allows for free ogling and voyeurism, which a Cowboys senior team executive got into trouble for in 2015, as well as other issues that come with representing oneself in a sensual way publically.

The cheer team also portrays an unrealistic and specific image for women. The Cowboys don’t have any height or weight requirement for the cheer team. However, a perusal through the Cowboys’ cheerleader catalog (which I am not suggesting anyone do) shows strict similarities of thin waists, tan bodies, gleaming white teeth, young age and faces full of makeup.

Wolford said, “You look at like the little girls with their eyes like, lighting up at you and just how they want to be in your shoes one day and there’s no part of me that feels like, ashamed.”

But is this what these little girls should look up to? Notoriety and awe at the price of selling their bodies to audiences and screens?

Their lives would hold so much more meaning and honor for God if they grew up to humbly scrub floors than if they gallivanted their bodies about for the pleasure of men and the title of “Cowboys Cheerleader.”

Matthew 6:19-21 says, “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

The praise and adoration of man means nothing in the Kingdom of God.

Now, the Cowboys cheer team is already a societal problem ethically, but it’s certainly a problem when some of these cheerleaders, like Wolford, choose this career while professing to follow Christ. That’s like keeping one foot in the water and one on land while claiming that both of your feet are dry.

“I never struggled with it in like a way of like, does this conflict with my beliefs and I also think it’s because the women around me were like strong believers,” Wolford said. “So yeah, I think maybe some people would be surprised to hear that, but as far as like the modesty aspect goes, I feel I’ve never felt exposed.”

“The creepy guys, you just like try to ignore…We have security who watches it and like are there to protect us and like the Cowboys do everything they can to help with that but yeah I mean in terms of like wrestling with it in my faith there wasn’t anything like that for me that I struggled with,” she said.

Movieguide® recently reported on Wolford’s faith:

Wolford shared that being a part of the Dallas Cowboys cheer team has strengthened her faith.

“It’s made my faith so much stronger,” Wolford said. “We do have Bible studies that we’ve had since I was on the team, and I’ve had so many mentors and girls who have just led me in my faith, and I hope to do the same for other girls.”

Many people don’t feel convicted about their choices. For example, sometimes when I get upset and respond in anger, I’m in my feelings. I don’t feel convicted right away. When I take time to be alone with God or read his word in scripture, he reveals that to me.

If there’s something you don’t feel convicted about, it should be treated like a question mark that needs to be thoroughly explored until you’ve got a definite position on it. You’ve got to ask ‘What does the Bible say about it?” and “Does what I’m doing honor God, or does it dishonor him?”

Truthsaves.org’s founder explains why Christians and non-followers alike often don’t feel convicted about their ungodly choices:

“The first time we steal something, our consciences prick our minds and hearts and we feel very convicted. But if we keep stealing, we warp our consciences so that we are no longer convicted of the sin. This is what Scripture speaks of as a seared conscience (1 Timothy 4:2) or defiled conscience (Titus 1:15). As Paul tells us in Romans 6, when we sin we become slaves to sin.”

And what makes sin attractive is that it has its own pleasure attached to it, whether it is the thrill of doing something illicit, the pleasure of forbidden fruit or the wonder of forbidden knowledge, there is a pleasure to sin. Without that lure of pleasure, there would be no attraction to sin. Sin sets pleasure as a sort of lure to catch and destroy people.

There isn’t and has never been a single human on earth that God created for the purpose of provocative entertainment. He wants his children to honor him.

How to balance being a Christian while having a career or lifestyle like the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders’ isn’t a conundrum; it isn’t a grey area. It’s either right or wrong. And anyone who tries to understand God’s design for their body doesn’t have to think hard before they know which one that is.