America's Sweethearts: The Most Important Show of Right Now
What you should have been watching last night
I have lost the past three days of my life to the Netflix docuseries America’s Sweethearts and have no regrets. Never has the problem-that-has-a-name (patriarchy) been so clearly conveyed in the audio-visual medium.
If you’re living under a rock, America’s Sweethearts is a nonfiction sports docuseries by the director of Cheer and Last Chance U, about the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders, the eponymous national sweethearts, hereafter DCC. But wait, you sneer, I care not a fig for that CTE-promoting organization, or compulsory jollity, or tiny pants,. But guess what? You do. A quick explainer before this show goes the way of Tiger King:
The series traces the 2023 DCC class from auditions to its natural conclusion, a sexual assault at the workplace. Dolly Parton has a cameo, Sarah Hepola brings a welcome touch of erudition, and everything really is bigger in Texas. But the show works because lemme tell ya, the DCC are compelling!!! Can your lazy ass do high kicks and LAND IN THE GODDAMN SPLITS?! All while holding down a day job as a nurse or florist or orthodontist?! And being emotionally abused by mommy figure-coaches who are the satanic embodiment of the patriarchy, proof positive that women can be just as culpable in men in scary views and behavior?! Talk about backwards and in heels!
Shot verité style, the filmmakers resist hammering home the “here’s what’s bad about patriarchy/racism/America” thesis (a la docs in similar settings like Bama Rush) because simply to show is to tell. The amount of time and capital these women spend applying and removing make-up (for closed practices?!) could fuel a small nation. The exacting cruelty of the female coaches and Charlotte Jones (her quote about cutting a hopeful: “You have the easiest conversation…” CHILLS. Screenwriters of Marvel movies should be taking notes on this reptilian villain) convey the predicament all mere mortal women among us, not just the demi-goddesses of the DCC find ourselves in: You’re amazing but you’re not good enough for us. It’s not you, it’s just the essential, immutable facts of you. You didn’t make it, but you should be proud of yourself. Stop applying mascara to your lower lashes. Lose weight, but don’t be scrawny. We’re not cutting you because you’re brown, it’s just because you’re not precise enough! (Justice for Anisha) Try out again next year! And after the coaches have eviscerated you, often in front of your peers, you are to smile and say, “Yes, Ma’am!” It’s something out of Atwood. Body positivity has yet to arrive to AT&T Stadium. Honestly, America Ferrara should have just delivered verbatim anything Kelli Finglass says at any given moment as her barnburner Barbie speech on the paradoxes of modern womanhood.
Rookie fave Reece tells us she dances to reflect the glory of god, and like Caitlin Dickerson wrote in the Atlantic, when she dances, I do indeed see Jesus. Even though I find the DCC guidelines detestable-- “I am pleasing to everyone…. I cost nothing”—the women themselves I adore. I have resisted the urge to google them lest I stumble upon the inevitable MAGA/pro-life/trad unsavoriness lurking behind the expertly-applied false lashes. In one scene, Reece’s untalented fiancé bemoans the fact that he can’t find a job, saying “the lord has shut that door.” This is a phrase I will be deploying often.
If you have watched this show, can we please talk?! The DCC has colonized my mind like Texas’s “annexation” this week and I just need to talk about it! In the meantime, I will be practicing my prancing onto the field.
Some further picnic-table-banging midsommar recommendations:
Strip Tees by Kate Flannery: Hits all the pleasure (and pain) centers of Dov Charney’s early aughts
You’re Grounded by Swan Huntley: A true, tender portrait of what it is to be a silly human in this mixed-up time. Plus, an invitation to sketch trees!
“Best Laid” by Maureen McLane: Your summer anthem
The 50-year retrospective at ICP (the International Center or Photography, not the Insane Clown Posse): One work I can’t stop thinking about is a still from a lighting test at Glamour magazine in the late 1950s. Pictured: some light-in-the-loafers male staffers, striking their cover girl poses. Worth the price of admission.
Buying a single half-sour pickle at The Pickle Guys and eating it while walking down Essex street: Be somebody’s New York story
The Biography of X by Catherine Lacey: You probably already read this as it came out > a year ago. I avoided it because I thought it would be too arty and pretentious, aka I yielded to the low self esteem siren call of yuh think yuh bettah than me? But reader, Lacey IS better than us all, as this book is so imaginative and confident and very readable.
Not being pregnant in the summer: NEVER AGAIN! NEVER FORGET!!!! Whenever you meet someone with a September birthday, buy their mom an expensive bouquet of flowers.
Paula Modersohn-Becker at the Neue Galerie: The artist died of a postpartum embolism at 31. Can you even imagine what midlife would’ve looked like to her?! Also, just a full-throated rec for the Neue Galerie always and forever because of its perfect jewel box size, a museum you can get your arms around. And being there with Anna on her birthday? Sublime.
Sally Franson’s masterpiece drops Tuesday!
Anti-recommendation: Multiple graduation ceremonies and celebrations for pre-schoolers and kindergarteners. Where has the month of June gone?! These people have a but tenuous grasp AT BEST of the alphabet and rarely make sense. Why are we celebrating them for an entire month?! If you think Millennials all get medals, gird your loins for their progeny, Gen Alpha! Get a job, kid!
And may that job be a fairly compensated Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader!!!!