Dallas Cowboys cheerleader Jenna Waller got candid about why she’s now thankful that she was cut from the squad in 2024.
“I’ve been so grateful that I didn’t make the team last year because of where I was with my health and with my body,” Waller, 27, said during season 3 of Netflix’s America’s Sweethearts: Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders, which premiered on Tuesday, June 16.
After being cut from the 2024 team during training camp, Waller said she went through “the lowest low of my life.”
“I gained a lot of weight. I think it was actually that I just started eating normally again,” she explained.
Former Dallas Cowboys cheerleader and associate choreographer Shelly Bramhall did not mince words after her daughter, Dayton, was cut from the iconic NFL squad for a third time. Shelly, a member of the DCC class of 1989, struggled to understand how her longtime friend, DCC director Kelli Finglass, could overlook Dayton again, this time cutting […]
Waller recalled how things became particularly dangerous right before being told she didn’t make the team.
“Last year during training camp, people would say, ‘How are you not eating?’” she said. “I was like, ‘I’m just not hungry’ or ‘I need to be skinny for practice.’ I would say things like that.”
She added, “As dancers, we’re always in the mirror. It’s hard to have a huge lunch and then wear that tiny outfit and be like, ‘Yeah, that’s fine.’ When a little extra bone would show, I was like, ‘Oh, that looks crazy! Let me go more!’”
Waller further explained that comments on social media began having a negative influence.
“It always starts with everybody telling you, ‘You look so good,’” she said. “And then that is such an addictive cycle. You don’t realize you’re in it until you’re too far.”
Waller continued, “Now it’s just kinda crazy to look back at. If I had made the team last year at the weight that I was at, at the size that I was at, I would have had to maintain that for my entire tenure on the team.”
In reflecting, Waller can admit now she “wasn’t feeling myself to be powerful on the field and take up space and be an adult woman.”
“I remind myself all the time how grateful I am that I had this year to heal my body and get to a place where I feel good in the mirror and I feel good about myself,” she said. “I’m so glad I was cut last year for this specific reason.”
While dancing for the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders is considered a prestigious honor in itself, it doesn’t come with a salary to match. “I would say I’m making, like, a substitute teacher [salary],” Kat Puryear said during the first season of Netflix’s America’s Sweethearts: Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders. “I would say I’m making, like, [the same as […]
With the help of a therapist, Waller said she learned to embrace the “anxious worry” about making the 2025 team.
“That’s better than overwhelming fear and doom,” she acknowledged.
Waller successfully made the team in 2025, which plays out on season 3 of America’s Sweethearts: Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders, streaming now on Netflix.
If you or someone you know struggles with an eating disorder, visit the National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA) website or call their hotline at (800) 931-2237 to get help.
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