Judy Trammell, the choreographer of the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders, and Kelli McGonigle Finglass, the director, mesmerize me as champions of the Texas avatar of femme performance.
Choreographer Trammell (L) and director Finglass, both former DCCs, judge auditions for Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders.
Now the texts on this, as I’m sure you all know, are the three Scholz sisters’ memoir of their time on the cheering squad (’78-’85), and the Channelview, TX tale of tiger mom Wanda Holloway, who was convicted in 1991 of plotting a murder-for-hire of Verna Heath, the mother of Shanna Holloway’s greatest rival for the cheering squad, Amber Heath.
The Scholz sisters’ mama taught them how to dress, a terrifying process in which bags and shoes must match and hair must be high — a mean girls’ Texas aesthetic whose persistence can be sussed today by seeing Finglass in her orange sheath or the terrifying female VP of the Cowboys, Charlotte Jones Anderson (daughter of the owner), who looks like a ravening, Stanford-educated ferret in poufy little Prada dresses.
Mean girls doesn’t even begin to cover it.
Trammell was a DCC from ’80-’84, and Finglass from ’84-’89. I figure they’re both in their 50s, and I am always thinking about what makes an Old Babe and what Old Babes do and wear. I think Finglass is and Trammell isn’t. What made Finglass a babe — her smile — still makes her one today, as mean a pimp as she is. (For the smile, check out the GIF third from the top, left, for the pimpin’ watch CMT’s show.) Trammell’s hair — and you know that hair whippin’ energy takes the place of jiggle on the DCC — is the same do she was whippin’ in the ’80s, very long and prematurely blonde. Even the black girls on the squad have long whippy dos. I am trying to deconstruct the Trammell/Finglass eyeliner — completely surrounding the eye with a black line after 50 is an aesthetic choice of the kind I deemed some time ago, deciding to be an old woman who paints, with Louise Nevelson as the Old Babe Who Paints avatar. The paint becomes your face, instead of your face being your face.
Sculptor Louise Nevelson
Iris Apfel, who is the captain of the Old Babes team, sometimes paints and also is a polychrome old babe, one trope of how to dress as an Old Babe. Please note use of I.M. Pei glasses as eyeliner.
Iris Apfel, captain of the Old Babes team. She replaces Princess Lilian of Sweden, who died in March and evinced an entirely different style. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princess_Lilian,_Duchess_of_Halland
Here we see Apfel, painted, hustling her own line of MAC cosmetics. Note there is nothing natural about the colors, such that the paint once again becomes your face.
I am trying to deconstruct Trammell’s hair — it’s the 2013 version of her 1980’s do, which Finglass has most cleverly left behind. Her hair in the 80s was the biggest poufiest and poodly-est of all, and now it’s cool MILF hair. As Trammell’s is not. I have to think about it some more. I wonder if Trammell thinks of whippy hair as part of her dance costume?
Judy Trammell, ca. 1980s
The makeover editions of the aspiring cheerleaders, in which Finglass supervises their haircuts and teaches what not to wear, has to be one of my greatest drag learning experiences, as if the Scholz sisters’ mama had survived into the 21st century to teach us all how to get closer to God with our hair.
http://www.cmt.com/videos/dallas-cowboys-cheerleaders-805-appearance-counts/1714824/full-episode.jhtml
Writing 