Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader With Alopecia Performs Without Wig
Dallas Cowboys cheerleader Armani Latimer bucked antiquated beauty standards Monday night when she danced without her wig in support of alopecia awareness during the game against the Cincinnati Bengals.
Monday night was the “My Cause My Boots” game, during which cheerleaders honor a cause that’s important to them with a star on their boots.
Other cheerleaders honored causes such as lung cancer awareness, mental health awareness and more. In an Instagram reel, Latimer can be seen wiping away tears before she walked onto the football field to perform. Her teammates encouraged her, telling her that she was “representing a lot of little girls out there.” Latimer told Women’s Health that she ran the idea of dancing without her wig by the cheerleaders director, Kelli Finglass, at the start of the season and that Finglass “loved it.”
At age 12, Latimer was diagnosed with alopecia, a condition that causes the immune system to attack hair follicles, sometimes leaving a person bald. Latimer told Women’s Health that she didn’t tell anyone about her alopecia when she was in high school, but stress in college caused her to lose more hair. She wore sew-ins while in college to hide her bald spots, but when she auditioned for the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders in 2020, the stress caused her hair to start falling out more. So she opted for a wig.
“My alopecia was hard to navigate during my early cheering days,” Latimer told Women’s Health. “It was such a tumultuous time that I was only able to give about 50% of my effort. Some people picked up on the fact that I was more withdrawn and not my bubbly self, and having teammates that I could sit and cry with about what I was going through was healing.”
Since their inception in the 1950s, NFL cheerleaders have been held to a high beauty standard. And Black NFL cheerleaders have said they have an even harder time maintaining the beauty standards.
The Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders have a partnership with Tangerine Salon, where cheerleaders can get their hair done, but it wasn’t until 2020 that they partnered with a salon that specializes in Black hair. Jacie Scott, a former Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader from 2012 to 2016, who is Black, told Allure in 2020 that she paid for her hair care services with her own money because she wanted to go to a stylist familiar with her hair texture.
Justine Lindsay, the first openly trans NFL cheerleader, told BuzzFeed News in 2022 that she was relieved when her coach told her she could perform without a wig. She said she is happy to “inspire other young girls who may be insecure rocking their bald look.”
Latimer told Women’s Health: “I figure that if I can overcome my negative self-talk and self-defeating mindset, I can help change the experience for the next 12-year-old who gets diagnosed. She can start healing early instead of waiting until she’s 23, like me. There’s so much societal pressure that comes with being a woman — we don’t need more.
“We can be empowered by so many things, and you don’t need your hair to feel that.”
