What to Know
Anyone who’s seen the wildly popular reality series America’s Sweethearts: Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders on Netflix already knows that the members of the team are some of the hardest working athletes around. It’s not easy to make the cut in the world of professional cheerleading — let alone on one of the most prestigious teams there is.
But despite knowing what it takes to become a Cowboys cheerleader, people are body-shaming one former member of the squad who recently returned to fill in for a cheerleader who was injured. And now, she’s sharing just how much those rude comments have affected her.
Claire Wolford recently filled in for a member of the squad.
After Claire, who is now 26, retired from cheering with the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders in 2023, she’s stayed in the game as a DCC All-Star, which means she’s on hand to fill in for a member of the current team if she’s needed. A situation like that came up in November, when Reece Weaver was unable to perform due to an injury.
Unfortunately, not all fans were receptive to Claire as Reece’s replacement, and after a video of her performance surfaced online, she said she saw a barrage of “negative comments” about her body — always a bummer to read, but it sounds like it especially stung since Claire said she was “very proud” of herself for getting back on the field two years after she retired.
Now, she’s fighting back against the body-shamers.
@clairewolford_ ❤️
♬ original sound – Claire Wolford
“I spent years of my life body-shaming myself, exercising and trying to fit a certain mold. I have healed from that and feel so much better where I’m at,” she said.
While talking about the situation, Claire became emotional, because of course she did — who would ever deserve to be shamed like this?
She even teared up, thinking about how those kinds of comments would affect someone who hadn’t made peace with their body, and how she herself would have felt if she’d read them just a few years ago. “You never know who you are triggering. There are girls who see that and maybe are not the same … and it causes them to stumble and think about, ‘Am I too big? Am I thick?’ and all the words that were thrown out,” she said. “Years ago, that would have thrown me into a spiral and sent me to the gym for hours.”
Claire is proud of her body.
At the end of her video, Claire encouraged anyone watching to stop making any kind of comments about someone else’s body, good or bad.
“I just want people to realize, it’s just not OK to comment on people’s bodies,” she said, adding, “There’s a lot better things to talk about, and there’s a lot more interesting things about people than their bodies.”
She later said, “I am so happy, like, I am making a lot of life decisions. There’s a lot going on, and I feel great in my skin. It took me a long time to get here to this point, where I feel content.”
At the end, the only opinion about Claire’s body that actually matters is her own — and after a career as impressive as the one she’s had, she truly does have so much to be proud of.
