What ‘Cheer’ Led To: How Viral Fame Upended Monica Aldama’s Life
Inside the Netflix star and competitive cheerleading coach’s fight against the fallout of instant stardom.
Sarah Hepola is a writer-at-large for Texas Monthly and the host/creator of the 2021 TM podcast America’s Girls, about the influence and lost history of the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders. Before joining TM, she was the personal essays editor at Salon.com, and her writing has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, the Guardian, the Cut, Elle, and Bloomberg Businessweek. She is the author of the 2015 New York Times best-seller Blackout: Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget and a forthcoming memoir about singlehood, Unattached. She lives in Dallas.
Inside the Netflix star and competitive cheerleading coach’s fight against the fallout of instant stardom.
By Sarah Hepola
Check out these five-star spots under the stars.
By Sarah Hepola
How high-end camping turned into a statewide phenomenon.
By Sarah Hepola
Wildcatter Ranch, near Possum Kingdom Lake, caters to weekend cowboys from around the world.
By Sarah Hepola
‘Mad Men.’ ‘Homeland.’ ‘Love & Death.’ The current golden age of television wouldn’t be the same without the work of Dallas native Lesli Linka Glatter.
By Sarah Hepola
The style, which proliferated on TikTok, says “I’m down to party, but not till I pick these wildflowers.“
By Sarah Hepola
From glamorous resorts to a repurposed storage tank, options abound.
By Sarah Hepola
Its fortunes ebb and flow, but the historic island is experiencing a renaissance, with new hotels and renovations and a shiny new cruise terminal.
By Sarah Hepola
Turndown service! Amazing cocktails! Small but expensive soaps! These ten new and renovated hotels (and ten more honorable mentions) know how to treat their guests.
By Kathy Blackwell, Courtney Bond and Sarah Hepola
'cleaVage: the front story' is the world’s first musical about silicone breast implants. Do we need a punny goof-fest about the saga of fake boobs? Yes.
By Sarah Hepola
Texas hat experts share their tips on how to select a lid that won’t make you look like an idiot.
By Sarah Hepola
Sipple in Houston curates hundreds of nonalcoholic products, from liquor alternatives to functional beverages, including many Texas-based brands.
By Sarah Hepola
Season three of the Netflix reality series wrapped up in Dallas, but between the gossipy fun and the occasional eye roll, there is insight into the nature of twenty-first-century relationships and marriage.
By Sarah Hepola
They’re global icons who have left a lasting imprint on American culture. But do recent controversies threaten the squad’s future?
By Sarah Hepola
‘Making the Team’ was the cable channel’s longest-running reality program. After sixteen seasons, why did it decide to pull the plug?
By Sarah Hepola
The drama that’s swept up Jerry Jones’s former right-hand man says a lot about the distorted values of America’s Team.
By Sarah Hepola
Host Sarah Hepola counts down her favorite moments from our series on the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders.
By Sarah Hepola
The Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders have navigated scandals and cultural shifts in the last few years. What is their future in this new world?
By Sarah Hepola
Dana Presley Killmer joined the squad at the peak of its popularity, but the $15 game rate hadn't changed, and wouldn't for many years.
By Sarah Hepola
From honey shots to swimsuit calendars, sex has long been part of the cheerleaders’ brand. But is the provocative tease a relic of another era?
By Sarah Hepola
It’s not just about being the right weight. It’s about having the right hair, the right skin, the right boobs, the right legs. Only a very particular kind of beautiful woman gets to wear that uniform.
By Sarah Hepola
One former Cowboys cheerleader tells the story behind her epic encounter with Danny White, in a picture that was quashed for 25 years.
By Sarah Hepola
Being a Cowboys cheerleader has always meant living by a long list of rules. But do those rules help protect the cheerleaders or control them?
By Sarah Hepola
A dynamic professor, a feisty seamstress, a firebrand dancer, and the other underappreciated architects of the phenomenon that transformed the NFL.
By Sarah Hepola
The Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders uniform is iconic, a symbol of Texas culture for half a century. But its origin story remains remarkably unsettled.
By Sarah Hepola
Tami Barber became a sweetheart of the seventies-era cheerleaders. But she also had—and still has—a rebel streak.
By Sarah Hepola
They were at the center of a scandal that rocked the NFL. More than forty years later, would they finally tell their side?
By Sarah Hepola
A group of former Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders pose topless in Playboy, and the Cowboys go to court to protect their brand.
By Sarah Hepola
Shannon Baker Werthmann got more fan mail than any woman on the seventies squad. We talk sexiness, fair pay, encounters with Roger Staubach, and getting fired by Kelli Finglass.
By Sarah Hepola
Vonciel Baker still holds the record for most years on the squad.
By Sarah Hepola
The cheerleaders enjoy the glamour of sudden fame, while grappling with low pay and the dangers that celebrity brings.
By Sarah Hepola
The modern Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders launch in 1972 and rocket to national fame.
By Sarah Hepola
Inside the wild, glamorous, and complicated saga of the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders, an institution that changed sports, entertainment, and countless childhoods of boys and girls like me.
By Sarah Hepola
Mobile City was incorporated in the early nineties to facilitate alcohol sales in a dry county. Now residents—especially its devoted mayor—fear for the fate of their accidental utopia.
By Sarah Hepola
In their new book, ‘The Sober Lush,' Austin writers Amanda Eyre Ward and Jardine Libaire offer a booze-free road map to a rich, full lifestyle.
By Sarah Hepola
“Six feet away” can be very, very sexy.
By Sarah Hepola
But for heaven’s sake, the best-selling author, unapologetic cusser, and fifth-generation Texan would rather not be called that.
By Sarah Hepola
This story originally appeared in the February 2018 issue with the headline “The Dating Game Changer.” The first time I heard about Bumble, I was complaining about dating apps, a favorite pastime of those of us consigned to them. This was December 2015, and I’d spent four months swiping
By Sarah Hepola
In the war against campus sexual assault, why are we not talking about drinking?
By Sarah Hepola
How I’m learning to love the Cowboys. And the Mavericks. And the Rangers. And the Stars. And . . .
By Sarah Hepola