Lindsay Rosenberg Is Changing How Pro Cheerleaders Are Seen One Photograph at a Time

Cheerleader with red poms
Lindsay Rosenberg

To have a photograph taken by Lindsay Rosenberg is something akin to a coming-of-age moment — an intimate experience in which the subject is given full reign to showcase their “vibe.” Before a single photo is taken, Rosenberg sits her client down on the couch to chat at eye-level, human-to-human; a brief moment in which the power in the room is equally dispersed. She asks what they’re hoping to get out of this, if they’re nervous (“Don’t be!”), and what sides of their personality they would like to see represented. Then, she begins her magic, which, in her eyes, is really just capturing her client’s magic. 

“I’m sitting there pressing a button,” she says. “You’re doing everything. You’re the one performing.”

When the shoot wraps, her client joins the collage of beaming faces on “the wall” — a collection of Polaroids documenting every client Rosenberg has ever shot. Each is glowing in a post-shoot haze: excited to be photographed, but mostly just excited to be in Rosenberg’s enigmatic presence.

“She kind of made me feel like my dreams were possible,” said Frida Dawson, Rosenberg’s former client-turned-assistant. “To go into something like that and feel so comfortable and valued...it’s rare.”

Dawson’s Polaroid is hung next to a litany of beautiful women: mothers, dancers, podcast hosts, and actors. But several dozen of the photos are of NFL cheerleaders, whom Rosenberg adores. They have also, unintentionally, become the center of her life’s mission to change the way society views women. A former NBA dancer herself, Rosenberg is now the team photographer for the 49ers’ Gold Rush cheerleaders — and the woman set on shifting an industry dominated by the male gaze into one seen through her own lens.

Rosenberg is one of a small but growing group of female photographers in the NFL, and one of the only female photographers to regularly shoot cheerleaders. In her career-defining work with the Gold Rush and other NFL cheer teams, she’s adding a much-needed “female gaze” to an industry where the “male gaze” is overwhelming. While she’s had the pleasure of working with highly respectful male sports photographers, many of them — who specialize in shooting technical shots of football players — swivel from a kneeling position on the field to snap quick shots of the cheerleaders from below.

“When some sports photographers glance over and there's a beautiful woman there, they're just going to shoot her the way that they see her, which is just probably...a girl jumping up and down,” Rosenberg said. “That’s what the world has kind of made them.”

Rosenberg noticed years ago that cheerleaders were being photographed, marketed, and publicized to the world as a cliché: attractive women in tiny clothes and, oh yeah, they dance sometimes. It's easy to spot in media coverage: a crotch shot here, a cleavage shot there. Even the cheerleaders’ photo albums and bikini calendars that Rosenberg remembers seeing growing up reminded her more of a Maxim magazine spread than a series of mementos honoring female athletes. And, their exploitation has been increasingly well documented as cheerleaders begin to speak out against their treatment. 

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The field of NFL cheerleading is littered with accusations of mistreatment and widespread inequality, and former NFL cheerleaders continue to file lawsuits alleging wage theft, sex discrimination, and religious discrimination. A new documentary titled “A Woman's Work: The NFL's Cheerleader Problem” directed by Yu Gu, which chronicles the wage lawsuit filed by former Oakland Raiderette Lacy Thibodeaux-Fields (she and her teammates were paid $1,250 each for an entire season, and said they weren't paid for required practices. The Raiders settled the lawsuit in 2014 for $1.25 million, according to CNN), is even an Oscar contender this year. And while cosmetic changes have been made — the New Orleans Saints retired all midriff-baring uniforms and the Los Angeles Rams added the first male cheerleaders to their roster — the root of the problem remains: That cheerleaders are seen and treated as accessories, not athletes.

Beyond their treatment in sports, the public perception of cheerleaders needs work too. NFL cheerleaders have long been misunderstood, misrepresented, and generally over-sexualized both by the public and the media. In an apparent effort to call out sexism, some in the media have even wondered why they're necessary at all. In 2018, The Ringer published an article headlined, “So, Uh, Why Does the NFL Have Cheerleaders Again?” calling the field “outdated” and “sexist at best.” Vanity Fair called NFL cheerleading “sex on the sidelines,” and an opinion columnist at USA Today called for the removal of teams altogether, claiming that “it’s time to end this nonsense.” When cheerleaders are incessantly portrayed as one-dimensional sex objects, ignorant of any agency or passion for the sport of dance, that’s exactly what they become.

Now, with the sudden removal of the Washington Football Team’s all-female cheerleading squad (communicated to the public as a “pause” and “rebrand” by the organization), the fuss over the hotly contested topic of NFL cheerleaders seems to only be getting louder.

“I feel like this role of a cheerleader is so close to becoming extinct, and it's the most powerful job that nobody understands,” Rosenberg said, pointing out that several NBA teams have recently shut down their all-female cheer squads. “It cannot go away. I don't think that you are elevating women by taking away their jobs.”

Instead of getting rid of cheerleaders because they’re seen as out-dated sex symbols, or because of their systemic mistreatment in the industry, Lindsay wanted to do her part to uplift the women by at least changing how they’re viewed.

“There was a point in my life that I was like, ‘Oh wait, if we just shoot them differently, they’ll look different, and they’ll change people’s minds,’” she said. “If we want these girls to look better than we perceive them as a public, and if we want them to look like they're on the levels of the athletes that they are, they need to be shot with more respect.”

Most importantly, Rosenberg has rebranded action shots as an opportunity to capture cheerleaders at their most powerful (vs. at their sexiest): mid-performance.

“The cheerleaders need to represent everything that they're fighting against and all the stereotypes that come with it, and if we keep shooting them on their knees in bathing suits, that’s not going to change,” she said.

Rosenberg caught the NFL cheer-bug by accident. After auditioning (unsuccessfully) for the NBA’s Clipper Spirit Dance Team when she was 18 years old, the director of the team called to ask if Rosenberg could choreograph a few sideline routines for the NFL’s annual all-star game, the Pro Bowl, which features one cheerleader from each NFL team. By a stroke of good fortune, the choreographer had dropped out, and Rosenberg had 30 minutes to pull something together. But a lifetime of commercial dance auditions and choreography experience had prepared her for the moment; she met it with ease. Seven years later, she took over choreography for the Pro Bowl halftime show.

Rosenberg’s big break as an NFL photographer arrived when Erin Olmstead, the former director of the Gold Rush cheerleaders, hired her to help style the team’s annual calendar shoot. Rosenberg, the chameleon she is, brought along her camera and got permission to shoot some behind-the-scenes content of the women, while doing her best not to disturb or step on the toes of the photographer the team had hired that day.

Looking back, Rosenberg says she had no idea what she was doing. She didn’t consider herself a photographer at that time; she was just a dancer with a penchant for capturing people in their truest form — not as subjects or clients. Even today, she seems oblivious as to why so many people love her work, though Julie Medeiros, the director of the dance department at Go 2 Talent Agency who works frequently with Rosenberg, knows precisely what Rosenberg’s “it” factor is: “I'll say it till I'm blue in the face. It's because she is actually photographing the person and capturing the personality and not just photographing a client against a pink wall.”

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That day, Rosenberg produced a stunning album of black-and-white photographs, which the 49ers wanted to use for their calendar. Unfortunately, Rosenberg hadn’t shot all of the teammates so the photos couldn't make the calendar, but she knew that the women looked more powerful than she’d ever seen them portrayed; something magical had transpired.

The following year, the 49ers hired Rosenberg to shoot the Gold Rush calendar by herself. While Rosenberg’s transition from dance to photography had been somewhat slow and natural — albeit bookended by one last traumatizing dance audition in which she was ridiculed by a choreographer, stormed out in an uncharacteristically dramatic fashion, and vowed never to audition for a commercial gig again — this shoot seems to be the pivotal moment.

Since then, Rosenberg has worked alongside current Gold Rush director Christi Deane to revamp the modern template for cheerleader-centric social media marketing. Each post shines a spotlight on the women as athletes, working professionals, and the down-to-earth, dedicated employees that they truly are. Videos showcase personality, gifs with digital doodles are engaging rather than sexy, and with heart, soul, and a little extra budget, other teams started to take notice.

“Lindsay didn't change the way that cheerleaders are perceived; she created the way that we're perceived,” Deane says. “She helped create the brand of Gold Rush.”

What Rosenberg understands, perhaps better than most, is that photographing some women requires an abundance of empathy, sensitivity, and trust because, she tells me, “it's very hard to trust somebody who just sees you as a sex object.” Her unique understanding of the precarious situation NFL cheerleaders often find themselves in when posing for calendar or poster shoots is because, well, she’s been there.

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When Rosenberg finally fulfilled her life-long dream of becoming a Clippers dancer, she had two life-altering experiences. First, she became enamored by the thrill of sports entertainment. Second, she experienced the spiraling loss of control and confidence one feels upon seeing an unflattering photo in a Sports Illustrated online album — one of the only sites that regularly posted photos of professional dancers and cheerleaders at the time. When asked if any of those photos had been taken by female photographers, she said definitively, “None. All of them were men.”

Rosenberg stresses that most male photographers had been respectful of her and her teammates, but that didn’t mean they understood the nuance with which cheerleaders deserved to be photographed. When she eventually left her position onstage and went behind the camera, she vowed to immediately delete photos of flexed feet, unstraightened kicks, and women hunched over while getting up off the floor mid-routine. And those crotch shots? They’d never see the light of day. She understood how damaging these photos could be not only to an entire team’s technical dance reputation, but to the reputation of the women themselves.

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with sexy photos, or with women owning their sexuality in any area of life. But that’s not exactly what’s going on here. Rather than the women being in control of their sexuality, they are seemingly being exploited for it. And, while they train and perform as athletes, they’re being consumed as sexual currency — a bit of eye candy for the audience while the real players rest. That’s what Rosenberg is dedicated to changing.

Now, when Rosenberg shoots NFL cheerleaders, she is acutely aware of the power dynamic inherent in the situation. To mitigate it, she tries to shoot from her knees or on the floor as much as possible. She allows the women to tower over her, effectively assuming the dominant position. She does not command them to put their hands on their hips or puff up their chests; she just lets them do their thing. And, because she’s participated in many calendar shoots herself, she understands how much pressure the women are under to take that perfect photo.

“I know them. I am them,” she says. “I look at somebody, and I’m like, ‘Wow, you’re a mom of two, and you have a degree, and I know how wonderful you are.’ The difference is that I’m seeing them as human.”

Rosenberg’s success within the NFL demonstrates the ripple effect of putting a woman in charge. Rosenberg is living proof that girls — and any young people, for that matter — don’t have to be just one thing, and that they certainly don’t have to do anything to appease men.

For now, Rosenberg will keep mulling over the “millions” of cheerleader marketing campaign ideas living rent-free in her head.

“I would be happy with my life if I could look back and know that I made a difference in women's lives,” she said.

Editor's Note: The author of this story was previously a cheerleader for the Los Angeles Rams.