By Alice Redpill
The moment was captured in an Instagram video shared by the team, Armani Latimer and a Cowboys community page on Dec. 9. Armani has alopecia, an autoimmune disease that causes hair loss and she no longer cares who knows!
“You got this, Mani,” a woman can be heard saying. The clip begins with Latimer in her uniform, surrounded by her fellow cheerleaders. She then starts walking out to the field. Bright smile and NO FEAR of judgemental fools.
“So proud of that you’re doing this and you’re just representing a lot of little girls out there and they’re going to be looking at you in awe. At your strength, knowing that they are going to feel so beautiful after this because of what you’re doing today”, the voiceover continues. The clip then shifts to show Latimer performing with the cheerleaders on the field.
Latimer’s teammates were showing her all the love in the comments section!
“Thank you for sharing this piece of yourself with the world. The strength you have is so inspiring ❤️,” fellow Dallas Cowboys cheerleader Marissa Phillips wrote
“I will cry every time I watch this ❤️ Armani you are truly my idol in every single way,” another teammate, Charly Barby, gushed. “You are embody everything a leader should be, have truly become my best friend, and my rock! I’m so excited that the world gets to see how inspiring and amazing you are!”
Latimer opened up about her condition in an essay for Women’s Health published in December, revealing she was diagnosed when she was 12. She also said cheering became a challenge.
“My alopecia was hard to navigate during my early cheering days,” she wrote. “It was such a tumultuous time that I was only able to give about 50 percent 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 Some people picked up on the fact that I was more withdrawn and not my bubbly self and having teammates that I could sit and cry with about what I was going through was healing.”
She also wrote that she became interested at the beginning of this NFL season in the possibility of cheering without a wig. Eventually deciding to do so during the team’s My Cause My Boots “Monday Night Football” game on Dec. 9 against the Cincinnati Bengals.
“At first, I was a bit scared to commit to it because doing a photoshoot or taking a video of yourself and posting it on social media is not in real time,” she said. “Knowing that the game would be live in front of over 80 thousand people and I may end up on TV is a bit intimidating. But I’m reminding myself that I’ll be out there dancing with my best friends, and my family will be there as well. I know that it’ll be an impactful moment for whoever it touches.”
She also told WHM, “When I was a young girl, my family and I would often go on cruises, and my mother would style my hair into a single braid for the trips. But after one of those vacations. When I was 11 years old. My mother unraveled my braid and noticed something shocking: a bald spot.
She was concerned that it had happened during the braiding process, but she also knew my father had struggled with hair loss. So, she took me to see a dermatologist. At age 12, I was officially diagnosed me with alopecia areata, a condition that causes my immune system to attack my hair follicles. Resulting in occasional bald spots that seemed to become bigger with stress. The older I got, the more pronounced they became.”
She went through high school without telling anyone she ever had alopecia but once she got to college, stress caused more hair loss; loss that took much longer for her to grow back. By that time, she was on a dance team and opted to get sew-ins to hide the areas of balding. This meant her natural hair was braided down and extensions were woven into the braids.
Not long after college, she auditioned to be a Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader and attempted to wear her hair naturally. The demands of being a training camp candidate and trying to make the team caused her hair to fall out faster. As it became harder to cover up she went back to sew-ins and once the hair fell out completely, she started wearing wigs.
“My alopecia was hard to navigate during my early cheering days. It was such a tumultuous time that I was only able to give about 50 percent of my effort. Some people picked up on the fact that I was more withdrawn and not my bubbly self. Having teammates that I could sit and cry with about what I was going through was healing.
On those days when you can’t be 100 percent, you need people who lift you up and help you be your best. I don’t believe we’re supposed to do life alone, and without my people, I wouldn’t have been able to break boundaries and be the woman I am today. Overall, my team and my family helped me maintain a positive mindset.”
Over the years, she says the biggest challenge was that she had to overcome being honest with herself. “Telling people about my alopecia areata wasn’t hard…but fully accepting that my life looked a little different than everyone else’s; especially being someone in the spotlight. People see cheerleaders and assume they’re flawless. While that’s obviously not true, I still found myself having to unlearn idea that I needed to be perfect to be on the team. I didn’t want to just be the cheerleader who didn’t have hair. Now that I’m more vocal about my condition, I know that alopecia doesn’t define me—it just adds character to who I am.”
Once she truly embraced her new reality she knew she wasn’t a victim. Alopecia affects so many men and women around the world. Alopecia areata affects about 160 million people worldwide. Researchers have estimated that the lifetime incidence (a measure of the likelihood that someone will experience a specific event over the course of their life) of the autoimmune disease is 2%. Most people lose hair on their scalp or beard area, but hair loss can occur anywhere on your body.
“I would rather speak out to bring awareness to this condition than allow people to think negatively about themselves. I never want to be the kind of person who doesn’t step up and speak out for others. 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.”
SSZ fam agrees. Let’s all celebrate this woman’s bravery and courage. To be herself. Her strength is admirable. Check out Armani and the rest of the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders on the Netflix series, Americas Sweethearts or on the field for her last home game December 22nd, at AT&T Stadium!
