Content warning: This story discusses eating disorders and depression.
For Victoria Kalina, being a Dallas Cowboy Cheerleader came with a harrowing cost.
The fourth-year veteran reflected on how she struggled deeply with her mental health and body image while on the team.
"I've never been open about it, but my depression turns into this bad cycle," Victoria explained on Netflix's America's Sweethearts: Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders docuseries. "Whenever I get into a bad depression, I turn to bad coping skills, which causes bad eating habits. And as a dancer, the hardest thing you can fight are eating disorders plus depression."
"I go through the cycle when that depression zone hits," she continued. "It's a binge-purge cycle. It's a binge to get that feel-good, that empty feeling filled again. But then game time comes, so then you gotta get into those baby clothes, get into that baby uniform, and that cycle just keeps going."
After the Covid pandemic and subsequent lockdown, the 24-year-old admitted she wasn't ready to pick up her pom-poms again and decided to take a gap year.
"I just felt very out of it," she recalled. "Without that year, I did not feel I could be my best to represent DCC. When I decided to take my year off, I got into therapy."
And it ended up being an informative process.
"I've learned that I do not like to feel my feelings," she noted. "I think that's why I cover any emotion that I have. I think we all kind of have a tendency to put up a front."
After that time off, Victoria's dreams of returning to the field dimmed as she felt like her teammates didn't put in any effort to be her friend.
"I just love making people happy," she reflected in a tearful confession. "When I don't feel like it's being reciprocated, it's very exhausting and hard not to think you're not liked."
Ultimately, at the end of the season, Victoria decided to leave the squad and has since traded in the Lone Star State for the East Coast to pursue new opportunities, she shared in a June 23 YouTube video. Although it's bittersweet, the Cowboys' longtime director Kelli Finglass is supportive of her new venture.
"Victoria made the right decision for herself," she recently told E! News. "I think she's got big plans moving on. I wish her nothing but the best. I think she can and should be successful."