Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader Armani Latimer brought awareness to alopecia on “My Cause, My Cleats” night.
ARLINGTON, Texas — It’s an annual celebration for the NFL: “My Cause, My Cleats.”
The night is an opportunity for NFL players to “wear their hearts on their cleats” to champion a cause that’s important to them.
But this year, the messaging of a different team member captured the hearts of many. Her cause wasn’t displayed on her shoes, but she bore her message on the weight of her shoulders.
Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader Armani Latimer chose this night, with a nation watching, to make her statement, cheering during the game without her wig.
“I really wanted to push the awareness of alopecia and the effect that it has on people. It’s something I’ve been dealing with since I was 12, so I wanted to share that with the world,” Latimer said. “I don’t want any woman, little girl out there to feel like they don’t have a voice in this world or someone who’s gonna speak up for them.”
Since childhood, Armani has lived with alopecia areata, an auto-immune disease that causes hair loss.
“I wasn’t frightened at all, and I had most of my hair so you couldn’t really see the bald spot if I had one,” Latimer said, recalling her childhood.
But Armani’s high school years became a bit more unpredictable. “I could go a whole year of high school and never receive a bald spot and then I could go two months and have five.”
Despite the struggles, Armani’s mom and dad refused to let anxiety steal her peace. “Me and my mom had plenty of conversations. She was my go-to person to help me figure out different hairstyles,” Latimer said. “I did turn to wearing extensions, weaves or wigs to help with maintaining the hair that I still did have and to cover up the bald spots that I had.”
Armani initially tried out for the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders with her natural hair, but in her second year, she lost it all.
“I would say I was probably angry when I lost it all,” Latimer told WFAA. “Why did I have to be the guinea pig in this situation?”
But it was the journey, the shared nurturing with someone who had walked her path, that gave Armani the reassurance and conviction to move forward. “My dad has Alopecia.”
“It gave me a little peace to know that I could be there for her, to support her, to answer some of the questions,” Armani’s father Cody Latimer said.
In fact, it was a little something dad shared with his daughter that helped shape her perspective moving forward: “Grow from your experiences, and just learn how to deal with it and be happy with yourself.”
Armani did just that and reversed the narrative and stigma associated with the disease, “I had this one thing about me that was a ‘bonus’ actually.”
A bonus that she unselfishly wanted to share on a night of her choosing. A night that brought “chills” to her body but more importantly “purpose” to her heart.
“I could actually hear some gasp in the audience,” Latimer recalled from the night she performed without her wig. “I said ‘Okay this is it, we’re about to start the conversation.'”
And did it ever. It was a social networking explosion, garnering responses from as far away as Australia in support of Armani’s efforts.
Latimer’s message is one of hope, aiming to spark conversations that resonate with kids who look like her. “One day, a little black girl or little black boy can look at me and say ‘I resonate with you, I see myself in you and I know that if she can go out there and tackle her fears in front of thousands then I know I can do whatever it is that I want to do,'” Latimer said.
Due to societal expectations, hair loss for women can be more challenging than that of men, and in the case of black women, the presence of hair or lack thereof has even deeper roots.
“Historically it has been something we identify with, it provides community, we’re raised getting our hair done and when it comes to the point of losing the hair, that sometimes removes some of those cultural things,” said dermatologist Dr. Daneeque Woolfolk.
“Women are supposed to have long luscious, beautiful hair, they’re supposed to look a certain way, and especially black women,” Latimer said. “We definitely had that stigma in the past. There’s a lot of history behind our hair so I love the fact that I’m able to break the stigma and the standard of what beauty in a woman is supposed to be and what it actually looks like.”
In life, one must be tested before being in a position to share a testament, and Armani has.
