They call each other “girls,” even though they are grown women now, some of them grandmothers in their 60s. Few look it: most are lithe and fit from a lifetime of exercise. Early this morning they convened for a variety of fitness classes, including a “twerkout workout,” a “hot heels dance class,” and “cheer Zumba,” followed by a panel on the “Good, Bad, & Ugly” of cosmetics procedures. Now they are buzzing around a banquet hall set up in a club-seating deck on the upper level of Nissan Stadium in Nashville, home of the Tennessee Titans. There are nearly 500 former N.F.L. cheerleaders—Washington Redskinettes, Seattle Sea Gals, Chicago Honey Bears, Buffalo Jills, and the queen supremes, the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders. (“When they walk in, you can just tell,” says one alumna.) They have gathered for the biennial National Football Cheerleaders Alumni Reunion, and the room is crackling with the bubbly brand of energy that many of the girls call “sparkle,” which also serves as an implicit dress code. There are sparkles on dresses, sparkles on earrings, sparkles on stilettos. “It’s awesome to get re-united with my cheer sisters, as we like to say,” gushes Jennifer Hathaway, a former Atlanta Falconette whose eyes are dusted with sparkly shadow.

The ex-cheerleaders have been drawn here by their shared past—a collective nostalgia for their days on the sidelines, their moment in the spotlight. But despite their giddiness at being re-united, they know there is no escaping the present. Over the past year, the N.F.L. has faced a rash of lawsuits and ugly allegations over its treatment of cheerleaders. Five former members of the Washington Redskins squad say the team flew them to Costa Rica in 2013, stripped them of their passports, and required them to pose topless before wealthy fans. In March, former cheerleader Bailey Davis sued the New Orleans Saints for firing her over an Instagram photo she posted of herself in a lacy bodysuit. And in June, six former cheerleaders filed a federal sex-discrimination suit against the Houston Texans, alleging they were paid less than the state’s minimum wage and relentlessly body-shamed by the squad coach, who called them “jelly bellies” and “crack whores.” “I had no idea that once I became a Houston Texan cheerleader, all of my dreams would slowly be shattered,” one of the plaintiffs, Morgan Wiederhold, said at a news conference.

The teams have all denied the allegations, and the N.F.L. insists that it “supports fair employment practices.” The cheerleader alumni assembled at the reunion, meanwhile, aren’t eager to discuss the league’s #MeToo moment. “Since we’re being real and honest with each other, the last couple of years, there have been some controversies in the N.F.L.,” the evening’s co-host, Lisa Guerrero, chief investigative correspondent for Inside Edition and a onetime Rams cheerleader, acknowledges when she takes the stage. “I know that some of these controversies have been painful, and some of them have been difficult for us to deal with as a unit. But what I like to say to people is that had it not been for the background I had in the N.F.L., there’s no way that I could have been on television or have the sisterhood that we all have. We’re here to celebrate.”

Some women at the reunion say privately that they experienced similar mistreatment during their time in the N.F.L. But rather than sympathize with their modern-day “cheer sisters,” they seem intent on siding with their old teams. “None of this conversation about the pay, and the discrimination, and the treatment—none of that is new to me,” says Cathy Core, founder of the now defunct Chicago Honey Bears. “My feeling is that when you come into a group, you sign a contract. You know what you’re getting into. Nothing that you’re gonna cry about is gonna make it any different.”

Cheerleaders started out as men—before the N.F.L. turned them into what a former Dallas cheerleader calls “sideline accessories.” Here, Yale’s male “yell leaders” circa 1925. By George Rinhart/Corbis/Getty Images. Baltimore Colts cheerleaders, the league’s first full-time squad, in 1960. By Neil Leifer/Sports Illustrated/Getty Images.

None of that is new. Such dismissals contain a tacit admission of a deeper reality. The low pay, the body-shaming, the Draconian rules about appearance and behavior that apply to cheerleaders but not to players—these are not the work of a few rogue coaches or lecherous owners. The N.F.L.’s current crisis, in fact, is the result of a series of carefully crafted marketing plans put into place by teams across the league in the 1970s to sell sex on the sidelines. One by one, front offices from Buffalo to San Diego gave N.F.L. cheerleading an extreme makeover designed to tap into the fantasies of male fans. The move took place at the very moment that pro football was transforming itself into the world’s most lucrative sports-entertainment behemoth: All together, the N.F.L.’s 32 franchises are worth an estimated $80 billion, according to Forbes. To woo TV viewers, court sponsors, and boost their brands, teams systematically set out to turn their cheerleaders into sex objects—ones who would serve as cheap labor in the hope that the opportunity would rocket them to stardom in Hollywood or the media.