Gabriella Davis, 20, first started cheerleading in middle school in Dallas, Texas; around the same time, she became infatuated with those high priestesses of spirit fingers, the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders.

“I’d go to Cowboys games, and I remember just watching the cheerleaders the whole time,” Davis told me recently by phone. “I was like, ‘They are so beautiful. I can’t wait to do that one day.’”

Davis cheered in high school, and in the national, competitive All-Star league, and in two years of college at Texas State University. It was about more than just beauty to her—a confluence of athletics (there aren’t many other sports whose squads can do a backflip while catching a football on the dismount), discipline, and sisterhood. But just as she’d “hung up her pom-poms” in college, she couldn’t shake the urge last spring to drive three hours from Texas State in San Marcos to Houston to try out for the Texans squad; to become an N.F.L. cheerleader, and one of the women she was so dazzled by as a tween. Everything happens for a reason, she believes: Davis made the team.

“It was a dream come true,” she said.

And then, it wasn’t.

Last week, five former Houston Texans cheerleaders filed a federal sex discrimination lawsuit against the team, alleging they were paid less than minimum wage and not adequately protected from fans groping them and making suggestive comments. The suit echoed claims made just less than two weeks prior by another former Texans cheerleader, who on May 21 filed a federal suit against the team and its longtime cheerleading director, Altovise Gary; she, too, alleged the cheerleaders were underpaid, harassed by fans, and verbally abused by Gary. The plaintiff is looking for the case to be certified as a class-action lawsuit, with two more cheerleaders reportedly ready to be added as plaintiffs. In an exclusive interview with Vanity Fair, Davis added her voice to those of her former teammates, and the wave of N.F.L. cheerleaders speaking out against years of pay and gender discrimination across the league, saying the Texans did not pay her for hours of extra work, and that Gary hurled insults at her and her teammates.

“This environment is toxic and it’s dangerous. The fact that we let it go on for so long . . .” Davis trailed off. “It’s time now to do something about it, whether it is creating a union or maybe spending $5,000 on having it staffed to make sure all the regulations are being followed and everyone’s happy in that scenario. Because that’s what women deserve.”

The Texans cheerleaders’ suits land in an already-embattled N.F.L. Questions swirl about the link between persistent head trauma, the brain disease C.T.E., and violence; the rights of African-American players to kneel in protest of racial injustice (the N.F.L. recently ruled that they will be fined for doing so); and, of course, the league’s chronic “woman problem.” After the N.F.L. dragged its feet to condemn domestic violence in its ranks (notably, in 2014, then-Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice was captured on tape punching his then-fiancée, Janay Rice, in the face and initially received a mere two-game suspension), the #MeToo movement has inspired a wave of pro cheerleaders to come forward with accounts of sexual harassment and gender discrimination.

In an explosive New York Times report, five Washington Redskins cheerleaders alleged that some members of the squad were required to pose topless at a photo shoot in Costa Rica for their annual calendar while male suite holders looked on. In another bombshell, Bailey Davis (no relation) filed a complaint against the New Orleans Saints, saying she was fired from their Saintsations cheerleading squad after Instagramming a photo of herself in a lacy bodysuit, a supposed violation of the team’s draconian social-media rules (which, suspiciously, don’t apply to players).

In separate statements to the Times, the Saints denied discriminating against Davis because of her gender, while the Redskins said that their cheerleaders are “contractually protected to ensure a safe and constructive environment.”

Pay discrimination claims from N.F.L. cheerleaders have been well documented in recent years, but are flaring anew: multiple squads, including those for the New York Jets, the Cincinnati Bengals, and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, have won lawsuits for back pay. In some cases, their reward—from teams in an N.F.L. that made an estimated $13 billion in 2016—included mandatory minimum wage going forward.

Sara Blackwell, an attorney representing Bailey Davis and advising Gabriella Davis, pointed to the league’s decision on kneeling (players must now either remain in the locker room during the anthem or teams will be subject to fines for on-field kneeling)—and smelled a hint of hypocrisy.

“Real patriotism is taking care of their American workers,” she said.

“Anytime I would go into practice, my stomach would turn”

Davis alleged that Gary, the director of cheerleading whom the cheerleaders called “Coach Alto,” body-shamed and bullied her and her teammates during the 2017-2018 season.

“She called us ‘jelly bellies,’” Davis said. Per Davis, the women were allegedly told at practice: “We can’t have a whole bunch of jelly bellies running around.”

Davis also claimed that Gary “touched a girl’s face and said, ‘Your face is fat,’” accused the youngest member of the Texans cheerleaders, who was 18 at the time, of “gaining the freshman 15,” and brought double-stick tape to a Texans game to “tape down” the skin on a cheerleader’s abdomen, saying, according to Davis, “Look how good this looks. Shouldn’t everyone do this?”

Davis said she and her teammates were also verbally harassed by Gary over their hair and makeup and their private social-media posts. “She called us ‘crack whores’ if she thought we were doing too much makeup or having too blonde of hair or being too skinny.” If Gary believed the cheerleaders were posting overtly “sexy” photos to social media, Davis said she’d accuse them of “looking like porn stars.”

In a statement, the Texans’ vice president of communications, Amy Palcic, said: “We are proud of the cheerleader program and have had hundreds of women participate and enjoy their experience while making a positive impact in the local community. We are constantly evaluating our procedures and will continue to make adjustments as needed to make the program enjoyable for everyone.” Gary did not respond to Vanity Fair’s request for comment.

Additionally, Davis alleged that Texans cheerleaders were shamed via mass e-mails blasted to the whole squad. In one instance, a Texans cheerleader e-mailed the whole team with a warning not to make the same mistake she had: gifting her “little” on the squad some candy.

“Completely disregarded the fact of us trying to be A1 from head to toe,” the cheerleader wrote. “Leave the candy and sugar alone. We know this can be a direct correlation of being cut from games do [sic] to body image and not being in tip top shape.”

It created a hostile environment where “anytime I would go into practice, my stomach would turn,” Davis said. She said she lost a significant amount of weight during the season, for fear of invoking Gary’s wrath. “If I’m going to get in trouble for my looks, for my too-blonde of hair and my bleached eyebrows, I’m not going to get in trouble for weight,” she reasoned. “I was always walking on eggshells.”

According to a copy of the 2017-2018 Texans cheerleader contract, a Texans cheerleader agrees that she “has been hired in part for her individual appearance,” that her appearance will be evaluated “from time to time,” and that a negative evaluation “due to factors such as excessive weight gain or loss,” “body rolls,” and “cellulite” may be punishable by suspension or even firing should the issue not be improved. Davis said she signed the contract and agreed that keeping up a healthy lifestyle and a certain appearance was crucial to the job. But she said that she did not sign up for harassment, bullying, and body-shaming as a means of enforcing the squad’s policies.

“Obviously, there’s an image that we have to maintain, but the way we were told and the way we were treated about our bodies was not healthy,” she said. “Instead of saying, ‘You know, girls, let’s watch what we’re eating,’ we’re called ‘jelly bellies.’ And instead of saying, ‘Let’s watch what we’re posting on social media,’ we’re called porn stars or crack whores. It’s not O.K. to be speaking to us like that, regardless of what I signed up for.”

Davis said the cheerleaders were frequently reminded that they were replaceable: “We were told, ‘There’s another girl who will do it for free,’” she said.

But they practically did that themselves.

According to both Davis and a copy of the 2017-2018 Texans cheerleader contract, cheerleaders were making $7.25 per hour, the state’s minimum wage, or approximately $1,500 per season. The employment agreement stipulates that the cheerleaders are hired as part-time employees (by day, some were college students, lawyers, or worked in P.R.). But Davis, as well as her former teammates who are suing the Texans, argued that Gary warned them upfront that they would be “part-time employees with full-time hours.” Their time commitment included games, practices, and a required 50 team-sponsored promotional appearances during the season. The cheerleaders said they were not paid overtime for hours of work outside of cheering, including selling calendars and meeting fans after games, plus daily social-media requirements, which included tweeting from the official cheerleader handle and following hundreds of people on Twitter in order to boost the account’s following.

“We were basically on-call every day,” Davis said. If a cheerleading coach messaged at midnight about tweets or followers, she said, “we were expected to reply right away.”

Davis echoed her former teammates’ claims that the Texans failed to adequately protect the cheerleaders when, as part of their duties, they were sent into the stands with prizes or to otherwise interact with fans and in V.I.P. suites to represent the team and “be the friendly faces of the Texans organization.” According to Davis, there was not regular security for cheerleaders as they encountered belligerent fans; sometimes she and her teammates were accompanied by a security officer and other times they were not, leaving them susceptible to fans who groped, clawed, or made suggestive comments. Furthermore, Gary told the cheerleaders not to wear their wedding or engagement rings, according to Davis, because it was “not a good look.” Davis said she believes this was an effort to make sure fans could sexualize the cheerleaders without the buzzkill of knowing if they were married or engaged.

Davis left the Texans when her year-long contract expired in April. She didn’t even bother to pick up her “rookie ring”—because her first season as an N.F.L. cheerleader had also become her last. She is often asked why she stuck out the year at all—or told that, as some on Twitter have trolled in response to the recent spate of lawsuits: no one held a gun to the cheerleaders’ heads.

“I was thinking, ‘I’ve worked so hard to be here. I can’t let anything distract me. I will find a way to survive. I will let these things slide.’ It’s almost a brainwashed mindset,” she said. “I was like a robot.” Not to mention: “I’ve never quit anything before, regardless of how hard it’s gotten. Quitting was almost like letting Coach win.”

As the alleged abuses piled up, however, Davis began plotting her exit. She’s gone on to found a social-media marketing company called the Social Shop, and is now urging cheerleaders to consider unionizing to prevent her experience from happening to others.

“Something needs to be changed. Any other job, this would not fly,” she said. “If we compare how much the N.F.L. spends on hot dog buns or whatever it may be, why don’t we spend time taking care of the women who are literally the walking representation of that group, or that Texan organization, or N.F.L. cheerleading?”

And while she said she has maybe-probably hung up her pom-poms for good—”’I’d rather not spend any more time with [the N.F.L.] unless it’s to make a change”—she remains invested in the next generation of cheerleaders; the little girls who might have sat in the stands and looked at her in wonder.

“They’re not going to take the sparkle from anyone else,” Davis said. “I remember one of my other teammates, an alumna, she looked at me and she said, ‘I’ve never seen anybody come out of this program with their sparkle. Don’t let them take your sparkle.’”