Justine Lindsay has made NFL history.
The 29-year-old is the newest member of the Carolina Panthers’ Topcats cheer squad and the league’s first openly transgender cheerleader.
Lindsay has kept her truth about being a transgender woman close to her heart, only sharing it with her immediate family until she decided to post her next career move on Instagram. Lindsay’s post would open the door to an entire community of friends and extended family into her lifelong secret.
In an Instagram post announcing that she was joining the Topcats Carolina Panthers cheer squad, Lindsay came out as trans.
Lindsay is seen boasting with happiness in her new cheerleading uniform in the photo.
“Cats Out the Bag you are looking at the newest member of the Carolina Panthers TopCats Cheerleader’s @topcats as the first Transgender female,” read the caption.
“I was so scared,” Lindsay told BuzzFeed News. “There’s just some things you can’t post,” Lindsay said.
“I just felt like when I posted it, whatever reaction I get from everyone, it does not matter,” Lindsay said. “And then my phone started blowing up.”
Although the NFL does not have a team cheerleading archive, Lindsay is the first trans person to be an NFL cheerleader.
Topcat cheer director Chandalae Lanouette told Buzz Feed that adding Lindsay to the team was solely based on her talent, not her being transgender.
“My goal is to create a team of individuals that are absolute fire on the field but are incredible human beings in the locker room, good friends, good people and at the end of the day, you have to walk through the door first to get to that spot,” Lanouette told BuzzFeed.
Source: Justine Lindsay Becomes First Openly Transgender Cheerleader In The NFL
