Costume

This will probably be the most controversial thing I write. At least it will be from the standpoint of where I come from and what I grew up around. I don’t believe that it is an argument or a particular point of view; I believe it is a fact. Perhaps it is a fact that has been covered up so much with culture and marketing that people have forgotten (and I will help clear that up a little too) that what is happening every day is simply NOT what it appears to be. It’s a behavior so ridiculous, yet many of us see it every day and think nothing of it. It is passed off as a lifestyle, yet so few claiming the lifestyle actually live that life. In fact, the word that comes to mind is “silly”.

If you’re wearing a cowboy hat, you’re wearing a costume.

That last sentence just sent shockwaves through my hometown. In fact, many people just stopped reading this. Some were actually wearing cowboy hats as they read the sentence.

But by all means, continue to wear the hats and the boots and the Wrangler jeans. If it’s working for you, it’s working for you. But unless you are making your living riding a horse and driving cattle, you are in a costume. You are dressed to make people believe that you are something you are not.

Believe me, I’m fine with you wearing a costume. Do it. It gives you something to feel good about. Many people like to dress up as different things and pretend they are someone they aren’t. I’ve done it on Halloween and other special occasions. My family loves to do costumes every October 31^st, we put a whole lot of thought into it. It’s how we are creative, and we have a lot of fun. In fact, all the children that dress up do. That’s why costumes are so great.

I enjoyed dressing up like a cowboy when I worked at Safeway during the local Rodeo Days promotions we ran. I even wore toy six shooters that I learned to twirl as part of the act. It was an ACT. I was ACTING like a cowboy, because I didn’t own a horse. I went to school and played baseball, I did not rope lil’ doggies out on the range. When Rodeo Days was over, I packed that stuff away… with my other costumes.

Now, I understand, there are rodeo athletes, and yes, they are athletes that need things like chaps and riding boots and even the hat is functional as a proper sun shade. This is totally acceptable. But when you wear that gear to a social event, you are pretending you are still on a horse, or at least pretending that you have one hitched up outside and ninety nine times out of a hundred, you probably drove your car or your pickup.

“But Steve, it isn’t a costume, this is the cowboy lifestyle.” I’ve heard it all before, but the fact of the matter is, if I wore those clothes to a Halloween party, people would say, “Oh, Steve came dressed as a cowboy. What an unbelievably uninspired costume.” They wouldn’t assume that’s my normal garb, and even if it was, I could still pass myself off as a cowboy at a masquerade ball. 100% of the other guests would answer correctly as to what costume I am wearing.

I grew up in a town where I saw this all the time. Some of my friends owned horses, rode them, showed them and sometimes competed with them. Many of my friends were farmers and wore straw cowboy style hats to keep the sun at bay while spending endless hours on the tractor in the summer sun. That’s wearing the gear as functional pieces of equipment. I wouldn’t consider this to be a costume at all. The minute it is used beyond the horses and the functionality? THAT is when the outfit, becomes a costume.

I still haven’t convinced you? Then I ask you this: What other occupation lends itself to fashionably accessorize for both formal and laborious activities? Does a police officer, after a day of patrolling, come home, change out of their uniform and hat and put on clothes and a hat reminiscent of their work uniform to go out on the town? They might wear a police department t-shirt, but that is different. A T-shirt promoting or supporting your organization is different than pretending to be a police officer when off duty. Being a police officer is an actual occupation. They catch bad guys every day, let them wear their bullet proof vest 24/7, they have earned the right to wear officer related clothing… but they don’t. The person that you just passed at the shopping mall wearing a cowboy hat did not just drive 800 head of cattle from New Mexico to Wyoming and probably never will.

If you were to ask me to go out with you for a night on the town to a nice dinner and then to a nightclub to see a show or go dancing, and I prepared myself by dressing in rubber boots, a heavy duty fireproof/waterproof jacket and a helmet with a bill down my back, you would laugh at me. If I dressed up in a jumpsuit and leather bomber jacket with goggles and a scarf, you just plain WOULDN’T go out with me. Yet if I went to my closet and put on a long sleeved decorative shirt with abalone snaps, horse riding boots and a ten gallon hat, some people would be ready to hit the town without batting an eye.

And OH! HOW THEY ACCESSORIZE! Just so I actually knew what I was talking about, I did about 10 minutes of homework and came up with a list of “cowboy” accessories that people use to complete their costumes. Cowboy Boots can go from $100-$2000. That’s Manolo Blahnik, Jimmy Choo territory at those prices. Fur cowboy hats can range from the $20 straw to the $1000 fur. But I think the biggest fashion accessory on a cowboy has to be the rodeo belt buckle. Silver and gold, sometimes fitted with diamonds and often awarded as trophies, rodeo belt buckles make gaudy costume jewelry look like something an Amish milk maid would wear.

Let’s talk about the truck, the single biggest piece of the so-called “cowboy lifestyle.” On real farms, pickup trucks are often used to transport everything from equipment, crop, tools, animals and actual crap from one place to another. You can tell a working farm truck by the fact that they are typically beaten up. The rear bed area has little to no remaining paint left after years of transporting gravel and other harsh cargo. It’s functional.

The “cowboy” pickup has not a blemish on it. It’s waxed to a gleaming shine with chrome wheels and all the bells and whistles of a Cadillac inside. It hasn’t carried so much as a bag of pillows in the bed. It’s a vehicle purely for status that says, “My cowboy costume is complete.” Although the “cowboy” that drives it looks down his nose at “all them flashy city cars,” might be interested to know that his pickup cost more than a new Lexus.

I have seen with my own eyes, “cowboys” with these giant gas-guzzling pickup trucks using them as their daily commuter vehicle. Said “cowboy” doesn’t do very well with matching tools to jobs and functionality. Yes a pickup will get you from one place to another, but it is not for commuting to a job that does not require a pickup. By this logic, one might eat breakfast cereal with a gardening spade.

“Why am I using this tiny shovel to eat? I’m a gardener. It’s my lifestyle. I feel safer eating with something a little bigger than those small, pokey things. I know it isn’t very efficient but I like it. It’s my style, I’m a gardener at heart, always have been.”

But let me tell you the one thing that drives me nuts: Cowboy hats on a groom or groomsmen at a wedding. Understand this fact, if a wedding has people in cowboy hats, that wedding is a costume party. The groom has chosen to wear a costume to the wedding. And if I hear word that a wedding I am about to attend has cowboy hats on ANY of the wedding party, then that wedding is officially a costume affair and I have no problem showing up as either Cat Woman, a Mighty Morphin’ Power Ranger, or the front half of a horse, just to prove a point.

Astronauts do not get married in fancy, decorative space helmets so “cowboys” can leave the costume at home. Seriously, if someone wanted to get married in clown make-up (which I’m sure has happened) people would think that was bonkers (especially if the clowns name WAS Bonkers).

The best part of all of this cowboy costume business is that the people dressing up as the romanticized image of the cowboy, are just dressing up as a made up theatrical character. Buffalo Bill Cody HIGHLY fictionalized the character of a “cowboy” as an adventurer in the west. They are almost always depicted as Caucasian and also desirable and heroic. But in reality, that was because that is what Buffalo Bill wanted people to believe. If Buffalo Bill told his audiences that most cattle drivers were homeless ex-slaves and immigrants from Mexico, he wouldn’t have sold many tickets to the incredibly racist white audiences he meant to fleece. Instead, these Wild West shows mostly created these characters out of thin air or romanticized them so much that they bare little resemblance to the original people that actually did the jobs.

Now an entire economy is built on fake clothing fashion, ideals, artwork, activities, music, film and food. When you think about it, there’s not much difference between the “cowboy” lifestyle and all the junk that’s popular about vampires these days. Both characters didn’t really exist or at least didn’t as we know them today.

Who would have thought that homeless vagabonds from the 19^th Century would be so popular for so long? If you were to tell me that in one hundred years, people would be clamoring for designer bottles in brown bags, pushing chromed up shopping carts, wearing sleeping bags to weddings and begging for change as a sport, I might just believe you. Because that is essentially what today’s “cowboy lifestyle” is doing for the homeless of our recent past.

So if you are one of those people that is most comfortable wearing Western attire, I ask you to think twice before you laugh and point at the guy you see decked out in a tutu and fairy wings on Seattle’s Capitol Hill, because you’re BOTH wearing a costume, his is just better, and that’s the Damm truth.