Vullnet Voca is a London-based cultural researcher, strategist, and factual storyteller working across a variety of channels and industries.

Polarised Populations

From the careful dissection of American society through 

 to Lil Nas X’s victory at the 2019 Country Music Awards, depictions of rural American identity in mainstream media are evolving. 

University of Washington Press Blog

 These narratives strive to unite people at a time when the US is divided along 

, and one notable case study of how American mythologies are changing is the cowboy.

Rebecca Scofield is an associate professor of American history at the University of Idaho and principal investigator for the 

. Her research focuses on gender and sexuality in the US West, and her book, 

Outriders: Rodeo at the Fringes of the America West

, not only showcases how the diverse history of cowboys has been erased and reshaped to fit a whitewashed narrative but also examines how marginalized groups – such as gay men and incarcerated people – have used rodeo to re-insert themselves into a national myth. 

The Atlantic

 “The people who actually worked on the range were incredibly diverse,” says Scofield. “They were largely a group of multilingual, multicultural, working-class, nomadic men.” 

Interview with Rebecca Scofield conducted by the author

Scofield is one of many Americans who consistently find themselves in the middle of a polarized experience of the American Dream, having experienced how the richness of her rural upbringing was often lost among her Harvard classmates. With this realization came the desire to document the diversity of rural identity. As part of the Gay Rodeo Oral History Project, Scofield has collected 60 interviews with members of the International Gay Rodeo Association, ranging from recitations of 

. Through this initiative, in which she emphasizes the importance of humanizing each other, she hopes that she can help heal the fragile state of American politics and identity. Canvas8 sat down with Scofield to understand what can be learned from a reimagination of the cowboy image and how canonical tropes shape rural identity in 2022.

There are few images that embody the spirit of American identity as well as the cowboy. “In film and literature, cowboys stand for all that is good and fight against corruption and corporate greed,” says Scofield. 

 Noted for their nobility and strength, the cowboy is a heroic figure that represents much more than cattle herding. The cowboy is an emblem of masculinity, ethics, and – for many people in the US – Whiteness. However, the history of the American cowboy is much more nuanced.

Scofield notes that the cowboy figure emerged as part of efforts to distance America from the Old World. The country replaced the image of knights in shining armor with a depiction of manhood that embodied deeply American beliefs of independence and individualism. “Cowboys became this sort of catch-all figure for working-class jobs that were found in what we now call the US West during this colonial expansion,” says Scofield. 

 In the late 19th century, amid anxieties over urbanization, industrialization, and an immigrant influx in the aftermath of the closing of the frontier, an anti-urban nostalgia further romanticized the cowboy. However, this figure was racially diverse – they were working-class men of color, often living in slave states, whose labor was influenced by the traditions of Mexican vaqueros brought to the Americas by Spanish colonists. Both before and after the Civil War, cowboys included enslaved and free Black men alongside Native, Creole, and Mexican people. 

 In fact, historians now estimate that one in four cowboys were Black, and according to William Loren Katz, a scholar of African-American history, right after the Civil War, “being a cowboy was one of the few jobs open to men of color who wanted to not serve as elevator operators or delivery boys or other similar occupations.” 

Smithsonian Magazine

Scofield notes that although early film and literature depictions of cowboys managed to capture this diversity, they often did so in offensive ways. And while some Black performers, such as Bill Pickett, gained success in Wild West shows, White actors played non-White roles in the first Hollywood movie, In Old California. As Westerns grew in popularity in the following decades, the omnipresence of all-White protagonists was one of the driving forces in fabricating a false reality of race on the American frontier. 

Another driving force behind the whitewashing of cowboys was their unionization – a shift caused by anxieties over economic insecurity that was antithetical to their ethos of individuality. “At that unionization moment, where you have cowboys who are trying to protect their ability to earn, the best way for them to do that was to write other people out of this image and define themselves as the one and only authentic cowboy and make sure that it was harder for others to participate in that,” says Scofield, adding that this self-contradicting cowboy myth was fueled by the performative aspect of its image. “The cowboy has always been camp and it has always been a performance completely constructed by Hollywood, Wild West shows, and rodeos.” To illustrate her argument, Scofield looks at the attire that cowboys wear in the American imagination. The button-down shirt, hat, sequins, and embellishments couldn’t have grown out of the practical needs and environment in which cowboys worked but rather served a performative function as they sought to be remembered in the arena. 

When Lil Nas X released ‘Old Town Road’ in 2019, it defied many listeners’ perception of what country music sounds like. 

 As fans and industry professionals engaged in a heated debate on whether a song could entangle rap and country in an intricate mesh of Americana, the artist reminded the masses that ‘Black’ and ‘cowboy’ had never been mutually exclusive. But Lil Nas X is not the first artist with a mission to redefine and reclaim the cowboy figure. In September 2018, Texas-based pop culture archivist 

 drew attention to the trend of Black artists and pop culture figures wearing cowboy garb, terming it the ‘yeehaw agenda’. 

 In music, Lil Nas X was joined by other stars such as Lizzo and Megan Thee Stallion, while the fashion world has seen names such as LaQuan Smith, Pyer Moss, and Telfar Clemens fill the runways with Black cowboys. 

Time

Scofield points out that cowboys had always established long-lasting relationships with other men in pursuit of safety and companionship. It was only after World War II – when the emergence of queer subcultures built around the desire for hypermasculinity coincided with the rise of the ‘urban cowboy’ moment – that the gay cowboy tribe was birthed. 

Rolling Stone

 And in 1975, Phil Ragsdale organized the first gay rodeo in Reno, Nevada, which eventually came to be known as the International Gay Rodeo Association by bridging other gay rodeo associations, standardizing rules, and creating a formal circuit for participants. 

Gay Rodeo History

Despite happening at a time when cowboys were re-gaining popularity both in the mainstream and queer subcultures, Scofield says that Ragsdale’s initiative shouldn’t be seen as a response to this resurgence but rather as an effort to create a space for queer people in rural areas in the 1970s and ‘80s who refused to relinquish their claim to a rural identity. The dichotomy between rural versus urban living is intensified in the queer context – queer people in rural places are still often told that their desire for community and belonging can only be met in cities, thus erasing centuries of queer history in rural areas. In reality, a study published in 2019 estimated that 15-20% of LGBTQ people in the US lived in rural regions. 

Movement Advancement Project

Gender and queer theorist Jack Halberstam critiqued the proposed narrative of inseparability between queer existence and urban living by coining the term ‘metronormativity’. 

In a Queer Time and Place

 The urban notion that queer life is non-existent in rural spaces not only erases the experiences of LGBTQ rural communities but also drives wedges in the urban-rural divide and paints a false impression of two Americas. Scofield is not the only digital archivist challenging this narrative by platforming queer stories of rural America. When Tiffany Saint-Bunny moved from rural Tennessee to the Bay Area, she found herself walking on the thin line that divides rural and urban America. To combat conventional thought, she started the 

 Instagram account, creating a visual archive reflecting the queer richness of rural America. Since its inception, the page has racked up over 40,000 followers. “There are gay rednecks, there have always been gay rednecks, and there always will be too,” says Saint-Bunny. 

Autostraddle

Cowboys in the context of America’s culture wars

Gun control, climate change, and immigration are just a few of the polarizing topics that have split America along partisan lines. 

Big Think

 While clashes around these subjects overlap greatly with the urban-rural divide, they risk perpetuating an oversimplified narrative of two entirely different societies where urban America is framed as diverse, educated, and economically productive and rural America is seen as White, dependent on dying industries, and characterized by stagnation. 

The Washington Post

 This binarized version of the American experience spreads myths about race and poverty that benefit White supremacist ideologies and propagate the culture wars. 

Brookings

According to data from the 2020 Census, one in four rural Americans are people of color. 

 While this is not quite as diverse as America as a whole, a monolithic view of rural regions as almost entirely White distorts our understanding of the nation while erasing the lived experiences of rural Americans of color. Mara Casey Tieken, an assistant professor of education at Bates College and the author of 

, criticizes the oversimplified narrative of rural America that erases rural communities of color, writing: “Whiteness is assumed; other races are shoved even further to the margins.” 

Meanwhile, a flurry of book bannings nationwide – between July 2021 and March 2022, school districts across the US banned 2,532 books – has disproportionately targeted tomes written by LGBTQ authors and those that challenge conventional teachings of American history by highlighting racism and slavery. 

PEN America

 In the context of this censorship and the nation’s culture wars, the power of digital archiving and diverse narratives becomes even more powerful. “Particularly in our current sort of culture wars, I want to make the case that whether you want to admit it or not, diverse groups of people have always been in this region and have as much right to call this a homeland as you do as a settler,” says Scofield. “We are all on Native land and… we have always had many different people coming here, so everyone has a right to call this a home.” 

It’s crucial to promote open discussions at a time when society seems to be so divided. In the UK, Google launched a campaign in 2021 to highlight how showing curiosity around complex topics – ranging from cultural differences to difficult emotions – can bring us together through better dialogue. 

Creative Review

 Tone is especially important in this case – Scofield says that to ensure dialogue, it’s vital to show empathy and humanize each other. “A lot of times, what I try to do is remind people that I'm not perfect and that I had a similarly narrow education prior to college. [I aim to] not only humanize them but humanize myself and be really open,” says Scofield. 

 By accounting for nuanced identities – rather than monolithic ones – brands have an opportunity to cut through binary narratives and speak to audiences across a wider set of lived experiences.

Amid America’s culture wars, oversimplified representations of marginalized communities have taken a hold of most conventional media outlets. Not only do these magnify a false sense of binaries, they often fail to include the very members of the same marginalized communities in the creative process, thus resulting in exploitative, one-dimensional stories. An example of a brand doing its best to fight these practices is Jagermeister, which sponsored the 

, a streaming series that spotlights authentic the human stories behind lesbian bars and the communities they serve across the country.

With less than a third of rural Americans boosted against COVID-19, rural regions boasting the highest gun violence per capita, and the digital divide continuing to grow, it’s clear that there is a wide range of challenges that make the rural experience distinct from urban life. 

The Daily Yonder

Center for American Progress

 When it comes to values and beliefs, we’re seeing demographic shifts in rural America manifest in real-time culture wars. Take, for example, the tensions that emerged when the owners of the Montana Book Co hosted a Drag Story Hour for children, resulting in protests and counter-protests. 

Montana Free Press

 These local tensions show the opportunity to bridge divides by platforming a wider range of voices and experiences across rural America, diversifying the gatekeepers of rural tradition and heritage. It’s a record and cultural identity that archiving projects such as the Gay Rodeo Oral Project are striving to expand.

 of LGBTQ people in the US lived in rural regions

Between July 2021 and March 2022, school districts across the US banned 

Mass media played a significant role in whitewashing cowboy culture and, subsequently, people’s understanding of rural demographics

Narratives that center queer experiences in urban locations erase queer history in rural areas, perpetuating skewed notions of rural culture

Digital archiving projects are helping to diversify depictions of rural America, adding nuance that shows the problems of seeing the country along urban-rural divides

Rebecca Scofield holds a PhD from Harvard University in American Studies and is now an associate professor and chair of the Department of History in her home state at the University of Idaho. Her research focuses on the history of gender and sexuality in the American West, particularly in popular performance. She is the author of 

, the principal investigator for the Gay Rodeo Oral History Project, co-creator of the web exhibit Voices of Gay Rodeo, and is currently co-authoring a second book entitled 

Slapping Leather: Queer Cowfolx at the Gay Rodeo

United States

Media and Entertainment

Citizenship

Culture wars and political disagreements have widened the rural-urban divide in America. But how might platforming alt identities resolve tensions and tackle polarization? Canvas8 spoke to Rebecca Scofield, a historian and researcher working on the Gay Rodeo Oral History Project, to find out.

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