The Women West of Here: Reckoning Their Place in the Western, Pop Culture, and History

Abstract

The Women West of HereReckoning Their Place in the Western, Pop Culture, and History Robert James Russell (bio) A woman on the prairie is an unwanted thing … Nothing but a burden and a tie-down, keeping the ones she loves from doing what they want to do. —Alan Le May, The Siege at Dancing Bird1 Here it is, imagine it: Blue-gray thunderclouds roil overhead, promising rain soon. The outdoor sporting pavilion is flanked on both sides by high school football game–style bleachers glinting in what's left of the Sunday afternoon sun thrusting yet through the overcast. And they are packed, the stands, filled with families and veterans and children carrying massive corndogs and Bavarian-style pretzels and sticky elephant ears trailing powdered sugar and syrupy strawberry jam behind. On either end of the pavilion, rodeo crew get things ready: calves wedged in double-digits in blue-metal holding pens, ears tagged with bright plastic, lowing frequently but with so little energy it amounts to only a subtle bowing of their head. On the other end of the pavilion, trailers sit backed up against more pens, these filled with bucks poised, touring cowboys in slim jeans and boots, sitting cross-legged on the posts and surveying the thin-yet-boisterous Click for larger view View full resolution Fig 1. Lobby card for the film The White Outlaw (1925) (Wikimedia Commons). Look how Vivian Bay needs three big ol' men to protect her from the Western wilds! With men in the lead, the whole world's ripe for the taking! crowd still taking their seats. They have uneven facial hair, deep-set eyes, jagged cheekbones, all of them. They're anemic, and in unison they spit along the ground, chew the tobacco folded under the tongues, spit again. Behind them, leading to the parking lot, are trailers, an ambulance with its EMT professionals sitting side by side along the front bumper, talking quietly, waiting. Thunder in the distance, but only the audience gasps, looks over. The cowboys ready themselves, chew and [End Page 127] spit again. One laughs, one stretches his shoulders. Piles of men in denim and leather wearing numbered tags. Carbon copy dynamos. There are no women here. Thunder again, closer this time. The announcer rides out on his sorrel. He tests the microphone, taps it with the butt of his palm, but there's no sound. Fairground rides sparkle and flare behind him, along the horizon. You can just make out the food stands: hamburgers and Philly cheesesteaks and bubble tea and BBQ of every variety. A hissing pop, static, and then the man's voice comes through the speakers, burping a jovial thanks, a welcome. Things are set in motion. A rodeo clown comes out, and he—wearing oversized pantaloons, the bare basics of a cowboy's silhouette, a tiny hat atop his bulbous red wig—shares banter with the announcer. They make jokes about Southern women, Hoosier women, women in general. How they have hardly any teeth. No teeth. How Southern men—and Hoosier men, too, he adds—are lazy. And then there's leering comments about women in the stands, about making them their wives. Almost no one laughs, and yet they double down—this is, we know, scripted anyway. Up first's the bareback bronc event. The first horse, tired from the midday heat, won't stand up in the pen, won't start. Its cowboy, frustrated, tries to get situated, to rile the horse to stand. It won't, and the announcer, impotent, struggles to improvise. But he finds a target: a group of teenage girls who've already had enough and have started to mosey out toward the parking lot—girls who, during the opening prayer and the jingoist salute to America were laughing, already plotting their escape. The announcer rides along the inside fence of the pavilion, following them. "Hey, y'all," he shouts, smiling. The teens don't pay attention, don't know he's talking at them. "Where y'all going? We're just getting started." Finally, one teen turns toward him. They've nearly made their escape, at the end of the bleachers, near...