As someone with neurodiversity I recognize clothes have many layers, no pun intended. There are cultural significances and practical uses, these are the two main qualities of clothing. Culture eventually wins over the practicality of certain garments, people wear flight jackets without being pilots, people wear Stetson’s without being ranchers, I fit that second category. Living in this country I have been exposed to the common judgement passed by others, Americans love to observe a person and fish out their qualities so that they can equate them to something familiar usually attached to pop culture. Since I live in the city, wearing a rancher hat most people won’t care but some people will point and say “Ayyy I’m walking here” or “Howdy pardner” or some stupid shit.
Two years ago when I didn’t care about appearance I had many people point and laugh, one person I confronted said “when is x album coming out”, essentially comparing me to some washed up classic rock star who I looked nothing like. I walked back to their apartment after researching what they said and said some things which made them close their window and end their windowsill “comedy show” which was essentially what I mentioned before, the lowest form of comedy of making fun of appearances and comparing those features to someone else / pop culture references.
But the hat is seven hundred dollars.
Wear whatever you want, who cares.
I've got a beautiful 10X Stetson that looks just like the one Tim Olyphant wore in Justified. I used to go drinking with a guy who also liked to dress western, and we'd go out in boots, hats, and buckles most of the time. He worked as a ranch hand very briefly years before I met him, but other than that, neither of us knows shit about being a cowboy (not firsthand anyway.) Didn't stop men, women, and everyone in between from checking us out everywhere we went.
There'd be the occasional guy from Texas or wherever interrogating us to see if we were "real" cowboys, which is idiotic on so many levels. Pay no mind to any of that, and dress how you like. We'll all be dead someday, live it up while you can and yee some haws with me.
I'm 100% sure these were guys from some hellhole suburb of DFW who drive lifted F350's to drop their kids off at football practice. Real cowboys, on the other hand, think they will be murdered by a street gang the second they set foot in a city, so you are unlikely to encounter them
That, and what does it even mean to be a "real" cowboy? There's only like a half million working cowboys left in this country, and even that seems like a high estimate. These guys must get awfully exasperated in the crowd at a rodeo or a country show.
But again, most people either dig it or pay me as little mind as they would any other stranger. It's been years since I've had one of those conversations.
By real cowboy, I mean people who actually have and/or work on cattle ranches
I know what you meant, my bad, I should've phrased that differently. I'm asking that of these guys, and what I really mean to ask is where they got the idea that only working cowboys can dress that way when there's so few of them to begin with, and when that manner of dress has so long ago transcended its original purpose.
Like what's next, you can't wear blue jeans if you don't work in a coal mine?
I'm being pedantic for no reason other than my lineage being a mix of Appalachia and west coast, but coal miners typically wore denim overalls and modern jeans were worn by western miners who were mostly mining precious metals like silver, gold, and copper.
Hey, please, be pedantic, it's just one more way for me to learn (And I'm definitely not also saying that because I'm habitually pedantic myself.) I do recall reading something like that though, in a book I've got on jeans in the old west. Clearly it's been a while since I've opened it lol
So jeans were built for durability which was the most important thing in the west where you were mining through granite for precious metals. If you were a coal miner in Appalachia, your main concern was being covered in coal dust.
Makes sense. Kinda wish I'd had a pair at my last job. Digging boric acid out of a hole in the ground in the middle of the desert. Doesn't compare to coal mining, but I'd come out of there absolutely covered in the shit. Dries your skin out something awful as well.
I mean, if you're out in the Texas sun kicking cow shit all day, then a cowboy hat and boots are still for their original, practical purpose. But also, they don't have a monopoly on those clothes items (stolen originally from the Mexicans like everything else in Texas) and who cares what they think anyway? They're by and large a bunch of incredibly reactionary hicks who think the closest midsize city is controlled by roving gangs of minorities
My thoughts exactly. Plus gatekeepers are pests no matter what's at issue.
I kinda want to be able to handle my own when confronted with someone who claims I’m not a genuine rancher. Like I want to look cool
If they start asking questions cut them off and then ask if they're trying to start a dick measuring contest or get your number for a date
“I don’t say ‘howdy’ i dont have a green egg, I don’t know what temp or what wood to use for smoke, I don’t have a revolver pinned to my waist, I don’t chew tobacco, but what I do is look good and I don’t need your approval, partner” I tip my hat finish my whiskey and coke and leave
You sound so much like my drinking husband lol
That's exactly what he would do in that situation, and it's what anybody should do. He looks better in that getup than most anyway, and I'll bet you do too
Green egg is a dated reference. If you're a cool kid in cowboy town you have a blackstone and a traeger smoker.
Tell him you’re wanted by 8 different federal agencies
How'd you know that