The Stripping Cowboy

The idea of the cowboy has always been bitter sweet to me. I was born into a life of hard work on the family’s farm, and raised with a similar moral code of honoring the land and rewards she could reap. As if living and enduring the agricultural lifestyle was not bad enough in the mind of a young child who always dreamed of a bigger and better world, my father raised me on a healthy dose of John Wayne and Clint Eastwood movies to solidify themes of the iconic West and the symbols of a lifestyle and a masculinity that, for me, seemed like lifetimes ago. I was somewhat reluctant as a young boy to watch old cowboy movies just to please my father, because for me, they further inscribed similar thoughts of an unwanted identity of a dirty, smelly, farming redneck. My attitude, however, quickly changed as I became more attracted to the newer version of Western masculinity produced by Hollywood in the 1980s and 1990s. It was John Travolta’s Urban Cowboy and Kevin Bacon’s country boy classic Footloose that made me want to rock a pair of cowboy boots, hat, and a shiny belt buckle to engage a contemporary Western-wannabe persona. The heartthrob cast of the 1988 film Young Guns influenced my desire to be a dirty, rough, and rugged outlaw badass. In 1993, the film Tombstone offered a representation of justice that made my blood boil with a sensual intrigue toward masculine dominance through the law. In 2004, when Big and Rich’s country rock anthem started making women scream “Save a Horse (Ride a Cowboy),” I knew that being a cowboy was where it was at (Alphin & Rich, 2004).

These archives offer unforgettable examples of “the good, the bad and the sexy” cowboy. ¹ As a result of such representations, the cowboy has become one of the most popular characters performed in the male strip show. While post-modernity has rejected the traditional simplicity of the open range, cattle drives, and sleeping under the starry sky, our media-saturated reality constantly projects a desirable gaze on the old West’s masculine representations. Media fetishizes the essence of the old West through a way of life that is nostalgically cowboy. It has shaped the cowboy image into a symbol that today is idolized, sexualized, and fantasized over as an erotic symbol. Some women revel in the idea of riding a cowboy to save a horse, as well as some gay men dream about such sensual encounters with a cowboy as demonstrated by director Ang Lee’s 2005 Academy Award winning film Brokeback Mountain.

For more than a decade I have been The Stripping Cowboy in various settings; offering my body up for sexual gaze and consumption of both men and women craving an over-animated sexualized Western fantasy. The cowboy has become a sexual symbol capable of crossing borders and boundaries in various spaces and venues determined by gender, race, and sexuality. Some settings are primarily occupied with racially specific heterosexuality while other spaces are more diverse. Some venues cater mainly to gay men, where other establishments offer a gender-bending drag queen who rules a queer environment populated by both men and women. The intentional play with gender and gender performance, and symbolic representation of both masculine and feminine, often shares space with the more masculine Western construct of the stripping Cowboy. I have been there, I live it, and it is often my reality during any given weekend. In these moments of erotic play, strategic politics of gender, sexuality, and desire become evident when comparing identities, purpose, and performativity in terms of shared space and sexual relationships developed by the performer and the audience.

Price (2008) has argued that “context matters” in strip shows (p. 85). The realities and social context of particular spaces produce certain outcomes, behaviors, and performative expectations. ² One thing I have come to understand is that, regardless of the expectations, a stripping cowboy routine can almost always find stage time. Although many cultural and social factors determine the rules, boundaries, and interactive expectations in a stripping performance (or a performance of stripping), music also serves, as R. Danielle Egan (2006) posits, “an important component in the overall production of a dancer’s erotic repertoire,” as well as his or her identity (p. 201). Music influences how dancers construct character and display their masculinity, while influencing the audience’s ability to relate to the theme, costume, and overall gestural performance. The choice of music and the particular genre and style has eased the entrance of the sexually expressive cowboy representation that my White heterosexuality has produced, helping me gain acceptance on stages and in spaces with various social and cultural contexts.

I emerged as The Cowboy through a rite of passage as my mentor bestowed his routine on me. ³ Following in his footsteps, I took possession of his black leather costume of assless chaps, vest, cowboy hat, and stainless steel fire cauldron, and, most importantly, his copy of Bon Jovi’s (Bon Jovi & Sambora, 1986) Wanted Dead or Alive. I nervously prepared to imitate his sexual gestures into my own construction of this symbol of fantasy and desire. Apprehensively entering a darkened stage, I emptied a bottle of rubbing alcohol into the cauldron, dropped in a struck match, and stripped by the light of the fire. In their song “Wanted Dead or Alive,” Bon Jovi sings, “It’s all the same, only the names will change.” Although times are different and a rugged steed is no longer the desired mode of transportation, he suggests that the modern cowboy makes his way through the world with the steel thunder of a Harley Davison roaring beneath him. The audience immediately knew that like Bon Jovi, “I’m a cowboy on a steel horse I ride” and that I was “going out in a blaze of glory” (1990). The lyrics as well as the masculine imagery of long haired, sweaty, bare chest musicians in leather and cowboy hats, evidenced in the original music video, produce erotic imagery of today’s rock-n-roll cowboy, traveling the world and across generations for the millions of fans who hang on to every note and lyric.

Within seconds of my performance I felt the passion of the song along with the reaction of the crowd encouraging my inner cowboy to burst out. I knew at that moment, he would live long and strong as part of my alternative identity. There is a reason why Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson (1978) in their cover warned, “Mamas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Cowboys” (Bruce & Bruce, 1975), and those reasons were radiating from deep inside me. Nelson and Jennings sing, “Cowboys ain’t easy to love and they’re harder to hold,” and that he is a man of the night, “even with someone they love.” They warn, “If you don’t understand him and he don’t die young, he’ll probably just ride away.” For Nelson and Jennings, the Cowboy lives carefree, day-to-day, but has a deeper identity than the outer façade may suggest. They advise,

Them that don’t know him won’t like him and them that do

Sometimes won’t know how to take him.

He ain’t wrong, he’s just different but his pride won’t let him

Do things to make you think he’s right.

Like Bon Jovi, Nelson and Jennings describe a rugged traveler who lives for the experiences of life. The cowboy lives by a moral code of right and wrong, without regard for the opinions of others.

As the audience sang with the powerful vocals and guitar chords of Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora, the music coursed through my veins mutating me into a badass cowboy. I knew at that moment, if I was not already addicted to the money, sex, and opportunity the business provided, I was sure to follow Nelson and Jennings prescription and become a man of the night with my own moral code and sense of pride in this form of erotic work. The sound and energy rang through my bones while erupting through my thong. The audience of women cheered as I offered my body for their sexual entertainment, and I became hooked. This impassioned moment of clarity was not an instant to reflect on whether my current occupational choice and station in life was right or wrong. Rather, it was a reflection on a moment (then and now) that I lived for the here and now (there and then) and experience it as if it may never happen again.

In her song, Paula Cole (1997) questions “Where Have All the Cowboy’s Gone?” In the song she laments, longing desire:

Where is my John Wayne

Where is my prairie song

Where is my happy ending

Where have all the cowboys gone . . .

Where is my Marlboro man

Where is his shiny gun

Where is my lonely ranger

Where have all the cowboys gone

Yippee yo, yippee yeah

In the song she is desirous of the iconic cowboys and is in search of the symbols and storylines that lead to a happy ending. It was during that first performance of my cowboy stripper persona that I decided I was going to answer her and all others who wondered. Lessons, however, were quickly learned, as my journey through the different segments of the male dancing industry took my cowboy to various settings. While my White rock music routine enticed a predominately White female audience, trial and error quickly taught me that sounds from 1980’s and 1990’s longhaired metal bands did not translate to all the settings that I would perform. It was not until I was introduced to “Pony,” the artist Ginuwine’s (Major, Lumpkin, & Mosley, 1996) number one R&B Billboard hit, that I began to understand how context of space affects audience, behaviors, and expectations.

In strip shows, as Liepe-Levinson (2002) has shown, “both female and male sexual desires are designed and managed by culture” (p. 5). Ginuwine’s music video displays this with a scenario suggesting that all it takes to spice up a party is a little color and the right music. The video exhibits racial integration as culturally varied White and Black masculine representations connect to a new hot sound. The men blend their masculine interests of drinking, gambling, and projecting sexual gazes on women, while the women sensually move to a sound that tells them through the lyrics, “If you’re horny, let’s do it. Ride it, my pony. My saddle’s waitin’. Come and jump on it.” Sexual expression through music trumps the racial tension exhibited in the beginning of the video allowing the party to continue.

Although there is mention of a saddle, a pony, and riding on it, it is not so much the lyrics that invoke the Western motif, as it is the suggestive symbols and oppositional binaries that are performed within the video (Black/White, Country/City, Urban/Rural). The video depicts Ginuwine on a tour bus with his predominately Black entourage, coming on a low down country bar filled with mostly White men sitting at a quiet bar, drinking beer, smoking cigarettes, and shooting pool. The video begins with the potential for a racially heated scene as Ginuwine’s crew quickly infiltrates the suggested segregated space, and begins to make the most of their unexpected stop by drinking, smoking, and taking control of the dance floor. All tensions are abandoned once Ginuwine hits the stage. The dance floor and mechanical bull are occupied by a number of women, many in cowboy hats, and the masculine aggressive tension disappears. The women begin to drink and bump and grind throughout the bar, as Ginuwine performs his erotic song connecting county Western themes to sex. His metaphorical use of saddle, pony, and “reach the stream” implies sexual intercourse, as he states he is looking for someone who is horny, “who knows how to ride without even falling off,” and can take him to his “limits.” The sexual nature of the lyrics and video links Western themes of bull riding, lasso’s and cowboy hats in a way which illustrates racial unity around sexual interests. The video ends with a representational gesture of a shared masculinity as a young Black man trades his designer hat to a long haired, bearded, older White man for a cowboy hat, over a beer and a handshake.

Ginuwine’s Pony has become a stripper classic. I am not sure if there has ever been a night that I have worked or been in a female strip club that I have not heard this song. It is a song that, when in the right context, has informed my understanding about the nature of gender, race, and sexuality when tied to erotic performance environments. Masculine constructions in the male strip show are determined by audience expectation, gender, race, and sexuality. Music is key in connecting to the audience, their cultural interests, as well as what they are willing to accept and what they desire in performative masculinity. The style of performance and music that a room dominated by predominately White women finds enjoyable is not necessarily what a room dominated with predominately Black women will connect with and accept as pleasurable. While working as the only White dancer in a Black male-dominated troupe, I quickly learned (was told actually) that my White rock music was not going to cut it in a space where Black female desire set the tone and expectations of the show. That honky-tonk White-boy bullshit had to go, and I needed to offer my audience a sound they could dig. If I was going to sell a cowboy theme in this setting, it had to be a representation that exuded smooth sexuality, dominant sexual attitude, and erotic movement, and not just some performative gestures in front of a small fire. While Ginuwine’s goal was not to suggest a Western representation of the cowboy in his lyrics, using Pony as my theme music was a good start to connecting with the audience. The lyrical suggestion of horseback riding as a sexual activity coupled with the video imagery exhibits how music and movement can combine the sexual desires of the White Western and the Black urban cowboy in an R&B sound.

Music also helps negotiate my sexualized cowboy in other spaces where queer sexualities dominate. Conversely, music is not the main element that entices the audience to buy into the erotic fantasy, and tip the character I construct, or at least this is what I have experienced. Performance expectations in predominately queer spaces are more varied, and permit me the ability to play with how I construct my performance identity in relationship to connections between music and theme. This is in part, I believe, due to the nature of the business which is based on preconceived norms established by more commercial shows such as the Chippendales or Thunder from Down Under. These more commercial shows are produced with a specific structure, and in a certain manner to fulfill the wants and desires of a predominately female audience. In these forms of male strip shows, the prescription suggests that men will look a certain way, dress a certain way, move a certain way, and use the appropriate music and symbolic props needed to construct a particular fantasy image; for instance, my description above and how the cowboy construct of black leather assless chaps, vest, cowboy hat, and lasso was bestowed on me by my mentor.

The expectations in queer spaces are more open and fluid in terms of how erotic masculinity is performed and displayed. When dancing for men, I have played with the construction of my Western fantasy and have performed the cowboy to a number of songs that are not specifically associated with a Western motif (including the music of Madonna, Kenny Logins, Ginuwine, Wilson Pickett, Garth Brooks, and R-Kelly). Unlike commercial shows, which provide a specific structure and duration marketed specifically to a female audience for a high admission price, stripping performances in alternative venues are not always the main event of the night. Sometimes they are merely a passing moment of free entertainment to enhance the social nature of the setting. Because the nature of the show structure, duration, and expectations is usually different from that of the more commercial show structure referred to above, queer performance spaces create and allow for a different set of expectations. Since my performance does not always serve the same purpose, I do not have to fit into the exact same prescribed version of a fantasy, allowing me to explore variations of my cowboy construct in an attempt to please a wider set of tastes and desires. While I am never fully aware of my reception, it appears that queer audiences are more interested in the presentation of the body as well as the performer’s ability to engage, interact, and entertain the space. I have noticed there is less concern about a full-scale production with extravagant costumes, props, and thematic music. Instead of my full costume, sometimes simply being shirtless with beat up blue jeans, and cowboy hat is all that is needed to please the tastes and expectations.

These are, of course, only my experiences of capitalizing on a symbol based on the nostalgia of the old West. I have matured with and as this sexual symbol, and have been privileged to cross borders and enter various spaces with it. The more I think about it, the more I understand the love/hate relationship I have developed for the cowboy construct. It has been a long and unexpected journey since those early days of my childhood, and the occasional feelings of being forced into a sense of pretend enjoyment of Western movies to please my father.

Being raised on a self-sustained dairy farm, I was the truest literal sense of the word cow-boy there could be. My daily routine was a non-stop process of maintaining, nurturing, and milking the herd. At that time, I thought it was the worst circumstances of identity I could be raised with. I can still remember the faint echoes of aggressive teasing from classmates with a so-called better economic position, hollering, “You dirty, smelly farmer. You dumb country boy redneck.” At 18, I packed my bag and ran from the homestead and went off to college. Maybe it was by accident, maybe it was fate, but shortly after, I was introduced to the sex industry. From there I continued to run further and further away from my original up-bringing.

Somehow, however, those early memories of the rough rugged cowboys that my farther introduced and that sense of a hard-working lifestyle on the farm never went too far. After 10 years away from home, gallivanting the nation in a g-string and cowboy hat as the erotic cowboy, I found myself returning home more and more often. This return has continued, and it continues to grow stronger. As my erotic career nears its end, I find myself enjoying those unique elements that so distinctly define who I was, who I have become, and who I am becoming.

The movies, the farm, the stage, and those nostalgic memories of performed erotic cowboy expand my perspective on how the notion and embodiment of cowboy can be constructed and performed. Depending on place, space, purpose, and attire, my understanding of self as cowboy varies. Sometimes, simple costumes make a difference, other times, music helps when moving between communities of audiences. In everyday attire, my White masculinity is more easily challenged by the racial and sexual culture of a setting. However, when dancing on stage, cloaked in performative cowboyness, my sexual representation of the Western genre, and the audience’s pleasurable acceptance of that portrayal, reinforces that the cowboy is still undoubtedly one of the most iconic masculine symbols of the 20th century.