Rodeo Girls
by Lisa EisnerGreybull Press, 166 pp., $49.95
If it’s got tires or tits, it’s gonna give you trouble. That’s the message scrawled on a board at the Chuck Wagon Headquarters in Cheyenne, and it’s the secret that these proud cowgirl queens betray through their impenetrable layers of make-up. In her hilarious collection of photos, Lisa Eisner, a former fashion editor at Vogue, presents an outrageous series of images that serve both to reinforce the pride and self-image of this rustic royalty and to present a worthwhile circus for readers who are unfamiliar with what seems to be an attempt at haute rodeo couture. Telling and titillating as these pictures become, their punchlines strike familiar chords: A first runner-up, for example, is caught scowling beneath her mascara at the rodeo queen, thinking, “That’s my tiara, you bitch!” Solitary cowgirls buy Frito pies and bend over the counter to reveal the too-tight and pocketless seats of their jeans. Pocketless seats! Puffy sleeves and Stetsons, crimped and feathered hair, five-pound belt buckles, and lots of variations of the American flag adorn the pert peaks of these queens. All this and the blessing of a fashion editor at Vogue! Now and again, Eisner shows these women interacting with Garth and Clint wannabes, stroking their chests, feeding their livestock, even dry-humping in a drunken stupor on the dance floor. But while the rodeo is so often about brawn and packed Wranglers, Eisner hints that the real wild of the West — and the most difficult to lasso — rides her best bra so fiercely along.
This article appears in May 5 • 2000.