When I was a child, I wanted desperately to be a boy because boys got to play at Cowboys. Boys got to climb trees, play in the long grass, stomp through streams, and scramble over and under fences.
Girls wore puffy-sleeved organza dresses, played at cooking, wheeled dolls around in prams - I hated it. I wanted to be like Roy Rogers, and (sigh) Audie Murphy. Jack Palance was my fave bad guy.
I didn't care for the silly women in western movies. They simpered, and batted their eyelashes. They always seemed to twist their ankles when escaping across the hills with the handsome square-jawed sheriff. They needed a man to save the family ranch from the black-hatted baddie, they carried parasols, and needed to be helped up onto buckboards and stagecoaches.
Oh, how my nine year old heart craved to be a cowboy, in a proper cowboy outfit. But my mother bought me a cowgirl costume. I was heart-broken. Okay, I had a great pistol and gun-belt, nothing wrong with them. The gun was pearl-handled with a silver (ish) barrel and the belt had bullets tucked into it. But, oh, that cowgirl skirt - there was a fringe around the hem, stars were stuck here and there over the (fringed) jerkin, and the boots were a rosy pink! The whole thing was so, yuck, feminine.
By the time I was sixteen, I was wearing rock'n'roll bop skirts, stiletto heels, and lipstick. If I accidentally mis-matched my handbag to my shoes I would turn around from the bus stop and rush home to change, regardless of being late for something. I wouldnt go as far as the letterbox without full make-up. Yes, I had morphed into a girlie-girl.
A few years' ago, I achieved a dream by touring Monument Valley in the States. Real cowboy country with all the scenery I had seen in 1950's cowboy movies. The nine-year-old in me was over-the-moon.
I look back, nostalgically, at all those cowboy movies I used to see at double-feature sessions at the Rivoli and Ascot theatres in Newtown -
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