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Reviews
RIDING PRETTY: RODEO ROYALTY IN THE AMERICAN WEST
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by Renée M. Laegreid
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| University of Nebraska, Lincoln, 2006. Illustrations, Photographs, maps, notes, bibliography, index. 283 pages. $29.95 cloth. |
| Although only a few women, mainly but not exclusively white, immersed themselves in the early years of rodeo life, they have generated some scholarly interest. Renée M. Laegreid, in Riding Pretty: Rodeo Royalty in the American West, for example, explores the creation of a local western character known as the rodeo queen. Laegreid argues that community-sponsored rodeo queens provide a yardstick by which to measure local values and civic identity, especially concerning gender expectations. To develop this theme — the relationship between the queens and their communities — the author turns her lens on Oregon where, she asserts, rodeo royalty was first introduced at the Pendleton Round-Up in 1910, creating a female model that soon became a fixture at other western events. Ultimately, she concludes, the role of the queen formed and reformed, melding with an assortment of western traditions that were tightly woven into community self-identification, which was constructed from local idiosyncrasies manipulated to make a town seem unique within its region. Thus, those women commonly pushed to the margins of historical narrative — in this case rodeo queens — actually played a role in yet another arena of the West: town building by means of entertainment through animal-centered competitions. |
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The strongest sections of this book are those that focus on Pendleton, its people, and the local dynamics that fueled rodeo celebrations. Laegreid's description of community planners calculating and acting on the notion that a frontier-style rodeo promised greater returns for town celebrity and business profits than the standard Fourth of July festival is fine local history. It shows that systematic town boosterism, organized publicity, community cooperation, and financial strategies, rather than frontier bluster or haphazard fortunes, aided small western towns vying for regional prominence. Here Laegreid connects the dots between economic interests and western-flavored entertainment, demonstrating that, early in the twentieth century, the Pendelton Round-Up backers understood the appeal in using young women as gender magnets for town promotion. Even though a preponderance of the research relies on the Pendleton East Oregonian newspaper or personal interviews, Laegreid does a solid job of presenting the rodeo queens, often the daughters or friends of influential white families, as a force, if only briefly, in the emergence of community. |
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To broaden the scope of the study, Laegreid looks to three western events outside of Oregon — Texas Cowboy Reunion, Cheyenne Frontier Days, and Tri-State All-Girl Rodeo. She suggests that the policies of each circled back to have an impact on the original home of the rodeo queen, the Pendleton Round-Up. Taking readers from Oregon to Texas to Wyoming as the author examines a variety of attitudes and changes for all women participating in the rodeo distracts from the primary objective — to bond local values and community identity — and weakens the Pendleton story. While comparative structures are an important tool, the shifting between and among these various locales produces some repetition in the text. The 1929 death of a cowgirl named Bonnie McCarroll is recounted twice, and too often one comes on such phrases as "again," "as noted above," and "discussed earlier" (pp. 90, 91, and 99). |
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In the heart of the book, Laegreid seeks to sort out more specifically the difference between the queen (rodeo accouterment) and the cowgirl (rodeo athlete), a subject touched on somewhat in the earlier chapters. The author poses her argument as traditional versus nontraditional femininity, but those categories are simplistic and buckle in several different ways, as she acknowledges. Delineating commonalities and distinctions between the rodeo queen and the cowgirl athlete is a tangled subject that might be its own study, given it is so heavily laden with themes of female agency, athletic discrimination, and masculine oversight. |
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Much of the vocabulary refers to physical attributes of queens and cowgirls, but the authority by which such standards of beauty and attractiveness were established and promulgated is not fully explained. This is particularly important in the treatment of Native American rodeo queens. The author deserves credit for tackling this thorny subject; but given its intense complexity, explanations of how Native people defined female comeliness would have been useful. |
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This monograph comes from the University of Nebraska Press's Women in the West series, overseen by a team of premier scholars in western history. For that reason, some flaws in the book are startling. There are stylistic glitches (such as use of the false title throughout and the vexing placement of historians' work in the present tense, an odd choice for the long-deceased Walter Prescott Webb), at least one noticeable proofreading error, and a decidedly inferior index. |
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Despite these criticisms, this book, which is graced by fresh and engaging photographs, is a noteworthy contribution to the literature of the women's West. Riding Pretty pushes readers to consider unusual questions about western women and the choices some of them made for carving a space within the world of rodeo. |
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| Anne M. Butler
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| Utah State University, Emeritus |
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