Cowboy Boots and Dreams of Being a Cowboy

By: xdavid

We all know how easy it is to romanticize things. After all, we live in an era where Hollywood can take just about anything and make it look glamorous. Dying of tuberculosis? You're a thin pale beauty who delicately coughs up blood and swoons on occasion. Got an addiction? You suddenly wear a great deal of eyeliner and look like a fashion model. By the time you get to what Hollywood has done to the western genre, well, you're blending a whole lot of fantasy with reality at that point. In doing so, it creates an ideal based on a bygone era. The reasons for this ideal are pretty simple, really. The western lifestyle is all about self-actualization and exploration. It is about personal freedom, and the triumph of "good."

These all are qualities that we are taught to emulate, and in many ways, qualities that are sometimes lost in the shuffle of today's life. It no longer takes a village to raise a child in the literal sense, and most all of us are herded through the cattle drive of what we call schooling, these days. Conformity to the rules, good behavior, the ability to learn what is taught, pass tests and move up to the next level is the main focus for all those formative years. Sure, there are sports that are played, and hopefully plenty of playtime with friends and quality time with family, but the reality is that our days are full, and there isn't the same kind of exploration to be done.

So where do cowboy boots come in to all of this? Well, partly through fashion. Western wear is no longer limited to the farms where people are working hard to make their living. Rather, western apparel is ubiquitous. You'll find people sporting western fashions in the south, the northeast, the mid-west and even on the runways of high fashion. It has become a symbol of American style. While it may have developed as a function-based way of protecting oneself from the elements, it has become much more than that.

In some ways, western wear is a tribute to days gone by, to days where there still was something left to explore in a physical, more tangible way. Being a cowboy meant being on the edge of society and being able to leave that edge and go where others were not. Today, as a society, there are plenty who are doing that, but it's no longer about land, and more about the human experience, something that is much harder to qualify.

Written by Melanie River. Brand name cowboy boots and western wear at The Boot Store online store for western apparel. Ariat boots, Justin boots more at western-wear-store.com