ABSTRACT
Many traditional events are primarily masculine, with male participation mirroring the gender dominance of these cultures. Festivals celebrating the American West are typically male-oriented. This is the land of Billy the Kid, Buffalo Bill, Wild Bill Hickok and Wyatt Earp. Western cinema, which has shaped so much of how we imagine the West, is dominated by John Wayne, James Stewart, Clint Eastwood and Kevin Costner (Frost and Laing forthcoming). The language of the West reflects this masculinity – it is populated by cowboys, lawmen, badmen and hombres. Not only are females usually subordinate, it has been argued that the popularity of the western myth starting in the late nineteenth century was a reaction to the perceived feminisation of urban civilisation leading to a degeneration of manly qualities among American youth (Hausladen 2003; Slotkin 1992; Watts 2003).
