Keeping those razors sharp was an entire saga on its own, and don’t even get us started on the soap. Made of bay rum and vanilla extract, shaving lotion would cake on the skin in the windy outdoors, and the stuff needed to be kept moist at all times while attempting a shave; otherwise, it would flake off under the razor blade. It was just too much of a hassle for a cowboy on the move, and most simply ended up not bothering with it at all.
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Hollywood Still Has A Long Way To Go In Fixing Its Whitewashing
Spanish colonists brought ranching culture to the West during the 16th century, and they were the original ranch owners. Cowboy culture was largely influenced by Hispanic and Latino citizens, with one in three cowboys being of Mexican origin by the 1800s. Those cowboy hats and spurs and lassos were all of Latine origin.
We don’t often get to see that kind of historical ownership in the stories on screen, let alone how white Americans first learned about cowboy culture in the early 19th century during the westward expansion. Back then, cowboys did the hard jobs that the slaves did for white folks — meaning it was, in fact, the people of color who shaped the Old West. And yet, it took us way too long to finally see the colorful people of the American Frontier represented in our Westerns. In 1951, famous frontiersman James Beckwourth — who was a multiracial slave freed by his white owner (and father) — was portrayed in the movie Tomahawk by a white actor. In 2021, a whopping 70 years later, we finally got to see a black actor (RJ Cyler) play a version of him in a (fantastic) movie.
We could carry on and name a list of white actors who portrayed prominent cowboys of color throughout Hollywood history, but we bet you probably already know many of them. And while it seems that Hollywood is slowly turning a corner on all the whitewashing of Westerns, more could be done, and less should be praised. It doesn’t really help saying Django Unchained is a revisionist Western when it uses the white savior plot. It doesn’t inspire when every second historical Western is about Jesse James. Google “21st century Westerns” and count the white characters in the movies that pop up. Actually, no — rather count the people of color instead. It’ll save you a lot of time.
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