Personal Reflection on Cultural Appropriation and Cowboy Hats

This reflection is in no way an attempt to define or argue the boundaries of cultural appropriation. Instead, I am attempting to think about what cultural appropriation means to me as a Jewish/ Israeli immigrant to the United States, who is nonetheless white, educated, abled, and doing well for myself.

When I started wearing cowboy boots a few years ago, I was not confident about my ability to "pull it off" and I was worried about appearing to be appropriating a culture that I did not belong to. One afternoon I brought that up with Al Steckelberg, a native Nebraskan, and a friend, he waved me off and said: "we all used to wear western gear, we were all pretending". I love my cowboy boots and recently added a hat (at least in the sun). As I sat in my backyard in my hat I was intrigued by the shadow my hat made. The shadow created a distance and felt like it was not me but some other. It led me to a new journal page that became a collage. To the collage, I added detail from a painting by Eakins c. 1888 and a Jewish Gaucho in Sante Fe Argentina. 

As an immigrant to the US, I am always in the process of figuring out how I belong. I live in the liminal space between my past culture in Israel and the culture I live in now. As a result, I often find myself appropriating language, expression, and communication styles in an effort to find a place. The process itself is inherently flawed and often I find myself trying out patterns that cause the people I am interacting with to give me a second and third look. I have a sense that I crossed some boundaries but since most of the boundaries are not articulated clearly and never spoken out I am not always sure what caused the reaction. 

In some ways, I wear cowboy boots and hat as a way of defying expectations. In Nebraska, I am often the first Israeli ex-pat people have ever met, doubly so when it is cowboy boots wearing Isareli. At the same time, the cowboy image in popular culture and in real life is linked to masculinity and freedom. Finally, I believe that the cowboy image connects me to a sense of place (the great plains are the birthplace of the classic cowboy boot), and at the same time allows me to connect to Jewish cowboys and Gauchos- a pocket culture that nevertheless existed.