How and Why to be a Cowboy

When I was young I remember listening to an old Smothers Brothers comedy album. On it there was a bit that included the folk song "The Streets Of Laredo", aka "The Cowboy’s Lament". It’s originally a sad tune about death, but the Smothers brothers had their twist that ended like this:

I see by your outfit that you are a cowboy. 

I see by your outfit you are a cowboy too. 

We see by our outfits that we are both cowboys. 

If you get an outfit you can be a cowboy too. 

The idea that there’s a social system that can be hacked by simply putting on the right uniform tickled me. I didn’t get why when I was young, but as I got older it became something oddly insightful. It conjures up an old quote I first heard in high school Latin, vestis virum facit (the clothes make the man). I’m not one-hundred percent sure of the original intent, but it looks like the same point. A nurse wears scrubs, a house painter wears white pants, and a pilot wears a dark suit with epaulettes. The ubiquity ends up serving a social function because of the pattern. We get large amounts of information at a glance, whether right or wrong. This allows us to enter certain spaces with little to no question. As long as we're seen as belonging we can pass the initial test. 

Being seen as can be easily curated though. People post photos of themselves in rented luxury cars to try and make people believe they have money. Many wear their beanie's a particular way and adorn the proper footwear and tattoos to look like a creative. The alleged "authentic self" looks curiously like a lot of others. In the context of alignment though, all of this is unsurprising. "Gooble gobble one of us", as they chant in the movie Freaks. This is why people do all of these things— to belong. It's something an outfit can help with. 

Once you are through the front door it starts getting way more costly to be a member, because the signals of deep commitment go beyond having a few articles of clothing. The greatest hack/trick, then, is to use the appearance of belonging as a leverage towards something else. For example, looking like a cowboy and being seen around cowboys means you could probably talk a non-cowboy into giving you their cows. The outfit becomes part of a different game, because people don't understand any other use for the outfit. They're blind to their own ontological thinking. Why the hell else would someone be so into cowboy stuff?

So, if you want to be a cowboy then you're going to need an outfit. And if you want to be seen as a cowboy… you're going to need an outfit.