Recently, I got into a fierce verbal battle with my sister, Caidyn Webb (’24), over an accessory, the cowboy boot. I feel comfortable divulging our argument publicly, because I feel there is a very slim chance that she will ever read one of my articles. Let me digress. The argument arose when I expressed my desire to wear and own a pair of cowboy boots. My sister, a tried-and-true country music fan, snapped, stating that it would be wrong for me to ever don the boots as someone who “doesn’t even let country music play in [my] car” during our daily commute to school. After the dust had settled, I realized that there are several very distinct ways to style cowboy boots, a spectrum which my sister and I lie on opposite sides of.

I assume the defensive nature surrounding the cowboy boot stems from their history and the lifestyle that they have come to represent, something which runs deep in American culture. With the earliest cowboys of the 1800s came the introduction of the boot to the work force, where they remained until I assume they were brought into pop culture by country music stars. After this there was no going back, as cowboy boots themselves became a symbol of the rural American working class, which is often the topic of country music itself.

For the today’s cowboy boot demographic, I picture a small-town gal. Thick bootcut denim with muddy hems from unpaved roads. Worn by a girl taking her dad’s rickety truck to the single bar in a fly-through, one-church town. Did I just write a country song? This image of the boot stays true to its origins as a work boot, coming largely from the words of country songs themselves. The boots, like country music, seem to represent an image of hard work and dedication to one’s roots. The cowboy boot is more than an essential piece of work gear, though time and music it has evolved into a symbol of pride to those who wear them. The overlap between cowboy boots and country music is not coincidental either. It’s rare to see a country star without cowboy boots on during a show, even though their music has taken them far beyond the hard labor of the boots’ initial conception. My best understanding, as a known modern country music anti, is that these boots can be a reminder of one’s country roots if not used for practical purposes.

However, the cowboy boot has also had their run in the high fashion world. The boots were essential accessories to many celebrity outfits in this past year’s Met Gala, as the theme was “In America: A Lexicon of Fashion.” Cowboy boots are also known to pop up on runways, both American and international. Moments like this hoist the cowboy boots from their stable country ideology to the forefront of the fashion world, a stark juxtaposition.

Yet with the funky high fashion form of the cowboy boot comes a wacky fast fashion iteration. The boots have undergone a recent surge in everyday fashion. The turn of the cowboy boot to such an opposing and widespread crowd is less based on the boots’ representation of classic American culture. Becoming reinvented in the high fashion world, the boots still embodied a sense of appreciation for all things Americana, yet the trickle of colored cowboy boots to the masses has brought them to a crowd who seems to ignore their deep ties to country ideals to pursue an aesthetic. Frankly, this has led the cowboy boot through the fast-fashion wringer, Shein-ifying them beyond recognition.

I’m not saying that the new-age holographic cowboy boot can’t be a fun Coachella accessory, just that it is very far from the boots’ origins. But what is fashion if not to evolve? Here is where I harbor some sympathy for the country folk. Perhaps their defense for the cowboy boot is warranted. People who diss on country music swooping in to cherry pick certain aspects of the culture that they find appealing? People who largely discount the messages long told in decades of country music and rural America wearing boots which have grown to symbolize the labor of America’s heartland? What these boots represent today is largely different from their origins, but the values remain generally the same.

The cowboy boot is a spicy country accessory and I don’t feel that by wearing them I would be misrepresenting or tarnishing country music culture. While I do agree that it has become hard to separate the boots from their country roots. In my own defense, I don’t even dislike country music as a whole, just a lot of the corny modern stuff. Maybe the twisted message of modern country music shouldn’t solely define a piece of American history such as the cowboy boot…