Page 37 - Confronting Race Women and Indians on the Frontier, 1815 - 1915

F R O N T I E R P H ILOSOPHY: AMERICAN D I S C OURSE

women" who demanded their rights. The Gibson Girl, created by
Charles Dana Gibson during the 1890S for Life magazine and appearing
on everything from magazine covers to wall calendars, was a softer ren­
dering of white American women. Gibson Girls wore their hair upswept
in bouffant coiffures, favored long skirts and corsets that made them
incredibly thin-waisted, and for the beach donned one-piece wool
bathing suits with legs that covered their "limbs." Long black stockings,
gloves, and parasols completed the outfit in which no one dared swim
for fear of drowning. 6 2 Although Gibson Girls were more liberated than
their mothers, they still were "ladies."
The contrast between the New Woman and the more traditional
Gibson Girl is best seen in the career of Annie Oakley, the female sharp­
shooter who, beginning in 1885, appeared with Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild
West for sixteen seasons. Cody's W i ld West brought a living and breath­
ing West to viewers who, up to that point, had only read about the West
or seen artists' renditions. Annie Oakley added a female element, por­
traying a western woman skilled with guns and horses, yet so feminine
and ladylike that she appealed to young and old, conservative and lib­
eral, New Women and Gibson Girls.6 3
During the late 1880s and 1890s, Cody and Oakley created the first
public image of the cowgirl. Because popular culture, such as Fowler's
book Women on the Frontier, characterized women as victims, Cody hired
actresses who screamed and fainted in such vignettes as "The Attack on
the Settlers' Cabin." But there were also forceful and scrappy women in
the West. During the 1890s, for example, women who went west as
homesteaders accounted for 1I.9 percent of Colorado's homesteaders
and in Wyoming were 18.2 percent. The existence of these and other
women forced Cody to recognize that in the West, as humorist Josh
,,
Billings put it, w " immin is everywhere. 6 4
From Cody's point of view, Annie Oakley made the perfect cow­
girl. She was an exceptional shooter rather than a disreputable "show"
girl or a New Woman and was intent on preserving her "ladyhood."
Cody encouraged Oakley in her interpretation of the cowgirl. In 1889,
he stated that women should be able to vote and earn wages, but he
opposed rodeo women who wore "bloomer pants" or rode bucking
horses. He first billed Annie and other cowgirls he hired as "rancheras,"

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