A Lazy Country Afternoon

Life in a farming or ranching town in my world has some similarities to that in yours. The pace is slower, things are simpler, and there's that faint tang of manure in the air. But you get used to it.

In other regards though, life and the division of labor is quite different.

A lot of light physical labor on farms and ranches are performed by hands, young men who hire themselves out for temporary work for a hot meal, a bunk to doss down in, and a little bit of cash. Much of the heavy and important farm work is done by women, who are usually farm owners or are hired on a more permanent basis, and who usually oversee the hands in their light tasks.

Life for a farm or ranch hand isn't all that easy, the hours are long, and the work unglamorous. Yet there persists a mystique in my world about these boys, healthy from the fresh air, strong — for men — from the physical labor, used to the unadorned life, and to the rough and tumble ways of cowgirls and country women.

In my world, there's also a mystique about country girls too, although not quite analogous to that in yours. I've written before about dalliances between hands and the young woman who stands to inherit the property. For these lucky boys, their days of slop buckets and uncertainty could well see an end, for in these relatively liberal times, even farm boys sometimes get the girl.

Rough Women and Sex in Advertising

One of the most popular brands of denim and leather clothing for women in my world is Leigh, and their "Rough Women" advertising slogan has been in use for several decades. In fact, the phrase Rough Woman is as iconic in my world as Marlboro Man is in yours. While their older ads emphasized a rugged and individualistic woman against the elements, in their more recent years, their ads have become much more focused on sex. The first ad above is from a billboard, with enough hints of the fun stuff for women, yet safe enough for the averted eyes of sensitive men.

The ad below, meanwhile, has been running in the pages of women's lifestyle magazines.

The Bridle and the Stable Boy

Update: I'm no longer using the "Continue reading..." links since Blogger allows me to flag the whole blog as adults-only. June 3, 2008

So a cowgirl walks into a barn... naked....

Cowgirls

I'm fascinated by the culture of the American West. It is such a part of the American psyche, and conjures up images of rugged independence and strength. It's no coincidence that Marlboro's ad campaign of cowboys doing their thing was so successful. Naturally, I'm drawn to the idea of cowgirls. On a slightly different scale, of course.

An early version of this image on the left was my first try at a cowgirl collage. The source image contained both her and the cowboys, and I just blew her up, tried to set her hand up in a realistic fashion and left it at that. I didn't end up liking the image much however, as the model was wearing a frumpy skirt and looked like she should be carrying out apple pie and lemonade to the boys when, at her size, she would be far more suited to wranglin' cattle and breakin' in broncos. So, recently, I went back, looked at it again, and decided to get rid of the frumpy skirt. I may have sexed-up the image a bit too much though with those ridiculous shorts, but the image now has a completely different feel. Here, she's more like the rancher's daughter, back for the summer from college, posing for a photo with the ranch hands. A few of the ranch hands have crushes on her, of course, and she's probably having a summer fling with one of them. That lucky dog.

This image was also the one which gave me the inkling "Wouldn't it be cool if I made not just collages of mini-giantesses and mini-men, but if I tried to create a world where all men were around half the size of women?" I've been trying to do that since, with varying degrees of success. Although a lot of my early work did not really feature this theme, I've been going back and rejiggering them to fit in more with that idea in mind.

This image on the right was the third cowgirl image I made (the second one I ended up throwing out because it was, well, boring). Again, both figures were in the source image – I looked for these images as sources early on because they were easier to work with – and I just shrunk the boy down. And again, the problem was with her clothing. She was wearing a dress! And heels! Fashion photography just can't get cowgirls right. So, to fix it, I got rid of that dress by superimposing another more appropriate body on her. Her new pose is also a lot more aggressive than before, so that she's the one more likely to have initiated the flirting and he's leaning against the post somewhat flattered by her attention.

I also added a truck, because the background was just too blank, and well, because a cowgirl like her probably has a really nice truck.