Emo Cowboys

I had no idea, until earlier today, that there is such a thing as an Emo Cowboy. Now, though, I’ve seen it with my own eyes (which, by the way, are bleeding, thank you for asking).

The Emo Cowboy look involves clunky sneakers (no color but black will suffice), skinny jeans, a giant t-shirt, and a miserable frown. A pale face is, of course, a plus.

Add a knee-length, imitation-leather duster (black, of course), and a felt cowboy hat (sans hatband and, naturally, black) to the ensemble and you’re near the goal. To go from Cowboy in Sneakers to Emo Cowboy, you must let your dyed-black hair grow out, then chop off the left half, leaving the rest free to obscure your right eye. You earn extra points if your unnaturally-dark hair is naturally curly, creating a depressingly-dark corkscrew over your hidden eye. Then, cover your lonely, exposed eye with mascara a la “A Clockwork Orange.”

But be aware that, if you’re shuffling along the sidewalk in our little, redneck town, with your sad little head down, wearing your Emo Cowboy getup, people are going to gawk. This is particularly true if you’re a) seemingly of the male gender, and b) wearing what is clearly a female’s cowboy hat.

I would have gotten a picture, but I just couldn’t – I was a little too far away for my camera phone to be of any use, and I would have had to shoot through the car’s side window, which wasn’t exactly clean. Oh, well.

P.S. I did a bit of research and discovered that "Emo Cowboy" is a phrase describing an emo kid who wears a bandanna around his neck. Sadly, the Emo Cowboy I saw earlier today sported no bandanna...but he WAS on his way to Walmart, where he could fix that little problem if he felt the urge to do so.