Stuff Boys Like

It has come to my attention recently that my Dad secretly wishes he was a cowboy. He likes going out bush and wearing RM Williams and he absolutely loves a good Western flick. Even his ring tone is that tune from The Good The Bad and The Ugly. Then the other day I was thinking about how my brother used to eat anything my mum declared was 'cowboy food' (see my post on 'Cowboy chowder', a revised Mummy recipe) so really he must have wanted to be one also. Then the other day my boy and my girlfriend's boy both bought a new PS3 game that involves riding around in a western country setting on horses, shooting things and wearing cowboy hats. They both deny this has anything to do with a love of cowboys but I think this game is letting them really live out their own fantasies of being one. It might be the outfit, the reckless abandonment and wild masculinity that cowboys represent but they really want to be a cowboy no matter how much they deny it. Boys like cowboys.