Let your babies grow up to be cowboys

Perhaps the first problem in the pussification of cowboy boots comes from the lack of actual modern cowboys. They still exist in small numbers sprinkled throughout the west, but the actual idea of the cowboy has been perverted into something romantic and hokey. Outside of a Cormac McCarthy novel, it's now damn near impossible for the average joe to understand what a real cowboy is about -- hard work, loneliness, stoicism. 

When you lose the original meaning behind the cowboy, you lose everything of importance. Perhaps the most important cowboy symbol of them all -- the boot -- ceases to be a symbol at all, merely becoming an aesthetic cliche. Sort of like if you took away all the swashbuckling, theft, and rape from a pirate but still had him wear an eyepatch.

They're being used as de facto high heels 

Why do women wear cowboy boots? If a guy wears cowboy boots disrespectfully, then at least there's a defined, logical reason for it: he's a moron who thinks he's John Wayne just because he grew up in the southwest. But why the hell would anyone with a vagina waste their time with cowboy boots? If they're actually cowgirls, okay -- makes sense, but that's rare. Most women who wear cowboy boots simply do so for their fashion implications, as if Stetson boots were nothing but masculine stilettos. This fashion "style" might be considered a reasonable act of female revenge against the metrosexuals who stole so many feminine styles for themselves, but still -- cowboy boots should be completely off-limits to anyone with ovaries. Unless they can ride a horse.

While you'll see that the cowboy boot is in enough trouble as it is, the female trendwhores who drag certainly aren't helping matters. 

Cowboy boots have no place in clubs

If there is one place in the world where cowboy boots absolutely, positively do not belong, it's in a Miami club. The boots which were originally made for stomping snakes, horses, and minorities have no reason to be in an enclosed area full of overpriced drinks, shitty techno music, and inebriated sluts. No other single environment is so truly antithetical to the idea of the cowboy boot as a Miami club.

And yet, weekend after weekend, any number of cowboy boot-wearing pseudo-men can be viewed bumping and grinding next to all the Metrosexuals and Bros and other varieties of douchebag. Irritatingly, cowboy boots don't even make functional sense on a club dance floor. There's a reason country music fans can only dance around in squares and lines -- their damned shoes won't allow them to dance in a more interesting, less stoic way. Someone trying to do the Soulja Boy in cowboy boots just runs counter to the whole idea behind them.

Leather grows more effeminate by the minute

While one can find numerous instances of men wearing cowboy boots when they don't deserve to, it's somewhat understandable when men who should wear them no longer do. Bikers, cowboys, and old-timer acquaintances of mine have actually stopped wearing boots altogether because (and I quote my cowbot hat-wearing, 50-year-old neighbor from across the street) "leather's getting pretty gay." 

A few months back, I referred to it as a manly thing which is no longer manly, and nothing's changed. For whatever reason, leather is now undeniably the gayest material available today. Given that most cowboy boots are made of cowhide leather, your ankles might as well be huge Sex and the City fans. Your heels probably listen to the village people. Your toes are some other ridiculous gay stereotype. You get the picture.

What to do

If you're the kind of person who legitimately deserves to wear cowboy boots, then you're not reading this article; you're riding a horse and spitting chew tobacco into a sagebrush. If you are reading this article, however, then let it be known that should you, or anyone you know wear cowboy boots as some sort of fashion statement, you are hurting America. You're denigrating the memory of the cowboy, and turning it into yet another piece of Mickey Mouse-ified piece of pop culture for mass consumption. You are the man who shot Liberty Valance.

Should you ever see someone wearing cowboy boots without (A) being on a horse or (B) holding a lasso, feel free to do any one of the following things:

-Tackle him or her to the ground, rip their boots off, and smack them moderately hard in the face with the displaced footwear

-Challenge them to a quick-draw, and win

-Force them to square dance

-Secretly drop a scorpion through the top opening (so as to give them that legitimate frontier feeling of danger).

While these courses of action may seem mildly illegal, keep in mind how  much good you'll be doing on behalf of the men who rode and lassoed and fought and lynched their way across the continent, to make America what it is today: a place where posers and phonies can rip off ancient cultural icons just for the sake of looking cool.