I am by no means an expert on TV Westerns. (Actually, you could put “I am by no means an expert” on my headstone because I’m not an expert on anything; I’m just really good at running my mouth.) But I have watched all of The Big Valley and Bonanza, and just about every episode of Gunsmoke thanks to my father’s latest binge watching habits, and I’ve noticed something.

Women in the old west were pretty weak. The plot typically calls for them to be at the mercy of something, usually a man. The man is either a bad man who makes everyone miserable or a man she loves who is either a bad man who makes everyone miserable or a good man who makes terrible life choices.

I honestly think the latter makes my eye twitch more.

There’s this insinuation that all a woman wants is to have a man and that she will put up with anything to have one, even if that man is garbage. The number of times I’ve heard, “You have to do X because I am your husband,” or “because you love me” or “because you don’t have a choice.” I would be a widow. Men outnumber women in the Old West. I will find me a new one that does not try my nerves to such an extent.

Which brings me to my next observation.

Men did outnumber women back in the Old West because it was a rough life. It wasn’t for everyone. You had to be pretty tough to survive out there. So, it stands to reason that most of the women out there would be a little more involved in self-preservation. They probably wouldn’t be as tolerant of their man’s bullshit because finding another one would pose no challenge.

Also, women would have to be tougher to survive out there, period. Depending on a man wouldn’t be the best strategy because if your man is shit or if he dies -which was probably pretty likely, especially in a TV Western- a woman would be shit out of luck. And that has been the plot of more than one of these episodes. The women are always looking for a man to save them.

I find this most egregious when it comes to the saloon girls working at the Long Branch on Gunsmoke. We all know what their business really is -wink wink nudge nudge- and the fact is that in order to survive that lifestyle, you had to be a helluva lot tougher than the men. Looking for a fella to save you wasn’t going to work out in your favor and being pushed around by the clientele was bad for business. Miss Kitty was a bad ass broad, but I feel like she should have shot a lot more men.

Which brings me to the flip side. Sort of.

If the women weren’t weak, they were wily. They were plotting, cunning, and conniving, using their feminine wiles to get what they wanted. It frequently manifests as a woman pitting two men against each other, or using a man as a proxy to enact either vengeance or self-enrichment. These women are tough, in their way, and that’s a bad thing. Being tough and resilient is at odds with femininity, at least in the minds of cowboys and the men who wrote them.

Of course, there are exceptions. Miss Kitty and Victoria Barkley are notable in this respect. Both women are fiery, independent, and not apt to take shit from any man. Victoria Barkley was skilled with a whip and even though I thought Miss Kitty should have shot more men, that didn’t mean she didn’t have a gun behind the bar and that she didn’t use it. I also saw her whip a man with a parasol once. I wouldn’t cross either one of those women.

I suppose they didn’t want independent, strong women to have too much representation in the Old West.

The ladies might get ideas.