Dallas Police Are Doing a Little Cowboy Cosplay Now, We Guess

The year 2024 will long be remembered in pop culture as the year of #bratsummer, christened, of course, by the early-June release of an instantly-iconic pop album, Charli XCX’s Brat. It was the cultural equivalent of the hippies’ summer of love in 1967, but for the girls and gays — a singular moment in time when every day offered the chance of a kiki and every night flirted with throwing a rave.

Girl-code was the law of the land, and straight men were the ultimate party foul. We went to the bathroom in packs, where the poppers flowed like milk & honey. We painted our nails neon matcha-green. And we danced. Oh, how we danced.

But in 2025, a reactionary conservative culture war has delivered us the backlash to #bratsummer, seemingly its antithesis. Without a doubt, the most influential trend in arts, music, fashion and lifestyle is Cowboy Cosplay Summer. Now, even the Dallas Police Department is jumping on board, perhaps a sign that it's soon headed for the trend graveyard.

Last week, the cultural conversation reached a fever pitch when country singer/songwriter and attention-deprived troll Gavin Adcock faced off against our own prodigal son, Charley Crockett, on X, “I got more cowshit under my pinky than you have seen your whole fuckin life,” said Adcock, who called Crockett a “cosplay cowboy.”

And that was all the Dallas Police Department could stand to watch fidgeting from the sidelines, before finally getting in on the Cowboy Cosplay action itself. In a recent Facebook post striving to entice new recruits, the department announced an update to uniform protocols that will allow officers to wear cowboy hats on the job. Included is a promotional photo taken by the DPD’s Fire Arms Training Center Instructor, Senior Corp.l Kuo. Naturally, the comments didn't disappoint. One person asked, "Will this increase the response times?" Another wondered, "I thought the bad guys wore black hats?" Meanwhile, another commenter noted the lack of functionality in trying to hold on to a hat while engaging in foot pursuits. Comparisons to Fort Worth were rampant, which might not have bothered DPD so much had its former police chief not just accepted the job as top cop at Fort Worth PD. At least Fort Worth actually has the cattle.

What is it about this image of Love Field beat cops? Do you see that quiet vulnerability shining through? A brawny officer leans against the vibrant beauty of a Texas sunset. The pose is coy, but commanding — shoulders proud, hand on hip, a casually propped knee that says, “strong but sensitive.” An ever-so-tilted cattleman’s brim suggests a bit of a wild side that longs to be revealed, if you can hold space for that between nights of cuddly Yellowstone rewatches in the strong arms of a loving man.

If this kind of homoerotic dog-whistling isn’t enough to queer-bait you, the photo also aches with the sapphic yearning of forbidden desire. Two officers gaze out across the sky, hoping that somewhere, someday, love will conquer all. They never expected to find each other, let alone that it would allow them to find their true selves. On bated breath, their hands come so close they almost touch — almost.

Cowboy cosplay is exactly what it sounds like — performative urban straight men costuming their bodies and personas with a legacy brand of uncontested salt-of-the-earth masculinity. On the surface, the aesthetic appears classic and rugged, notable but unassuming, powerful, smoldering and, in an unintended twist of delicious irony, flamboyant.



It’s giving the sound of $300 ostrich leather cowboy boots clacking like cloven hooves over the cobblestone streets of a gentrified historical district. It’s giving a man, trying, for the third time, to back a Ford F-350 into a parking spot at Trader Joe’s as an unlit Marlboro Red sits behind his ear. It’s giving a craft cocktail mixologist who wears overalls and a Stetson hat to work. You get it.

Country western culture is having a moment that culminated this summer in a full-blown popular culture takeover. Cowboy Cosplay godfather and bard, Taylor Sheridan, has brought production of his shows to North Texas as he continues his meteoric rise through depictions of modern-day ranching, oil businesses and Shakespearean home-on-the-range family sagas.

As with most blockbuster trends, it started with Beyoncé, specifically her decision to “go country” with the release of her smash hit album Cowboy Carter just a few months before the beginning of #bratsummer. The album and its subsequent top-honors Grammy win for Album of the Year sparked a still-ongoing cultural debate over what qualifies as authentic country. We, for one, are not willing to grant Dallas police immunity in that same court of public opinion.

Cowboy Cosplay exists in a culture of substantially regressive politics, a denim marketing war across the fashion industry that’s steeped in the subtext of ethnic-cleansing, booming audiences for incel podcasters and the return of unambiguous racism in popular country music. As strong as its intentions may be in leaning toward conservative utopia and a return to antiquated masculine dominance, cowboy culture is actually a specifically acknowledged aspect of LGBTQ+ culture and history. The very same "woke," if you will, that conservatives lambast at literally every opportunity.

Midnight Cowboy, the hanky code, Brokeback Mountain, the Gay Rodeo — think about it. Even the Village People, gay icons despite MAGA's recent co-opting, feature a cowboy. Historically, cowboys find the same solace that has been known to draw closeted homosexuals to the priesthood — a built-in lifestyle that allows them to hide their truth without reproach or suspicion, tucked into the range with nothing but privacy.

Culture is a dynamic phenomenon. It ebbs and flows in reaction to itself, a perpetual call-and-response cycle in which social values are reflected in the mainstream, rejected by the underground fringe, and manipulated with commercialism. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

Thus, the ring-wing response to the unbridled queerness of #bratsummer has backfired. Ironically, the anti-gay stance overlapping Cowboy Cosplay purveyors and the GOP’s MAGA base has resulted in homophobes all over the country queer-jacketing themselves and carrying on a long LGBTQ+ tradition and lineage of the iconic gay cowboy. You love to see it, especially in an age where wins for the gay community come few and far between.