Riding pretty

"When the town of Pendleton, Oregon, held its first large-scale rodeo, it introduced a new kind of rodeo queen - not a traveling cowgirl performer but a young, middle-class women from its own town. Riding Pretty examines the history, evolution, and significance of the community-sponsored rodeo queen, from the introduction of this new phenomenon at the 1910 Pendleton Round-Up to the advent of Miss Rodeo America in 1956, and places the main theme - connection of queens to community - within the context of the evolution of rodeo as a spectator sport and the changing concepts of gender relations in the American West."--Jacket.