Mexico’s female rodeo culture has been challenging gender norms for decades. But the job isn’t done

By Leah Dolan, CNN

(CNN) — What does a cowgirl look like? For some, the question may call forth images of flanneled shirts, Stetson hats and bootcut jeans. But in escaramuza, the all-female equestrian sport imported by the US from Mexico, the answer is a little different.

Before every escaramuza competition, each team lines up to have its uniforms measured. Strict guidelines dictate that the riders’ tiered Victoriana dresses, often vivid in color and trimmed with lace, must be long enough to cover their horses’ haunches. Glitter and beading are prohibited, but any accessories from earrings to brooches must match. Boots, too, should be identical throughout a team. Under each dress is a petticoat layer, as well as a pair of bloomers — both are to be steamed. One missing underlayer can disqualify the entire squad.

Once they have passed their inspection, these spectacularly clad women go on to perform an elaborate synchronized routine while riding side-saddle. Their frothing dresses become fast-moving flurries of pink, purple and sky blue as they gallop across the arena.

Photographer Constance Jaeggi spent the best part of two years traveling across the US to California, Texas, Idaho, Colorado, Oregon and Washington D.C. photographing these women, first for an exhibition at The National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame in Fort Worth, Texas, and later for the upcoming book “Escaramuza: The Poetics of Home.”

This visual clash — the strong, muscular horse working beneath layers of delicate petticoats — is one beloved by fashion. Dior’s former designer Maria Grazia Chiuri was inspired by the traditional costume of escaramuza, as seen via the brand’s 2019 Cruise runway show; while the September 2025 issue of Vogue, featured self-described horse girls Kendal Jenner and Gigi Hadid atop great steeds in lacy McQueen dresses.

Jaeggi hopes people will come for her vibrant portraits of beautifully dressed women, and stay for a more layered and complex story about feminism, immigration and personal sacrifice. “I think the fashion aspect of it is the easy entry point,” Jaeggi said in a video interview.

Along with taking their photograph, Jaeggi would watch hours of team rehearsals and often ate dinner with her subjects in their home. She interviewed the women and passed along their recorded conversations to Mexican-American writers Ire’ne Lara Silva, the 2023 Texas State Poet Laureate, and Angelina Sáenz, who wrote 15 accompanying poems each in both Spanish and English. The result is a tale of two halves — the calm, predictable waters of Jaeggi’s images, versus a tense storm brewing in the words of the poets.

“When I started researching and speaking to the escaramuza, I realized how important the oral histories were to their story,” she said. Jaeggi was also “hyper aware” of the fact that she isn’t Mexican-American herself. “I don’t have that cultural, personal connection and I felt it was important to make sure that was a major part of the work.”

Instead of visiting the sport’s home country, Jaeggi was instead drawn to the women who were working hard to establish escaramuza in the US. “In Mexico, it really is the sport of the wealthy,” she said. But the performers she met, most of them first or second generation immigrants, told a different story. From bake sales to fund the cost of the extravagant, hand-made dresses for competitions (the gowns cost roughly $300 to $400 each and are imported across the Mexican border) to putting gas in each others cars, the teams Jaeggi met were financially interdependent communities with one shared goal: furthering their athletic craft.

“One of the stories I kept hearing was that it took them years, like a couple of generations, to be able to afford to have horses and to be able to do this sport,” she said. “It made it even more impressive to me, the fact that they dedicate so many of their resources to it.” When discussions moved onto the topic of immigration “there was some hesitance” for women to go on the record, Jaeggi said, because they were undocumented. That was in 2023 — before President Trump’s mission of mass deportation and deployment of ICE. “It’s a difficult political climate right now,” she added.

Throughout Jaeggi’s book, there is an undercurrent of inequality that regularly bubbles to the surface. Escaramuza is a five- to 10-minute drop in the three-hour ocean of traditional charrería — the exclusively male ranching and horsemanship competition that is also Mexico’s national sport. Charrería was declared as Mexico’s national sport in 1933, though women were only allowed to perform as an entertaining half-time show in 1953. Escaramuza was not recognized as an athletic competitive event until 1992. Even today, the uniforms of male riders are not inspected as rigorously as their female counterparts, Jaeggi notes, a reason she coyly attributes to “interesting gender dynamics.”

While the women are eager to maintain their traditions and culture, they feel weighed down by the sport’s strict, essentialist views on gender. It’s a knotty back-and-forth that mostly comes through in writing. “Women/Are second class citizens in this sport,” reads one line of a Sáenz poem, “You are prettier when you are quiet.” In another work, “Machetona,” Silva interprets the struggle of a lesbian teammate who tries to rally against the inherent misogyny of escaramuza. The history of side-saddle, for example, comes from the fear that riding astride risks breaking a woman’s hymen, compromising the evidence of her virginity and, therefore, her value.

“When it came to issues around gender and feminism, and pushing against some of these gender boundaries, I think most women were really willing to talk about it,” Jaeggi said. “They felt like their voices weren’t always heard in their community, and so there was a lot of frustration that was coming out. Those were really great conversations.”

In “The Poetics of Home,” pride and frustration are intermingled in equal parts. But all can agree that an imperfect community is better than none. The “sisterhood,” as escaramuza is often referred to in the book, gives these women purpose, direction and a sense of belonging. “A sisterhood/Born of struggling and dreaming and training,” reads Silva’s poem “Lo Nuestro.” And as much as this sport is rooted in heritage, the women competing today have their sights set on the future. Jaeggi remembers a conversation with an escaramuza rider, who told her that “one of the main reasons she does this sport is she wants little girls, the next generation, to see that as a woman, you too can ride a horse.”

“For a long time within charrería they weren’t,” she said. “The thought of having a woman compete alongside a man, or ride alongside a man on a horse, was unthinkable.”

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