Last year, while waiting to see if she got accepted to the PhD programs she applied to, Maura Finkelstein decided to audition for a PBS reality show. Her friend at PBS told her about the open-call, and Maura said, why not? But what she didn’t expect was getting picked.
The PBS producers found Maura comfortable and real enough in front of the camera to be the “girl of all work�—a maid—on the “Texas Ranch House� reality show. Maura, 26, found this out the same week she got accepted to Stanford. But Maura decided to first spend a summer back in time, in the wild, wild west. So she did. Here’s Maura…
First and foremost, what’s 1867 Texas ranch house food like?
Pretty plain. And in the end it came down to the creativity of who was in the kitchen. It also took a while to get used to cooking with the utensils and the pots that we had, and controlling the fire and getting an even heat. But I think about halfway through the summer we were all eating really well—making tortillas from scratch, eating lots of beans with salt pork—which I’m not a huge fan of but it gives the food some flavor. And when the garden started to produce, then we were eating lots of fresh veggies.
Did you have to kill any animals?
At the very beginning of the summer, Nacho, the original cook, killed a couple of goats. That sort of ended when he left. We later killed a couple of chickens. I learned how to pluck and skin and fillet them. It was awesome. I’m just kidding. [Laughs] I’m glad that I did it. I think it was a good experience, but I’m not necessarily sure I want to do it every time I want to eat a chicken. The guys killed and ate a havalina, which is a wild boar. And some rattlesnakes.
Did you eat the rattlesnakes?
Yeah-ish. It was fun to eat off the land, I suppose. I don’t think I’ll make it into a regular diet. [Laughs]
What about going to the bathroom?
We had an outhouse, which was quite nice. I’ve been camping a lot, and have gone to the bathroom in the woods a lot, and used a portapotty every once in a while, so I don’t think it was that big of a deal to be honest. But late at night, when I didn’t want to go all the way to the outhouse and be in the outhouse in the dark where there could be scorpions and centipedes, I would just pee behind the chicken coop. The one thing I think I did miss was toilet paper.
What did you use then? Rags?
We used rags. And sometimes we would use cornhusks. We would soak them in water so they would be softer.
What about that time of the month?
We were literally on the rag. We had these cotton pads and these quilt covers that would go over them with a little belt—which was basically a string that we would tie around our waists. It was like wearing a diaper. It was really uncomfortable and we had to wash them every day, or more. I missed tampons a lot. [Laughs]
Were they harder to work in?
The biggest problem was that you would be afraid that they were going to slip off. And that would be really embarrassing considering we didn’t have underwear to hold them on.
You didn’t have underwear?
No. We had these things called pantalets, which were like bloomers, except they didn’t have a crotch. Which I think was for easy access.
Easy access?…To go to the bathroom?
Or…for your boy.
Are you serious?
I guess so. We couldn’t really figure it out. It was supposedly to make it easier for women to go to the bathroom in crowded outhouses. However…I mean, come on. All those layers of clothes? The girls and I very early on couldn’t figure out exactly what the point of them were and stopped wearing them.
So you wore nothing?!
Nothing the whole summer. Just skirts.
Whoa!
Yeah. You get used to it. It’s kind of nice. It’s cool. You get some wind up there.
Whoa! Well, I guess the skirts were really long so it wasn’t that bad.
Yeah, they were floor-length. But every once in a while when I would be hiking out somewhere and there would be camera crews following, I would be, ‘If the wind picks up, close your eyes.’ But the wind never picked up, and they never had to close their eyes. It was pretty funny though.
How about the whole corset thing?
I stopped wearing my corset very early. I actually didn’t have a corset, I had a stays. Which was not bound, it was just a cloth that was really, really tight that you lace at the back. I just found them really uncomfortable. I didn’t wear my stays most of the time so I made a bra. And I was pretty proud of it. And I made a sports bra.
Did the other girls make bras, too?
Yeah. I think by the end of the summer we all had them.
It was just too much?
Yeah, if you’re wearing your really tight corset and can’t breathe, how are you supposed to carry heavy things, milk the cows, bend over, and carry water buckets? It seemed really not practical.
And you had to wear big skirts and puffy blouses?
I had a couple of outfits. I’d either be wearing a petticoat and a skirt. I’d always wear my chemise, which was like a slip. And I’d wear a petticoat over that sometimes. Sometimes I’d end up too hot and then I’d either wear my dress over that or I would wear a skirt and an apron. And this blouse that went with the skirts. But you’d get so hot. Especially when you’re in the kitchen, and it’s steamy.
When we stopped wearing all the petticoats, [the clothes] really weren’t as massive as they could have been. But I still felt like a whale most of the summer.
[Apparently many readers thought Maura looked like a whale, and have been posting away at the “Texas Ranch House� website about how all the cowboys lost weight and how Maura gained weight during the show. Maura has been doing her best not to read these comments, and wishes the American public would take a break from their obsession with women’s bodies, and read up on how carbs break down differently in men and women’s bodies.]
The producers didn’t care that you didn’t wear everything?
The idea of the show was that they gave us what they gave us, and they stepped away. They couldn’t tell us to do anything. They might not have liked it, but that’s not our problem.
Did the guys have any weird wardrobe stuff like that?
I don’t think so. They had to wear long underwear and pants, and they had undershirts and shirts and chaps? But I didn’t hear about anything.
The one thing that everybody had was crotch powder. Basically it was some kind of talcum-baby powder-type thing for when you would be sweating a lot and chap. You’d put some in between your legs, your arms to absorb moisture. And that saved me! Oh, it was fabulous!
How did you wash up? Did you use soap?
We had lye soap, which is made up of basically charcoal ashes and pig fat being cooked down. I found that it didn’t always make you feel so clean. It was the only soap we had. We had it to wash our bodies, our hair, our face, our clothes, our dishes—everything.
The woman who taught us how to make lye soap, she said she would never use another soap. She stopped using “real� soap years ago. She showed us in boot camp, but they gave us enough soap that we never needed to make it again.
We used a tin bathtub. We could fill it with buckets from the well and take baths but that took up a long time—going back and forth, back and forth with buckets. I tried to bathe every day but a lot of times I would go out in my chemise and I would just dump a bucket of water over my head and soap up, and then dump another bucket of water over my head. It saved time, water, and energy.
About two-thirds of the way into the summer, Mrs. Cooke decided to make a shower. She took this canvas and made it into a shower curtain so we could actually go outside in the back of the house, and go behind this curtain and get naked and take like a proper shower. It was still buckets poured over our heads, but we had a little private space.
You had boot camp before the show?
Yeah, we had two weeks where we were learning to do all kinds of crazy stuff. Like make soap, cook, feed goats, milk cows, sew—all the things we would need to do.
Did you all have to live together then, too?
They separated us. We never did meet the cowboys. We stayed in a hotel, and it was just the Cookes and myself. We didn’t meet each other until we got to the ranch. Which I think was possibly strategic in the end, and very problematic because I got to know the Cookes. The cowboys got to know each other. But when we actually got to the ranch, we were all strangers. And we never bonded. I’m not really into blaming production for everything, but I think it would have been a very different show if we had all gotten to know each other from the beginning.
What kinds of experiences did you have with the cowboys?
For the most part, we never really got to know each other. At the very beginning of the summer, I wanted to hang out with guys my age, and so Vienna [the oldest Cooke daughter] and I would go over and we’d play chess. And they’d come over to the house and they’d play croquet. Vienna and I made cookies for them a couple of times. But then things started to deteriorate really fast and very quickly, and we didn’t interact with each other unless we had to.
So all the cowboys were pretty much together. There weren’t any stragglers that went between both groups?
Shawn, who became the cook, he very much went between both camps because he said he felt much more comfortable at the Cooke house. He was a Christian. He felt really uncomfortable being around the guys, they gave him a hard time. In the end he had to pick his side. His loyalties went with the guys and he rode off with them till the end of the summer. But I think it was definitely a struggle for him.
And it was a struggle for me because I did want to become a cowboy. I wanted to work with the guys, but I didn’t necessarily want to socialize with them. I had to take all my meals with them [when I became] a ranch handler. It was hard because my friendships were with the Cookes. And I was never really given any friendship from the guys, except for Shawn. And it was hard to work with them. Especially on the cattle drive because they didn’t really talk to me that much. But what are you going to do?
How did you become a cowboy?
In the first week, the foreman was fired. Then after the third week, the cook was fired. And then the next week, one of the cowboys quit. And so we were down three ranch hands. [The producers] brought in another cowboy—Rob Wright to replace Ian. But there still weren’t enough people to do the cattle drive so Mr. and Mrs. Cooke decided that it would be helpful if I started working with the ranch hands.
So it was more their idea than your idea?
I think it was something that we talked about for a couple of weeks. I made no secret of the fact that I would have rather been a ranch hand. One of the biggest challenges was knowing that there was something else that I would rather be doing. So I was working on dealing with that. And then people started leaving for various reasons. And I started feeling like all the participants felt that they were experts in historiography.
Like one of the most common conversations would be, ‘I’m sure this would never have happened in 1867.’ We all had this idea of what history was like, and what life was like in the 19th century. Of course there’s no concrete precedence that this wouldn’t have happened, or this wouldn’t have happened. And my interpretation was that if you were trying to make a ranch work in the 19th century, post Civil War, and you’re down workers, everybody pitches in. The women don’t sit around and watch the ranch fail! And so I felt it would have been perfectly reasonable for a woman to step up and help out in a traditionally male space. And it was about making it or not making it. I mean who was running the ranch when all the men were off to war?
But the guys: a) Thought they could do it all by themselves, and that they didn’t need extra help, and b) There were just so many problems for various reasons over the summer that we just didn’t get along. And there’s a big part of me that thinks the reason why they didn’t want a woman working with them was because we had all these problems with the ways men and women interacted back then. I think they thought it was personal, and so they didn’t like me. But I feel the reason why we didn’t get along was because of the gender issues.
Like what kinds of gender issues?
From the very beginning, I thought that if we performed the work when the cameras were rolling, then in the evenings, when nobody was around, we could sit around and joke about how absurd it was to play these roles. But what I found from the very beginning was that the guys wanted to be “cowboys.� They wanted to totally embrace the lifestyle, and they didn’t want to ever call on their 21st century sensibilities when it wasn’t convenient for them. So I felt from the very beginning that they were treating me differently all of the time.
There was talk about how I had a chip on my shoulder because I would try really, really hard to be the docile maid. But I wasn’t going to be that all of the time. That’s not who I am. I was playing that when I was working. But at the end of the day, when all the work was done, I was still being treated like a maid. And they’re not cowboys, and I’m not a maid. These aren’t things that define us. They were roles that we were playing. And I felt from the very beginning that you either could become your role, or the role could become you. And I didn’t want to become the “maid.� I wanted to do the work.
But they were all becoming cowboys and there was this frat boy mentality. It’s like the Stanford Prison Project where you start playing roles, and wearing certain clothing, and then all of a sudden you start embodying them. [For the project] a psychology professor got a bunch of students together for the weekend and split them up between guards and prisoners and it got really scary, really quickly. That freaked me out.
What were some examples of how they treated you like a “maid,� and how they were acting like “cowboys�?
They were always telling me what women can and cannot do. ‘Women can’t do this.’ ‘A maid wouldn’t do this.’ They were instantly experts on what my role was. One thing I think initially would have happened [if they were cowboys] is that there would have been some kind of respect for women. There would have been, ‘Yes, Ma’am. No, Ma’am.’ I show you proper respect. I don’t swear around you. That wasn’t necessarily something that they seemed willing to embrace. I felt like the dirty word became respect really fast. And I realized as a maid, that they didn’t need to respect me.
There’s a clip in the second episode. It became sort of amusement to watch myself and the other girls struggle with the livestock. You never sit around and watch a woman struggle and laugh at her [if you’re a cowboy]. And if you want to do that, that’s OK, if I can step out of role as well. Don’t tell me that I always have to act like the maid if you’re not always going to act like the storybook cowboy, because we’re all working off of stereotypes here. And if you’re going to drop your stereotypes when it is convenient, then so am I.
And I just felt like when I would go out and hang out with the guys, they weren’t really interested in my opinions. They wanted me to be amused by them. They didn’t want me to be part of the conversation. And this was in the evenings, after the cameras were gone for the day. Who were we playing for? And it’s just sort of insulting because that would never have been the way I would have been treated if I met these guys on the street. I hope.
I’ve gotten some flack for stepping so out of period, but in reality, there were a lot of recorded stories of women working side by side with men. Of women dressing like boys and pretending to be cowboys. Of women just being ranching women. There are a couple of documents from the 1860s. And if one story is written down in the 1860s, that means there’s got to be more. So I don’t think it was that unheard of.
It’s funny, because even Shakespeare’s Twelveth Night, one of the girls dresses up like a boy and goes and fights and does whatever—and she’s a hero. But in reality, when you try to push the boundaries, people hate you.
It’s crazy! Do these guys come from pretty conservative parts of the country?
No, it was pretty diverse. I think for the most part, the Cookes and I were from the coasts. And the guys were not. But the Cookes and I were very different, so that’s not a good indication.
I would like to think none of them are inherently sexist. But I think it’s a lot about that space that brought a lot of what I consider sexist. But I think the show brought out the worst in all of us in a lot of ways. It’s an impossible situation. To take people out of their comfort zone, away from everything familiar, and put them in a very unsafe space and they can’t escape it. And then you ask them to be themselves. And that’s what was so confusing—we were asked to be ourselves. It was very specific, and it came from the producers all the time: "Be your 21st -century self in a 19th-century place."
Really? I didn’t know that was the basic premise of the show?
Yeah, people watch the show and feel like what we’re doing is not appropriate. But I was never asked to act. In fact, I was chosen because it was believed that I wouldn’t act. The show is about seeing if 21st-century people could make a 19th-century ranch work with 19th-century tools and technology. And that’s a very difficult project because everybody has a very different interpretation of what that means.
[For us], right away it seemed like racism, classism—these were things people didn’t feel comfortable talking about. So therefore they didn’t exist. The Buffalo soldiers were treated with the utmost respect. The Comanchees were treated like honored guests. But not the women.
Did the Cooke daughters say anything about the treatment of women on the show?
I think the Cooke daughters, and Mrs. Cooke, were just as upset as I was. And none of the Cooke women would refer to, or see themselves, as feminists. So we all felt that there was just this inherent sexism that was sprouting out. And that actually kind of freaked me out because racism and classism existed [and exist], but it wasn’t something anybody on the show felt comfortable dealing with. But sexism was something that came with the territory. And that was OK. So what does that mean? What does that say about who we are today? It’s just weird.
How long were the Buffalo soldiers on the show for?
They came in as guests so they were there for about two days altogether.
I wonder what would have happened if they stayed there longer?
Yeah, I don’t know. It just seems that racism and classism are very clearly seen to be forms of hatred. But sexism, in a lot of ways, is not seen to be a form of hatred by a lot of people. I don’t know enough about it, and I don’t know enough about how people view gender differences, and sexuality differences. But it just seems that treating men and women differently, at least in this situation, was not seen as a form of hatred. It was not seen as a form of inferiority.
And I would have been a happy, happy maid if I felt like I had some kind of sympathetic support from the guys. I had nothing but sympathy for them spending 10 hours in the saddle. I wanted to do that, more than making lunch, but I realized they were fish out of water in a lot of ways. But I really don’t think they acknowledged the women for being in the same situation. I think that in a lot of ways, traditional women’s work was seen as window dressing. And it wasn’t seen that we were working very hard. I worked very hard.
Do you feel like the show showed that?
I don’t think the show showed how much the women worked. I was up at 5 a.m. I was working through the day. I would take an hour off in the very heat of the day, like everybody did, and went back to work after. I worked really hard. But I think that watching cowboys rope steers and brand calves and wrestle with the pigs was a lot more interesting than watching women cook—according to the producers.
You have experience working on a ranch. You would think the guys would want your input?
I think that my knowledge was seen as a huge threat because a lot of the guys came in not knowing how to do any of the ranch work. And I had done it all before. I worked with horses all my life. And I worked in a ranch in Colorado. I wasn’t nearly as skilled as Robby, who has been doing it all of his life, but I felt that I was just as capable as any of the guys. But trying to prove that I could do the work was a very bad thing in their minds.
So when did you finally get to work as a cowboy?
When I was finally hired as a ranch hand, I was sent out to a three-day boot camp to make sure that I knew what I was doing, and that I was safe. I learned a lot of very important skills and practiced my riding. When I came back, the guys were very upset that I was joining their group. [Eventually Robby] said he would let me work. But for the next two days, I just sat around the house and waited for him to let me work. And he basically ignored me. I felt like I was wasting all this time when I wasn’t working, and Mr. Cooke was finding errands for me to do around the house. And I was really afraid that the cattle drive would be upon us and [Robby] would say, well, Maura hasn’t done any work, I can’t work with her, I don’t know her, and [I would] get left behind.
At one point, Mr. Cooke was like, you need to let Maura ride and Robby was like, before Maura rides, I want to take you and your family out on a ride to show my respect. And from what I understand, there was a ploy to put off my riding even more. After six weeks of not getting along, it became weird that Robby was suddenly extending an olive branch—I want to take your family on a ride. But until it happens, Maura can’t ride.
But there were all of these little ploys to keep me from riding. And eventually keep me from the cattle drive. But in the end, I did the cattle drive, and I’m really glad that that happened.
Did they respect your work then?
I think by the end of the cattle drive, everybody felt that I was as capable of doing the work as they were. Although I was never really able to work with the cattle. They made sure that I stayed away from the cattle. I only took care of the horses. Which was fine. Baby steps.
Did you have any meltdowns?
I had some meltdowns. I tried not to have them on camera. [Laughs] I couldn’t call my friends, I couldn’t call my family. I did make friends with the Cookes but that’s not a very large community. And so that was definitely hard and alienating.
Is there anything you miss about living in a Texas ranch house in 1867?
I think what I miss the most is the evenings, and watching the sunset. It’s like a light show! The most beautiful thing ever. Then the stars would come out and it would be cool and quiet.
There’s something about when your body is so exhausted, and you can finally rest, and it’s not as hot as it’s been. That was a really satisfying feeling. But not enough to want to go back! [Laughs]
Is there anything that people in 2006, with globalization and the Internet, could learn from Texas ranch life in 1867?
I don’t even know how to answer that question. [Laughs] I think there’s this nostalgia for the past. There’s this tendency to go back to the past and see it as a much more simplistic time because it was less technologically advanced. And see it as a time when people behaved better, and got along better. I just think that’s a little absurd. I think that kind of nostalgia has everything to do with who we are now, and absolutely nothing to do with who people were then—whenever that then is. There were always people who behaved better than others, and I think there was always conflict. We just sort of have more access to it all now. I wouldn’t have wanted to live in the 19th century. I’m really glad that I live in the 21st century. I don’t see it as being a happier, more satisfying, more peaceful time at all. If anything, it could have been the opposite.
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What? Viola didn't fight anything in Twelfth Night.
Slutever. Good interview-- and that shit about how racism = bad & sexism = good creeped the hell out of me.
What in the hell kind of word is "slutever"? Why do you hate the English language *sigh*
I found this very interesting. A similar program was screened in Australia a year or so ago, and you didn't see that kind of macho bullshit from the stationhands there. There was plenty of conflict going on (sounds like the problems with the cooks tend to be pretty universal, heh) but it was never about gender roles. Always class-based power differentials and fights based on personality clashes. There's something funny about the state of gender relations in the US, and it sure isn't "ha-ha" funny...
I found the show very interesting. The scene with Maura and the Cooke woman trying to move the animals while the cowboys laughed really made me mad. It seemed that the men enjoyed the opportunity to indulge sexism at every turn-they were entitled due to historical accuracy (?) I questioned how accurate the roles of women were at that time. Our history is an account written by men.
What annoyed me most was the way Mrs. Cooke pushed the boundaries of her role of a wife and having some say in what goes on at the range (good), while simultaneously holding onto the classism and keeping the cowboys and other workers down (bad). She seemed to demand the voice that she has in our time period, while enjoying the power of the 1800’s.
Was it macho bullshit or was it a self-fulfilling prophecy on her part?
It’s like from the start, she makes an assumption that they are sexist and will resent a woman messing up their sad little child like cowboy fantasy. When perhaps it’s that they resent her for the assumptions and prejudgments for her standoffishness and the fact she self segregated and couldn’t let go of her "maids can be cowboys too" modern feminist statement in a show about the past, were she was givin a specific role. What are feminists calling maids lame? There are also butlers?
Will have to watch the show but it sounds like the problems were not all created by the men.
Great interview, thanks for posting it. One of the interesting/disturbing things about all of these "living in the past" reality shows is the tension of patriarchy--like she says, most participants will not go along with the racism of the time, but do feel obligated to revert to the gender roles of the time. Says a lot about how entrenched those roles still are.
And yes there were LOTS of female ranch owners, cowgirls, and ranch hands in the 19th century. Pioneer women were a tough breed, and men tended to go off to war or die in other ways. Crops and herds still had to be tended, though. What a society SAID women were like and what they actually were like are two different things, no?
They usualy only slaughter young men in war, leaving old men children and women back at the ranch.
The show was great - I loved Maura. That said, I had no love for Mrs. Cooke, for it seemed she was playing her own little power game by creating war on the cowboys rather than trying to befriend them, which would have been much more beneficial for the good of the ranch. In general, harping on the flaws of macho-men won't change their behavior, seducing them to our way of thinking will.
I wish I would have caught this show, but alas, I have no TV. I spent a summer as a 1836 historical reinactor, and I can verify that a lot of what she is saying was true. I mean, we got to go home every day at 5, so its not the same as REALLY living in it, but nice average non-super mysoginist men just turn into these raving sexist assholes in costume sometime. The absolute worst was the actual professional reinactors we had come in and do a WWII fight, both sides treated women like shit... but at least the Americans gave us candy. By day two of that, the women in the french occupied village reinactment decided that if they wouldn't let us join the resistance, that we would form our own. Finally they let us in, and we found that it was SO SO much easier for the women to spy on either side because no one took us seriously at all. It was a really interesting experiance...
What do you mean, what kind of word is 'slutever'? It's, like, one of the greatest words EVER. And don't even talk to me about hating the English language. I'm an effing linguistics major.
Anywhore, I looked up Maura's profile on the PBS website & oh my god, she is SO more than not fat. She's actually mad cute.
slutever
A manner in which to dismiss something totally if one wishes to be more forceful than what is gained by simply stating, "Whatever." Gives it a little kick and ambiguously insults the victim.
"Nah, I don't think I'm gonna come over and watch Say Anything tonight."
"Shiiiiit, slutever."
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=slutever
So it's basically new and hip slutbashing.
Maura was by far my favorite character on the show. All the people but her on the show lost my respect by the end. The cowboys were incredibly sexist. You'd think they'd never heard of Annie Oakley.
It's interesting the hear about the different boot camps and the two groups not meeting until the show started and the effect on the dynamic. I thought things got off to a bad start between the cowboys and the Cookes because they didn't eat together. And it seemed like the Cookes didn't share as much of the vegetables as the cowboys would have liked.
Thanks for the interview!
I am amazed to find on the message boards, as Maura mentioned, how many viewers believe that the cowboys bore no responsibility at all for any of the things that went wrong on Texas Ranch House. Particularly distressing is the notion that the women alone were guilty of practicing sexism; the men were not sexist at all. Hello? Did we all watch the same program? I don't believe it was a woman who said, "She will never be a cowboy. To be a cowboy, you have to have balls." [Robbie] Nor do I believe that the women are referring to themselves as "hoop skirts" either. [Shaun] Take a look at the clips posted on the iFIlm website, where you'll see footage of Shaun blaming the women for all of the conflict. Or are these clips edited to make the men seem sexist?
Wait first she says the cowboys would have never treated a women the way they did(laughing at her taking care of live stock) but then she says no one really knew how things were done back then (letting women be cowhands). Looks like she only wants to follow the rules when it benefits her own wants and needs.
I saw the show , she knew the guys did not want her to be a ranch hand and that Mr (MRS.) Cook forced it on them. If she would have went to the cowboys and tried to get along instead of playing a role when the cameras were one and acting different when they were off I have to think they would have taken her in. But when someone enters your group already accusing you of being something (sexist) it is hard to find the time to show them different when they have already made up their mind.