Horse Girls

by Halimah Marcus

  It wasn’t until decades later that I’d convince my husband to give up a summer weekend to drive the five hours from our home in Cleveland to Lexington, where we found ourselves wandering the BreyerFest grounds as an entire family of five—mother and father included—sashayed past with faux horse tails attached to the backs of their pants.

  Many of the flashiest sights at BreyerFest took place in the covered arena. The arena’s perimeter walls were plastered with BreyerFest ads while a giant banner at the back showed a photo collage of girls hugging both real and model horses. A packed schedule of breed and riding demonstrations filled the arena throughout the weekend.

  The attractions were eclectic, to say the least. Peter and I stepped inside the first time to see a Morgan horse standing on a platform next to a glowing American flag while “I Will Wait” by Mumford & Sons filled the arena. Later, a miniature horse named Hughie donned a silver cape and leapt over fences; Oliver, a mounted police horse, navigated an obstacle course; and trick ponies galloped the length of the arena as their riders performed acrobatics.

  During a Western dressage demonstration, I leaned over to Peter and whispered that riding dressage in Western tack struck me as a bit ridiculous.

  “Maybe that’s snobby of me,” I said, “but I can’t help it.”

  He nodded. “I understand because—and maybe you won’t like to hear this—to me, everything people do with horses seems ridiculous.”

  I laughed, but then I tried to view it all through his eyes. Attaching a cart to a miniature horse so it could pull you around in circles? Ridiculous. Donning shiny black boots and a formal jacket to guide a horse over a series of low jumps while being judged on form? Ridiculous. Dressing your Arabian in filmy scarves and tassels as part of a “Native Costume” competition? Definitely ridiculous, and served with a heaping side of cultural appropriation, too.

  That Saturday, the festivities also included a live performance by Nashville country music artist Templeton Thompson. She strode into the arena in jeans and cowboy boots to serenade Cobra, a dark bay gelding with flowers braided into his mane and gold glitter splashed across his rump. Cobra was famous for his transformation from wild mustang to dressage champion, and BreyerFest 2019 marked his official retirement from competition. As Templeton crooned into the mic, Cobra’s rider guided him through some dressage movements, then cantered straight down the side of the arena to drum up applause from the crowd.

  Later, Cobra was adorned with a wreath of flowers as part of his retirement ceremony while Templeton sang her original song “Girls and Horses,” a tribute to the unbreakable girl/horse bond that was on display throughout BreyerFest. Everywhere I looked, in fact, I saw girls—girls who stood by horses like faithful handmaidens and girls who clutched Breyer models to their chests with the fervor of the religiously possessed.

  I knew exactly how those girls felt and how much horse love brimmed inside them. I’d practically grown up at stables thanks to my mother, who’d loved horses all her life but was an adult before she began riding. Once she started, she allowed that pent-up horse love to consume much of her daily life. She bought Amrieh, a chestnut Arabian mare, when I was four years old. Within a few years she bred Amrieh, named the filly Shilo, and spent the rest of her life doting on both horses with the whole of her heart.

  Together, my mother and I passed many hours driving to and from stables. Together, we walked the length of pastures to track down our mares, we groomed and tacked up in barn aisles, we circled riding rings or headed out on the trail. Gentle, reliable Amrieh became my horse while my mother rode Shilo, making two sets of mothers and daughters between us.

  That my mother and I were able to share so much time together around horses now strikes me as a kind of miracle. I was twenty years old and in the middle of my sophomore year of college when she died, unexpectedly, of cancer. Keeping both our horses at that point was impossible. I gave Shilo to my equestrian cousin, and I paid for Amrieh’s retirement board from my portion when my brothers and I sold our childhood home. Amrieh was in her late twenties by then, and she only lasted about a year before she fell ill and had to be put down. And just like that, I entered adulthood with neither my mother nor my beloved horse, both of whom had taught me what it was to love and be loved unconditionally.

  By 2019, my memories of those carefree days spent in the company of my mother and our horses seemed unreal. But there at BreyerFest, as I watched so many girls wander the park grounds with their own mothers, the distance between my present and my horse girl history seemed to be narrowing. I could sense the ghost of my past self everywhere, from the thunder of hooves in the arena to those model horses forever frozen midstride.

  The BreyerFest arena also contained the marketplace, a congested space full of vendors hawking all manner of models and horse-themed clothing and gifts. I lingered at a stand selling custom models, Breyers that had been hand-painted by the seller. I considered shelling out $45 for a mare painted a lovely shade of purple with a silver mane and tail. It was a color scheme I would have gone wild for as a girl.

  Just before reaching for my wallet, I paused to examine the model more carefully. Up close, the paint job was sloppy, especially around the eyes, where dabs of silver made the mare look like she’d been blinded in some kind of molten metal accident. Perhaps it wasn’t something I’d have noticed as a child, but my adult self was disappointed. With a touch of resignation, I put the mare back on the shelf. Maybe I’d have better luck in the official store—the shop younger festival attendees nicknamed the Ninja Pit of Death, presumably for the fierce competition that arises when thousands of collectors battle it out for limited-edition models.

  Peter, who was exhibiting astonishing patience and good humor as I dragged him around the park grounds, agreed to venture with me into the Ninja Pit of Death. While he was not a horse person himself, he’d always supported my affection for horses, and he indulged me on the rare occasion I accessed the vast stores of horse care and riding information that had taken root in my brain decades ago. That knowledge had little reason to surface in my adult life as a writer and editor, but when it did, it felt like opening up a part of my past to Peter, a way to show him where I’d come from and what had once mattered most to me.

  To gain access to the hallowed Ninja Pit of Death, we stood in a holding pen across from the arena. It felt like waiting in line for a roller coaster at an amusement park: we were corralled in a maze of gates while giant fans blasted overhead to provide some relief from the heat. While we waited, I eyed the middle-aged woman behind me. We’ll call her Barbara. She wore the knowing air of a festival regular as ostentatiously as her outfit, a shirt screen printed with a horse head, and a fanny pack clipped around her waist.

  “This is my first time visiting the official store,” I told Barbara as the line inched forward. “I hear it can get intense.”

  Barbara nodded. “Some of the special-run models are limited to one purchase per person,” she explained. “But if you’re serious, you can buy one, check your purchase, and get back in line to do it all over again.”

  Barbara, I learned, was definitely serious—she’d been attending BreyerFest for years, where she bought models to resell online for a profit. She owned hundreds of Breyers, which made me think with some pity of my neglected collection at home. I hadn’t even stored the models properly; I just tossed them in a box and that was that.

  “Some people leave their bags there before getting in line again,” Barbara continued, nodding to the bag-check booth next to the holding line. “But I don’t trust it. I walk back to my car every time I buy something and leave my models there instead.”

  I estimated the parking lot was nearly a mile away, which meant Barbara was getting her steps in. Clearly, I had found the dedicated BreyerFest expert who could answer my questions.

  I flipped open my official BreyerFest program and pointed to the column labeled “Autographs/Meet & Greet at Stables,” which provided a schedule of the real horses one could me
et to obtain an autograph on the Breyer model that was made in the horse’s likeness.

  “How can a horse autograph a model of itself?” I asked in all seriousness.

  Barbara looked at me as if realizing I was perhaps not very bright. “The horse’s trainer or owner signs it. Not the horse.”

  “Ah,” I said, trying to hide my embarrassment. “That makes sense.”

  I was about to ask if the trainer/owner signed their own name or the name of the horse, but Barbara had already embarked on another story, this time about an owner of a real-life Breyer horse she’d met at the festival some years back. There’d been some mix-up that had delayed the owner from receiving the brand-new Breyer model based on her horse.

  “Can you imagine?” she asked. “To not even have the model of your own horse!” Fortunately, Barbara went on, she had braved the official store earlier that day and bought two of the models in question. She gave one to the owner, who returned the favor by autographing the other model on the sly and outside the official channels, which was apparently pretty scandalous in Breyer world.

  Around this point, I glanced at Peter, who appeared to be staring straight into the sun with a vacant, I-guess-this-is-my-life-now expression. The line wranglers chose that moment to release our group from the pen, finally giving us access to the Ninja Pit of Death.

  “Good luck,” I told Barbara, and then we walked up a ramp behind the arena in an orderly fashion, which seemed anticlimactic. True, we were visiting the store after the initial rush, but where was the desperate running, the shoving, the hair pulling? Instead we were a bunch of overheated white people trying to find a bit of shade before finally making it inside a wonderland that turned out to be . . . another store filled with model horses.

  Peter and I browsed, passing editions marked LIMIT ONE PER PERSON. I bought a few toy ponies as gifts for my nieces, but I didn’t purchase any “real” models, meaning the 1:9 scale horses packaged in yellow boxes with clear plastic fronts—those delicious, full-of-promise boxes that had been the center of my materialistic desires as a child. I was willing to drop the $65 or so on the right model, but none pulled at me strongly enough to make the call. I was no longer a child for whom a plastic toy could come to life, and this made me feel as though a light inside me had been extinguished.

  There was only one way to see if at least a spark of that light remained: head to the stables and check out the real-life Breyer horses.

  The smell of horses, of dust and hay and even manure—it fills me with a melancholic nostalgia each time I encounter it, and BreyerFest was no exception.

  At the stables, the horses who’d inspired models wore special blue-and-yellow halters that read “Breyer.” As I admired King, a palomino pinto and one of the stars of the Trixie Chicks Trick Riders, I had to admit that the halter made him look like he’d stepped to life right out of a Breyer box. It was a glimpse of what it once felt like to gaze at a model horse and believe it had a spirit nestled within its molded plastic shell. In a flash I was a girl again, saving my chore money to head to my town’s eclectic general store to select a new Breyer model. I could still feel the tight twist of plastic ties that secure the model’s legs inside the packaging. I could still recall the sensation of my hands sliding over the smooth body that felt light and alive and ready to play.

  “There is something inexpressibly charming about a plastic horse,” collector Nancy Atkinson Young wrote in the preface for Breyer Molds & Models: Horses, Riders, & Animals, 1950–1997, a guide published in the 1990s. “Indeed the first thing many a Breyer collector does upon acquiring a new model is to plunge her nose into the box and take deep whiffs of that mystical perfume of cellulose acetate.”

  I know that smell as well. It makes me think of tack shops, saddle soap, and the velvety inner knee patch on a pair of breeches. It’s the scent of plastic, but it also conjures the smells of leather, and dirt, and the dust that rises from a horse’s thick winter coat during a good currying. The memories I associate with that smell take me right back to those days spent at the stables with my mother. In the summertime, we coughed through clouds of fly spray. In the cold dark of winter, we made the horses warm bran mash drizzled with molasses as a treat. If one of our mares colicked, we’d stay up until dawn taking turns walking her up and down the aisle until the vet arrived. We also mucked out stalls to reduce the board payments, endured family tensions over money, and switched barns multiple times in search of a more affordable price—but overall we led a charmed, horse-filled existence.

  When I wasn’t at the stable, I had my Breyers, horses that could never colic or buck or bite, not to mention rack up expensive board and vet bills. With a model horse, I could imagine myself as a perfect rider, one who never fell or had bad form or grew frustrated. In my mind, I gave perfect cues, my horse was always balanced and on the bit, and I was never, ever afraid.

  I continued to pursue this unattainable perfection as an adult during the sporadic periods I took riding lessons or half-leased a horse. But no matter how many times I tried to return to riding, I never recaptured the sense of freedom and joy I’d experienced as a child when I rode with my mother. Instead I was often self-conscious, sometimes even fearful, and I struggled to meet the financial and time commitments that horses demand. When I had a job that supported the cost of riding, I didn’t have enough time to spend at the stable; when I had the time, I didn’t have the money.

  The girls all around me at BreyerFest, meanwhile, were still in the full flush of their horse obsession. They were everywhere, wandering the festival while carrying their model horses like talismans. The sight was so ubiquitous that Peter and I returned to the marketplace to buy tiny $2 unicorn models so we, too, had something to hold on to. Laughing, we clutched our unicorns as we walked the park grounds, thus joining the ranks of the Breyer girls and their beloved plastic companions.

  We laughed, but it wasn’t entirely a joke to me. The way these girls held and admired and gazed lovingly at their new models felt familiar. I understood how an injection-molded plastic toy could conjure complex fantasies surrounding horses—to achieve flight on the back of a galloping horse, and to become strong, beautiful, and powerful by extension.

  I understood those girls because I had been the same, and in fact that child from the past was still alive inside of me. She’s the one who prompted me to keep that boxful of Breyers for decades. She’s the one privileged enough to not only have grown up around horses but to have had a mother who shared and facilitated a deep love for them. And she’s the one who decided to journey across state lines on a hot July weekend to enter a world where horses are worshipped like celebrities or gods.

  The day carried on, the sun boiling. While Peter waited in line at a food stand, I wandered over to some shade. Only after plunking down on the ground did I notice Cobra, the famous mustang, waiting nearby with his handlers. I remembered how the announcer had called Cobra “a true American Cinderella story” and said that he’d risen “from rags to riches, from wild to world famous.” Before he became a star, Cobra was a wild mustang held by the Bureau of Land Management, which administers federal adoption programs for wild horses and burros. After being passed over for adoption three times, Cobra was labeled “unadoptable” and left to languish in a government corral—all until the right trainer took a chance on him. Now Cobra was a champion, an event headliner, and had his own Breyer model to boot. And he was right next to me in all his glorious bay flesh, enjoying a quiet moment away from his adoring fans.

  I stayed off to the side to signal that I wasn’t there to harass Cobra for an off-the-books autograph or photo op. I was a woman, sitting alone, reflecting on the day and the past. So much about BreyerFest struck me as absurd, foreign, and far removed from my adult life that centered on bookish pursuits like writing, editing, and teaching. I laughed at the strange sights and told myself I’d outgrown this. I was better than these adult BreyerFest attendees who were so unabashedly horse obsessed, even still, that they dressed in
horse-themed clothing and fought over rare models and spent thousands of dollars every year at a festival devoted to plastic horses. I believed I was different now. But I was not. The smell of the stables, the sight of a familiar blue-and-yellow logo, the model horses capable of coming alive with the merest hint of imagination: this all belonged to me. This was my history. This was who I was.

  So I sat quietly and watched girls walk by holding model horses to their chests. Clinging, clinging with unabashed devotion to all that they loved more than anything else in the world.

  Hungry and Carefree

  Alex Marzano-Lesnevich

  How I hated the jodhpurs. If you’ve worn them, you know why, can probably conjure their feel against your legs: the heavy yet too stretchy material; that color like sand or Play-Doh or a pallid doll’s hard plastic flesh, a color that has never looked good on anyone, only determinedly inoffensive, the most offensive thing about it. And then the horrible cling of those pants, the way there was just your shape in them, the bud bloom of your body right there for you and your mom and the other horse girls to see. Worse yet was that the pants somehow conveyed in their very fabric the suggestion of how they were supposed to look: smooth and elegant, like you were tall and thin and had hair as straight and plain as the pants. Like you were one of the cool blond saplings of a Ralph Lauren ad, part of an idea of America that had taken British tradition and Western adventure and forged a wholesome new myth from it.

  Like, in other words, you had money. Money was what the tall black riding boots cost, as well as the fourteen-karat horseshoes that hung on chains from the horse girls’ necks and dangled from their charm bracelets. Money meant that your hair was honeyed and your clothes cut well and you’d learned to dance at the country club on the hill, where your father played golf, and that the pants and the helmet and the riding crop and even the horse weren’t borrowed, but your very own. The one time I remember going to the tack shop a town over in northern New Jersey—ours striving to be a tony town of cash, always striving, but the other far tonier, my sisters and I raised to be attuned to that difference—I gaped at the perfection of what was on display: tiny plush horses with their tinier, bristly currycombs; the gorgeous gleaming leather of the saddles. Imagine owning your own saddle! Here, thumbing through racks of jodhpurs for ever-smaller sizes, were the girls who never got messy even as they mucked stalls, the girls whose hair stayed neat in their ponytails as they rode the backs of hulking, sweating creatures. Who were long-limbed and loose-limbed and who went to, oh god, summer camp. A tribe of girls, a flock of girls, a stable—the collective noun—of horse girls.