Speed for escaping chaperones. Less burdensome clothes for riding. The bicycle's little-known role in equal rights.
As much as we love bike culture
and everything bikes stand for, we may have underestimated the profound
significance of the bicycle as a cultural agent of change. Thanks to a
brilliant new book, we no longer do. National Geographic's Wheels of Change: How Women Rode the Bicycle to Freedom (With a Few Flat Tires Along the Way)
tells the riveting story of how the two-wheel wonder pedaled forward
the emancipation of women in late-19th-century America and
radically redefined the normative conventions of femininity.
"To men, the bicycle in the beginning was merely a new toy, another machine added to the long list of devices they knew in their work and play. To women, it was a steed upon which they rode into a new world." ~ Munsey's Magazine, 1896
A follow-up to Sue Macy's excellent Winning Ways: A Photohistory of American Women in Sports,
published nearly 15 years ago, the book weaves together fascinating
research, rare archival images, and historical quotes that bespeak the
era's near-comic fear of the cycling revolution. ("The bicycle is the
devil's advance agent morally and physically in thousands of
instances.")
From allowing young people to socialize without the
chaperoning of clergymen and other merchants of morality to finally
liberating women from the constraints of corsets and giant skirts (the
"rational dress" pioneered by bike-riding women cut the weight of their
undergarments to a "mere" seven pounds), the velocipede made possible
previously unthinkable actions and interactions that we now for granted
to the point of forgetting the turbulence they once incited.
"Success
in life depends as much upon a vigorous and healthy body as upon a
clear and active mind." ~ Elsa von Blumen, American racer, 1881
"Let me tell you what I think of bicycling. I think it has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world.
I stand and rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a wheel." ~ Susan B. Anthony, 1896
"Many
[female cyclists on cigar box labels] were shown as decidedly
masculine, with hair cut short or pulled back, and smoking cigars, then
an almost exclusively male pursuit. This portrayal reflected the old
fears that women in pants would somehow supplement men as breadwinners
and decision-makers." ~ Sue Macy
Poignant and playful, Wheels of Change explores the early history of women in bicycling with equal parts illuminating insight and freewheeling fun.
This post also appears on Brain Pickings.
Images (top to bottom): Library of Congress,Colorado Historical Society (Cycling West, Vol. 6 April 15, 1897, Scan #30000557); History Colorado (Lillybridge Collection, Scan #20000294); Beth Emery Collection,Hulton Archive/Getty Images; Norman Batho Collection.
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