Long before things like Title IX, the 1972 federal mandate that banned sex discrimination in educational activities, including athletics, there was an invention that was to have a profound and continuing impact on the rise of women from their historical position of servitude to a place of equality with men. That invention was the bicycle.
We can be certain that German Baron Karl Drais von Sauerbroon, who invented the laufmaschine (running machine) in 1818, had no vision of giving women equal rights with men. His interest was simply to make a two-wheeled device upon which you sat and powered by running on the ground, for fun and pleasure.
Nor did Pierre and Ernest Michaux, a French father and son team, think they would help shatter ages-long discrimination against women when, in 1861, they took the baron’s running machine, and added pedals and cranks to create the first real bicycle.
While it was certainly not these inventors’ intent, these developments were to prove so socially significant that they led Susan B. Anthony to praise the role of the bicycle in women’s liberation. And the bicycle may have played a part in motivating American Author William Saroyan to write in 1982 that “the bicycle is the noblest invention of mankind.”
Frances Willard, president of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, wrote a book in 1895 titled How I Learned to Ride the Bicycle. She called her bike “Gladys” – a reference to what she said was its “gladdening effect” on her physical health and political optimism.
By the time Willard wrote her book, many women were riding bicycles, which became known by feminists as “freedom machines.” As bicycling surged in popularity, it affected something else: female attire.
The traditional long dresses worn by women were obviously not well-suited for riding a bicycle. Enter Amelia Jenks Bloomer, who made popular the “bloomer suit” in the 1850s. This consisted of long baggy pants narrowing to a cuff at the ankle. Bloomers were first worn under a skirt, but eventually the skirt was abandoned and the attire became known as rationals, knickerbockers or just knickers.
Evolving cycling fashion was not driven solely by practicality. As women became free of long dresses, corsets and other Victorian-era clothing, there was a public debate on the issue of female dress as well as women’s freedom. Tempers often flared on both sides. Cycling women were frequently referred to as prostitutes and harlots. Male students at Cambridge University protested equal status admission of women in 1897 by hanging a female bicyclist effigy in the town square.
More and more women took to bicycling during the boom years of the late 19th century and later. Bicycles became more available, less expensive and more affordable for everyone. And the freedom they allowed made them attractive.
Recently, the bikes and bloomers debate prompted one enterprising businesswoman to name her bicycle apparel company Harlot Clothing. Jennifer Steketee said in a recent interview in Mountain Bike magazine that she couldn’t find flattering women’s mountain bike clothing, so she started making her own. Her company is at www.harlotwear.com.
The controversy has waned since the early days of the bicycle. Male cyclists still seem to outnumber their female counterparts 2-to-1. But the number of female bicyclists continues to grow – a phenomenon that has its origins in the suffrage movement.
Modern mandates, like Title IX, have helped by requiring equal financial support for women’s sports generally, although women’s sports still lag the men’s at our universities. Someday they will catch up, and all women will look back and in large part thank the invention of the bicycle.
Author James Starrs, writing in Sports & Recreation in 1999, noted that one bard summed up female emancipation this way:
In olden times the woman rode
As fitted one of subject mind:
Her lord and master sat before,
She on a pillion sat behind.
But now upon her flying wheel
She holds her independent way,
And when she rides a race with man,
‘Tis even chance she wins the day.
Bill Hauda is a bicyclist, veteran of some 50 marathons, including 13 in Boston; a former competitive triathlete; founder and first president of the Bicycle Federation of Wisconsin; currently a BFW board member; and former director of Wisconsin’s two major cross-state bicycle tours, GRABAAWR and SAGBRAW.
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