Your Grandmother's Skort

I stopped wearing lycra a couple of years ago.  For years, I wore skintight jerseys and shorts made from that fabric.  So did the guys I rode with.   However, none of us would have worn anything so thin and stretchy if we weren't on our bikes.  


The truth is that I never really liked the way lycra felt on my skin.  Yes, it is light and moves with you.  But it can also feel clammy when you're sweating.  


After getting to a certain age (and gaining weight), I just felt silly wearing it.   It was like hanging a sign on myself that said, "I am an overaged wannabe."  For me, cycling has always been, in some way, an expression of my individuality:  When other people cramped themselves into gas-guzzling smog-belchers, I could stretch my legs and spread my wings.  And I have always wanted to do so with style as well as dignity.


When I started to transition, I also was asserting my femaleness in any way that I could.  Perhaps I engaged in some of that exaggerated femininity of which our detractors accuse us.  But cycling to work in a skirt and heels wasn't just a matter of trying to be, or be perceived as, a girl on a bike:  It was, it turns out, something I needed to do in order to integrate cycling with my new life and my identities as a woman and a cyclist.  


It's certainly easier to ride for more than an hour or so--especially on a diamond frame--in pants, shorts or tights than it is in a skirt.  Still, on a mild day, I enjoy the sensation of the breeze lapping around the hem of my skirt and rippling a strand of my scarf as I pedal.  As I'm weaving through traffic and around potholes, I can still imagine myself pedalling to a marketplace in Provence or Tuscany.


But even the most restrictive clothing I've ever worn isn't as constraining as anything female cyclists were expected to wear a hundred years ago.  It's amazing to think that the garment shown in this illustration was actually an improvement in comfort and freedom of movement over what women had been wearing:

The skirt was divided and each part could be buckled around the ankles.  When the cyclist dismounted, she unbuckled them and was, by the standards of her time, attired like a proper lady.


It is one of those things I'd like to try just once.