How To Ride Like A Lady

Historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich has written, "Well-behaved women seldom make history".

She, of course, is correct.  However, when women are entering previously-unchartered territory, we sometimes have to behave in accordance with accepted gender norms in order to hold onto our places in those worlds.  In other words, we can't be perceived as a threat to men.  On the other hand, we also have to do whatever we're doing in our own way--and, indeed, we often have to figure out what that way is--in order not to be seen as inferior to the men who are doing whatever it is we're doing.

I know from whence I speak: In my transition from living as a man to my life as a woman, I have been criticized for being too much like a man and too much like a woman--sometimes by the very same people.  The same people who told me I was too aggressive on the job told me, in the next breath, that I was too submissive--"like a woman."  It's a bit like telling a woman she throws too hard for a girl but that she "throws like a girl".

I thought about that when I came across this list of "don'ts" for female cyclists that was published in the New York World in 1895:

Don’t be a fright.

Don’t faint on the road.

Don’t wear a man’s cap.

Don’t wear tight garters.

Don’t forget your toolbag

Don’t attempt a “century.”

Don’t coast. It is dangerous.

Don’t boast of your long rides.

Don’t criticize people’s “legs.”

Don’t wear loud hued leggings.

Don’t cultivate a “bicycle face.”

Don’t refuse assistance up a hill.

Don’t wear clothes that don’t fit.

Don’t neglect a “light’s out” cry.

Don’t wear jewelry while on a tour.

Don’t race. Leave that to the scorchers.

Don’t wear laced boots. They are tiresome.

Don’t imagine everybody is looking at you.

Don’t go to church in your bicycle costume.

Don’t wear a garden party hat with bloomers.

Don’t contest the right of way with cable cars.

Don’t chew gum. Exercise your jaws in private.

Don’t wear white kid gloves. Silk is the thing.

Don’t ask, “What do you think of my bloomers?”

Don’t use bicycle slang. Leave that to the boys.

Don’t go out after dark without a male escort.

Don’t go without a needle, thread and thimble.

Don’t try to have every article of your attire “match.”

Don’t let your golden hair be hanging down your back.

Don’t allow dear little Fido to accompany you

Don’t scratch a match on the seat of your bloomers.

Don’t discuss bloomers with every man you know.

Don’t appear in public until you have learned to ride well.

Don’t overdo things. Let cycling be a recreation, not a labor.

Don’t ignore the laws of the road because you are a woman.

Don’t try to ride in your brother’s clothes “to see how it feels.”

Don’t scream if you meet a cow. If she sees you first, she will run.

Don’t cultivate everything that is up to date because yon ride a wheel.

Don’t emulate your brother’s attitude if he rides parallel with the ground.

Don’t undertake a long ride if you are not confident of performing it easily.

Don’t appear to be up on “records” and “record smashing.” That is sporty.

Some of these "don'ts" made me cringe.  But I had to get a laugh out of "Don't try to ride in your brother's clothes 'to see how it feels'!"

Kurt Mc Robert's New York Cyclists

Sometimes it seems that--here in NYC, anyway--there are two kinds of cyclists:  the ones everyone hates and the ones other cyclists hate.

In the first category are, of course, hipsters with fixies and delivery cyclists riding against the traffic on city streets--and, worse, in bike lanes.  The second group consists of tourists on rented bikes and hedge-fund managers on bikes that cost more than their secretaries make in a year, with lycra outfits to match.

Back in the '80's, the cyclists everybody loved to hate were the messengers.  (I know: I was one.) And the ones who ticked off other cyclists were the Chinese (and, later, Mexican) delivery guys, who invariably were riding the wrong way just when you were flying down the street and couldn't steer out of their path. 

And there was another category, of which I was a part:  The ones fishermen hated.  Now you might be wondering why a fisherman would hate a cyclist.  Well, it has nothing to do with, "A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle."  Instead, it had to do with the fact that very often, as we rode across the narrow pedestrian lanes like the ones on the Marine Park-Gil Hodges Memorial Bridge, men (almost always men) were casting their lines off, or had propped their fishing rods on, it. Sometimes they came close to snagging us, or we got a little too close to them (as if there were any choice!) and they claimed we were scaring fish away. 

Perhaps the hate stemmed from resentment:  Most of the anglers were poor or working-class, many of whom were immigrants.  They saw us, on our expensive bikes, much as those who participated in Occupy Wall Street see bankers and the like.

Anyway, there are categories of cyclist--and haters--that didn't exist back then.  Illustrator Kurt McRobert has catalogued them on his site.


(All images are from Kurt McRobert's site.)

The BMX Ballerina

One of the few genres of cycling I have never tried is BMX.  Part of the reason for that, I think, is that when it was first becoming popular--in the late 1970's-- I was a bit older than most of its participants, who were in their mid-teens.  Also, by that time  I had become so accustomed to riding 27 inch--and, a little later, 700C--wheels that I simply couldn't see how I could ride the smaller-wheeled BMX bike.  Moreover, I became more interested in speed and distance--and, later, longevity--than in fancy maneuvers.  (That's one of the reasons I was a mountain biker for only a few years.)  Finally, I'll admit that by that time I was on the cusp of early adulthood and thought of anything with small wheels as a kid's bike.

I probably won't ever be a BMXer because, at my age, I don't think I any longer have the reflexes or flexibility for the kinds of maneuvers BMX riders routinely do.  But that doesn't mean I don't admire the really skilled riders:  In fact, their feats are among the few things I watch on TV or video anymore.  Even the less-skilled riders interest me in much the same way skaters and dancers do:  As something of a performer, athlete and artist myself, I can appreciate their intricate moves--and, most important, the talents those riders possess, and the drive and discipline it takes for them to turn their visions of themselves into reality.

Funny that I should mention skaters and dancers: Some of the earliest--and, even today, best--BMX moves were done by someone who never claimed to be a BMX rider.  In fact, this person was, by training and profession, a ballerina.  And she didn't cut her teeth (or gears) in the sandlots of Southern California.  Rather, she got her training on the other side of the United States--in New York, where she was born to parents who came from Japan, on the other side of the Pacific from California.

And, because there wasn't a BMX circuit in her time, she performed most of her acrobatics in circuses or on other stages of one kind or another.  She once even performed on The Ed Sullivan Show.

Who is this amazing performer to whom I am referring?  She is none other than Lilly Yokoi, who was dubbed "the world's greatest bicycle acrobat" during the 1960's and '70's.

Look at some of the moves she was doing years before Dave Mirra and Ryan Nyquist were even born:




The show was The Hollywood Palace.  That particular episode aired on 9 October 1965.  And, yes, that was Joan Crawford hosting.

I can't find any current information about Ms. Yokoi.  In 2009, her daughter let it be known that Lilly, then in her eighties, was retired and living in Japan.