Cycle chic, personal style, and feminism

(Forgive me, folks, I'm a couple of months behind on my blog reading, but I had to share my thoughts on this...)

So. Wanting to wear stylish clothing on my bicycle makes me a tool of the patriarchy?

*Eyeroll*

Heaven knows there are lots of sexualized 'cycle chic' photos that have been circulated that have almost nothing to do with bicycles and everything to do with the male gaze - for amazing commentary on that see Sweet Georgia Brown - and lots of other 'cycle chic' photos that have everything to do with selling us stuff we don't need. The criticism that the cycle chic movement is vulnerable to being co-opted by sexism and consumerism is a valid one. However. That doesn't mean the movement itself is sexist and consumerist.

On a continent where girls stop using their bikes sometime in their teens because they think it makes them look dorky, and where the idea that bicycling is a fringe activity is used to justify rolling back funding of much-needed bike infrastructure, I believe that photos of women and men (of all ages, sizes, and shapes) enjoying bicycle rides to go places and do things help to make cycling more accessible.

As for the perception that cycle chic prescribes a particular, exclusive, commercial version of fashionable: I do not believe that expensive clothes, or expensive bikes, are a prerequisite for cycle chic. That line about your clothes being more valuable than your bike in the Cycle Chic Manifesto? I think its author is talking about using the bike as a tool for living - along the lines of his post about your bike being like a vacuum cleaner. I stand with Velouria on that topic, and think emotional attachment to bikes we've customized to our tastes is part of what makes bicycling appealing - but the point is that perhaps he's using 'value' (not expense) as a stand-in for relative importance. He's saying it's not about the bike, it's about your personal style and your needs, and that your bike should suit you, not the other way around.

I don't believe that youth and a standard definition of beauty are requirements of cycle chic, either.

It doesn't matter if you wear something you've made, something you've thrifted, something you found in a big-box bargain bin or something you had to get on a haute couture wait-list to buy. It doesn't matter if you're twenty or forty or eighty. What matters - with both personal style, and cycle chic - is that you feel great about yourself, and that you're having fun. To me, the most attractive thing about any photo of a bicyclist is the sense that they're having fun on their bike. They look great because they feel great, no matter what they're wearing.

I'm a 40-year-old plus-size mother of two who lives in the suburbs. I ride relatively inexpensive workhorse 3-speeds, for fun and the occasional grocery run, and I stop riding when the snow flies (icy roads plus drivers not expecting to see cyclists in outer-ring subdivisions is a bad combination). I have a closet full of jeans and t-shirts and thrift-shop finds and handmade jewelry. I rarely wear makeup, and I don't do designer labels (Well, I have this one scarf, but it's not an obvious status piece.). I am a chic cyclist, and a feminist, and an advocate for better bicycle infrastructure and more sustainable living.

None of these facts preclude any of the others.

What a shame that some bicycle advocates don't see it that way. I guess they're just not listening.

(PS: Yes, I know there's an issue with the Disqus comments right now - I am waiting on their support people to tell me how to fix it. Apparently they upgraded their back end and broke the CSS somehow. Meanwhile, you can read the white-text-on-white-background if you highlight the comments.)

Margin of Error

What makes good infrastructure? One key feature is that it is forgiving. Infrastructure that requires expert skills and an absolute focus is crappy infrastructure.

Photo courtesy of Michael Snyder via SeattleBikeBlog.

A recent example of this can be found on the Burke-Gilman Trail. This is the grandaddy of multi-user trails in Seattle. It's a major route for bicycle commuters during the week and is thronged with the kids & dogs crowd on the weekend. It's one of my favourite parts of Seattle. However, it does have its flaws, including a spot near NW 41st St. where the trail crosses railway tracks. The trail does try to indicate that cyclists should cross at a 90 degree angle, but the natural path to take is a shallow angle that places cyclists at considerable risk of catching a tire on the track and falling. To try to improve safety, a rubber mat was installed. This does prevent catching a tire, but can become very slippery itself when it's wet or frosty. Not surprisingly, this has been the site of many accidents (well covered by the Seattle Times and SeattleBikeBlog) and I'm happy to hear that SDOT is fixing it.

The response to the story has been fascinating. At some point in the comments, you'll typically see an exchange like this:

• People ride too fast there! I always slow down enough and cross at a 90 degree angle and I've NEVER had a problem
• Well, I'm a VERY experienced cyclist and have crossed that spot thousands of times without a problem before falling and breaking my arm!
• People have to learn how to cross railway track safely. Slow down and cross at a perfect 90 degree angle!

Now, I'm all for safety, and hearing about these accidents certainly reminds me to be careful when crossing the tracks. I also recognize that the city can't find and correct every hazard out there, whether it's gravel, potholes or wet leaves. However, I think people tend to miss the point. When we build and design infrastructure, we can't assume that everyone using it will be highly skilled. We also can't assume that those who are skilled will be paying perfect attention at every moment in time. Our brains do not work this way. We all get distracted by things we see on our way, personal issues, or even thoughts of dinner. If a spot is particularly risky, you can do everything correctly (which we often don't) and still have a significant chance of falling.

If our infrastructure demands perfection, it's only a matter of time before we'll fail. Good infrastructure allows for some margin of error. We demand it in the design of our highways and cars - let's also demand it in our bicycling infrastructure.

Gender Gap?

There's a fascinating discussion going on in bike-blog-land as a result of Elly Blue's Bicycling's Gender Gap post at Grist. She makes an interesting argument that the gender disparity in ridership figures could be a result of economic disparity and additional caregiving and household duties, in addition to the 'fear and fashion' theories - and points out that both cycling infrastructure and appropriate, affordable bikes for carrying kids and cargo are missing in most North American cities. The lively comment section is well worth a read, with additional points about racism, class-ism, street harassment, and public perceptions of cyclists being made. It's also well worth going back and reading the rest of the series of articles, which includes some especially salient points about political pressure to keep the status quo and the actual costs of freeways. The author also followed up on her own blog. Meanwhile the discussion has spun off onto one of our favourite bicycle blogs, Velo Vogue. Go read the links and meet me back here, mmkay?

You've read it now? Good stuff, right? If a bit counter-intuitive based on the explosion in lady-bike availability and number of women writing fantastic bicycle blogs.

So, instead of debating which is the most important, let's say that all those factors are at play in preventing women from riding at the same rate as men do in North America - which they probably are, to some extent. How can we fix that? How do we encourage more ladies to get on their bikes? Can bike blogs like ours, and the social rides and bikey events organized by blogs like ours, actually make a difference?

Angel (my Loop-Frame Love coblogger) and I probably aren't typical cycling activists (if such a person exists). We're moms with 2 young kids each and minivans and small budgets who live in the suburbs - and we'd love for this blog to (eventually) demonstrate that it's possible to live car-light under those circumstances, if not completely car-free - like our blogging heroes at Carfree With Kids, Car Free Days, Chicargobike, full hands, mamafiets, and Totcycle are already doing on their blogs for their circumstances. So let's be honest about the barriers we face to doing that, and how they relate to the factors mentioned above.

(Our coblogger Jen's situation differs from ours in that she's living in a more central neighborhood in a different city, has one child, and is still commuting to full-time work instead of staying home or working part-time... so we hope she'll chime in in the comment section.)

My favourite current setup for easy kid-hauling is the Bobike Junior seat on a Raleigh-built 3-speed (Ms. Trudy Phillips),
but my 8-year-old is a bit too big for the seat and the pretty wicker basket will only hold a small bag of groceries.

We're pretty lucky in a lot of ways. We're middle-class white Canadians, so our experiences are fairly sheltered. Our husbands are not themselves cyclists, but are happy to support our interest in cycling. We're part of a bigger local community of cyclists, advocates, and bike bloggers who are demonstrating through their daily lives and organized rides just how much fun life on two wheels can be. We're social creatures, so it's probably important in helping us stay motivated that we have that support system.

We live in a city with progressive urban planners who are in the process of improving the infrastructure for public transit and active transport, and we live in neighborhoods that have multi-user paths and/or sharrowed bike lanes that we can safely ride to useful destinations. However, we also live in the closest big city to the Oilsands, in a politically conservative part of Canada, in a place where a large proportion of the automotive vehicles using the roads are pick-up trucks and sports utility vehicles. So, when we venture outside the MUPs and sharrows, we don't always encounter drivers who are predisposed to be kind to bicycle users. We have been buzzed and yelled at. We totally understand when our friends who haven't ridden since their teens ask hesitantly about traffic on the route for the next Critical Lass. That said, the infrastructure in our neighborhoods has made that a pretty minor concern for our day-to-day rides.

We're also really lucky to be part of a community with an amazing not-for-profit (EBC) that makes it possible to buy a low-cost vintage bike and turn it into a safe, reliable ride we can wear our regular clothes on; but turning it into a grocery-getter and a good way to get young children from A to B can be a bit of a challenge. We still wish we could get our hands on a longtail or cargo bike without having to blow our budgets. Going car-free so we can increase our bicycle budgets is not in the cards for our families, and we're both still figuring out how we can run bike errands with two kids in tow, since neither of our eldest children are strong solo cyclists yet, despite being too big to be passengers. We'll be actively working on that during the summer holiday from school.

We can testify that how busy our day is and how pressed for time we feel does directly affect how much (or how little) we ride. A quick run to the grocery store without children for a few items is easily managed by bike, but multiple errands with the kids becomes an all-day adventure when you're not properly set up to do it by bike. A longtail or cargo bike would make that much easier, but ferrying the kids to extracurricular activities in other parts of the city immediately after school still would require a car because of the distances involved. If we were commuting for work, public transit would probably be more time-efficient than cycling, because we both live walking distance from major suburban transit hubs (As it happens, my husband has found that taking the LRT downtown is usually quicker than driving, and more pleasant.). So, ability to use our bikes while caring for our children and living our busy lives has been our single biggest barrier to riding more.

Your turn, my friends. What's your single biggest barrier to riding more? Which barriers do you feel apply to your friends (of either gender) who don't use their bikes? How can bike bloggers and cycling advocates help remove those barriers?

Update: I've just been reading Velouria's post on Lovely Bicycle about the different kinds of bicycle commuting, and I wonder how the study that's being discussed accounted for office-job commuters versus freelancers and errand-runners, and how gender might skew which category you fall into?


Update 2: You need to also check out LGRAB's new series of guest posts on commuting by novice cyclists, the first of which was just posted - they'll be talking about their barriers and how they surmounted them, too! I love the ideas from the current post of learning to bike commute in steps, and seeking out social ties to the activity so you have friends and role models. 


3rd July, Update 3: We've been invited to crosspost this piece on the perfectly wonderful blog Lindsay's List, which has necessitated a slight rewrite and the addition of a shout-out to a few of our car-free-and-car-light family blog heroes. I'll also be adding a photo that wasn't originally included, of my current setup, once it's been taken.


10 July, Update 4: http://lindsayslist.org/2011/07/gender-gap/ It's up!