Updated: Girls on bikes, etc.

With all the talk by the more afeminate side of the cycling community, and amid today's Women's Night meeting at the Bike Collective, I thought that this article written by Jessica Gilmore a few months ago would be an appropriate reminder. Enjoy.

                                                                                                                 - Tom Millar

In 6th grade I was playing goalie at recess when I got hit in the face with a soccer ball. You know that feeling, a sharp throb prickling like thousands of needles. The numbing sting made my eyes water and lip quiver. But I didn’t cry. There were boys around, including the one who kicked the ball and I knew I’d get more respect or maybe less crap from the boys if I didn’t cry. [click more for more]

One time in 2nd or 3rd grade I wore a dress for picture day. It was purple and striped. I played on the monkey bars anyways; I wasn’t about to sit around for the whole recess. Hans Locher ran beneath me while I was swinging across the bars and yelled some kind of “I see Jessie’s underpants!!!” thing, which was mostly just annoying but embarrassing enough to keep me from wearing a dress to school for a long time. Not only was it harder to play soccer and play on the playground in a dress, it brought on some kind of debilitating attention from boys and I caught on to that quickly. I wore shorts every day for years.

I thought I only had two options: either I was a tomboy who wore my hair in a ponytail and liked sports more than I liked boys, or I was a girly-girl who hung out with those chicas who painted their nails by the tree stump at recess. So I was a tomboy. For years and years I kind of ignored the feminine aspects of myself. Only recently have I realized how much of a woman I am and how possible it is to balance the sporty feminine side of me with the competitive masculine side.

Women’s bodies are beautiful. Not because they’re sexy, but because they can work and sweat and get strong and fit while being curvy and pretty. I love being a woman. I’ve grown into my own skin a lot in the last couple years. I like having a female figure, a female voice, a female mind. I love my body and wouldn’t trade it for the world. So what’s the problem?

There’s this mountain bike world champion lady named Willow. She’s also a model. 

When I heard her story I thought ‘that’s fine, she’s using her sexuality in ways she wants and she’s earned it because she’s so fast and strong.’ So do I think that a woman has to be fast and strong in order to be sexy and feminine? Does she have to be a crazy intense biker chick to ‘earn’ her sexuality? When I’m riding around on my bike in cute clothes or something more feminine than my usual t-shirt and shorts, I find myself hyper-aware of my speed and strength, as if my thoughts are something like, “you can check me out as a cute girl on a bike if and only if you also recognize that I’m fast and strong at the same time.” Wouldn’t it be more interesting to be a beautiful sexy model who rides around on a bike and is just super comfortable with her sexuality and femininity without feeling like she has to earn it in any way? Without trying to balance or justify her sexuality with some kind of masculine feat of strength? 

Sort of along those lines, a couple weeks ago there was some construction happening just outside my house and every day I’d ride my bike past the same workers. For the first few days this one worker would stop and stare at me as I passed. I felt a little bit objectified by his stare and I let it bother me. Then finally one day I looked at him and said “Hi” as I passed and he smiled, looked at me as a person, and said ‘hi’ back. I had realized that maybe he was objectifying me and just seeing me as a body on a bike, but I didn’t have to perpetuate that in my mind. I could take a more active position and say hello, do something that pulled him out of the silent voyeurism he was hiding behind and make him recognize me as a person. I don’t know if it worked, if he started seeing me as a person with a name and story, but it helped me step out of this place where I was the victim, passively gazed upon, and into a position with slightly more control. 

“Sexuality is the most powerful way in which patriarchal ideology oppresses women’s strength. Sexuality is most ones own for women and yet most taken away in patriarchy. It can be women’s greatest source of strength so if you can suppress that you can keep women from being able to navigate their way to their own strength, that’s how you can keep them subservient.” -Dr. Jennifer Finlayson. 

I feel like most women [and I apologize for using simple genders like ‘men’ and ‘women.’ I know things aren’t nearly this simple] in this society are taught (either through educational moments or through social experiences) the social construct that if I wear short shorts I’m a slut, if I kiss too many boys I’m a slut, if I show any cleavage I’m a slut, if I show too much desire I’m a slut. So naturally I did the opposite, hiding my female form for years, playing hard to get, and ignoring my sexuality because it was ‘bad.’ After 20+ years of that way of thinking about myself and about other women I finally broke through it and now find a huge strength through my body and my power as a woman. I have gained a certain respect for myself as a woman and for women all around me. And it’s not because the women around me are strong or fast or have earned or proven their strength and wisdom and sexuality through some feat of strength or what not. I’m learning to appreciate sexuality as a beautiful, positive empowerment. Check out this project, Thought You Knew, for example.

Alexis is a woman who lives in Chicago and for the last few years has been making pin-up girl calendars of women with their own bikes, dressed up how they want. Above is Kathryn. Check out the website, the project, and tell me what you think.

These are our bodies, this is our sexuality. I’m still not a fan of exploiting women or any of that jazz, but feeling beautiful or sexy or cute, wearing sweat pants and a t-shirt, shaving our legs, not shaving our legs, putting on makeup, doing our hair, wearing a ponytail everyday, being checked out by a cute boy, being checked out by a cute girl, checking ourselves out in the window, being sexy and showing desire or being totally disinterested, all of this is part of a huge spectrum of female sexuality and all of it is okay, all of it is personal. I’ll have no more of the expectations (of any type, really) placed on me by men, by the media, by other women, and especially by myself. I don’t need to be told what kind of a woman to be. I’m figuring out who I am and who I want to be every day and it’s a beautiful process.

Sexuality is a powerful thing, and context matters. How we use our (or others’) sexuality matters. But being sexual is not the problem, it’s how we’re sexual (Dr. Finlayson again).

As I finish typing this up I’m thinking about men and the expectations that surround them. A lot of what I said here is exactly applicable to men with a few words swapped out. But I see things from a female perspective. I’d love to hear responses from both men and women about both women and men. All this gender and sexuality stuff is real and present and important and fun and I want to talk about it.

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