[image via Mattijn]Today is the 100th anniversary of International Women's Day - what began as a European political movement in 1911, but evolved into what is now more like a "women's appreciation day," or, in the former socialist countries, a sort of Mother's Day and Valentine's day rolled into one. As ironic gestures, friends have sent me cards with messages such as "Woman, With Your Daily Acts of Goodness You Inspire Us!" showing a Polyanna-esque maiden feeding forest animals amidst flower blossoms.
[image via I am Cheapskate]ThoughI am fairly well versed on genderin the academic sense, I did not personally care much about gender "issues" until I became interested in bicycles and cycling. Something about the latter turned the former into a more poignant topic, and I find myself writing about gender-oriented themes here that would not have been on my mind a few years ago. I feel vaguely unsettled about the way female cyclists are perceived and depicted by the very cycling community they belong to. I get the same feeling of unease from the pictures on Copenhagen Cycle Chic as I do from that Woman's Day card showing the angelic girl feeding forest animals.
[image via Julie Tjorneland]Equally distasteful to me is the school of thought that women cyclists "bring it upon themselves" by being all sexy and frivolous on their bikes wearing skirts and high heels. If they want to be taken seriously as cyclists, they must don practical shoes and high-vis wear. It's been decades since similar rhetoricabout womenhas been acceptable in Western society. But apparently the cycling community is an exception.
[image via R A C]Besides, don't roadies and tri-athletes wear far more revealing clothing than women going grocery shopping in a dress and heels? At the heart of it, it's really all about how one chooses to twist it politically, which in turn is based on personal preferences and prejudices.
[image via macfred64]And what is the difference between politics and personal philosophies? Let's Go Ride a Bike has a post today where they ask "Is bicycling political?" - which I think is more or less a trick question: a contemporary truism, whereby any "no" answer will inevitably be demonstrated to be just as political as a "yes" answer. It reminds me of the arguments I had in college with people who would tell me that being a woman is political, whether I wanted it to be or not. According to those arguments, everything I do is inherently politicalbecauseI am a woman, and I have no way of escaping that. But don't I?
I think that in order for the political question to be addressed meaningfully, we have to distinguish the way others perceive us from our inner world - and while the two are connected, they are not one and the same. Any action on our part, as well as our very existence, can be perceived as political by others. But if we don't experience it politically, then it is a basic human right for our inner experience to be recognised as valid. A woman's cycling and her gender may be politically perceived by others, but they may not be politically experienced by her - with both points of view having equal merit.
Don't know whether others have seen the classic film, 
Miss Brodie mounts her bicycle with ease using the proper Sheldon Brown method. Her long, narrow skirt does not seem to impede the mounting maneuver one bit.
Notice how straight her leg is on the pedal as she cycles: completely extended. She would definitely not be able to reach the ground with her toe in traffic.
Ah, here she indicates that she is about to stop. Look at all that stuff on her bike! Rolls of paper in the basket, and what looks like a wooden trunk strapped to the rear rack. You can hardly tell due to the bad quality of these images, but it looks like her bicycle has all blackout parts on it. Does anybody know what year they began doing that?
To get off the bicycle, she takes her right foot off the pedal and swings the leg over the frame while the bicycle is still in motion.
Then she coasts for a bit in this standing position - with the left foot on the left pedal and the right foot supposedly in the air next to it? - until she hops off and the bicycle comes to a stop. Impressive! - and no way can I pull that off.
DPS founder, Stephan Drake, is spending his second season in Las Leñas, Argentina. He is on Rossignol Viper skis, 60-something mm underfoot. After a 1-meter storm, he makes his 100th over-the-head face shot turn down Eduardos. He collapses in a pile of exhausted sweat at the bottom. His pro snowboarder roommate ollies over him at 50 mph and slashes a huge wave feature at the bottom couloir exit. Stephan (and Dane) wants freedom from the fall line, and ponders quitting skiing and taking up snowboarding.
