For decades, Americans have too often seen cycling as a kind of macho extreme sport, which has actually done a lot to damage the cause of winning acceptance for biking as a legitimate form of transportation. If your association with bikes is guys in spandex narrowly missing you on the weekends or YouTube videos of kids flying over ramps on their clown-size bikes, you’re likely to think that bikes are for only the athletic and the risk-prone.That strikes me as exactly right.
As Mapes points out, when more women begin riding, that will signal a big change in attitude, which will prompt further changes in the direction of safety and elegance. I can ride till my legs are sore and it won’t make riding any cooler, but when attractive women are seen sitting upright going about their city business on bikes day and night, the crowds will surely follow. A recent article in a British newspaper showed the pop singer Duffy on a pink bike. The model Agyness Deyn claims never to be without hers, and Courteney Cox reportedly presented Jennifer Aniston with a Chanel bike last year. Tabloid fodder does not a revolution make, but it’s a start.That strikes me as silly. Generally speaking, I don't think that being associated with women, let alone with models and Hollywood starlets, is the way to mainstream acceptance in America. Or rather, it's the way to a kind of mainstream acceptance, but not the kind that gets you taken into account in urban planning decisions. I think it's great that more women are riding bikes, and it's fine by me if some of them are hotties, but I don't think that's going to be a factor in changing American transportation policy.
When I wore a backpack with my work shoes and purse, I ended up with a huge sweaty patch on my back.That's definitely a problem. The general solution to it is to get a basket or panniers, pannier being a fancy name for a bag that attaches to your bike. You can put your stuff in that rather than a backpack, and you avoid the sweat spot on your back. There are panniers that detach and look like a backpack or briefcase. You can actually get special garment bag panniers, which are supposed to get your suit to work unwrinkled. I don't know if they actually work, though.
“If you want to know if an urban environment supports cycling, you can forget about all the detailed ‘bikeability indexes’—just measure the proportion of cyclists who are female,” says Jan Garrard, a senior lecturer at Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia, and author of several studies on biking and gender differences.posted by Lexica at 9:25 PM on October 3, 2009
Women are considered an “indicator species” for bike-friendly cities for several reasons. First, studies across disciplines as disparate as criminology and child rearing have shown that women are more averse to risk than men. In the cycling arena, that risk aversion translates into increased demand for safe bike infrastructure as a prerequisite for riding. Women also do most of the child care and household shopping, which means these bike routes need to be organized around practical urban destinations to make a difference.
“Despite our hope that gender roles don’t exist, they still do,” says Jennifer Dill, a transportation and planning researcher at Portland State University. Addressing women’s concerns about safety and utility “will go a long way” toward increasing the number of people on two wheels, Dill explains.
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I might like this.
posted by mazola at 10:01 AM on September 27, 2009