The Ride to Freedom
As cyclists and women, a lot of things make us happy while we’re riding our bikes, including that bicycles helped bring about a feminist revolution in the late 19th century! To quote Susann B. Anthony, the bicycle "has done more to emancipate women than any one thing in the world.” The bicycle provided women a means to get around without a carriage and male chaperone. The bicycle also allowed women to leave their long dresses and skirts at home. Although pants were deemed socially unacceptable at the time for women to wear, many women did so anyway in order to more safely ride a bike, and in doing so, normalized the new pants, or bloomers.
Some men had many reasons for not supporting women and their perseverance to ride bicycles, from the unladylike way women would straddle their bicycle, to their wardrobe change, to the fear of them leaving behind their home responsibilities with the new freedom of the bicycle, but my favorite reason was - the “resting bicycle face”. This was the idea that the concentrated face women made while avoiding traffic on a bicycle would ruin their beauty.