Women

My recent review of the jerseys at Summit Different focussed on the quality and choice, but I did mention the contrast to other websites where the range offered for women is smaller.

It was pointed out to me that women just don’t cycle as much. And yes, market forces dictate that there is little point having a heap of stuff with no-one to buy it. (I’m still simmering about what choice there is being mainly pink, though!).

Women’s professional cycling is overlooked, though it is improving – I can’t say anything better than has already been said on Cycling Weekly. Anyway, just look at other sports. Women’s football, anyone? It only gets slotted into “feature” spots on TV when the programme wants to look a bit more diverse and right-on.

Report after report finds that generally less than 20% of women take the recommended minimum of exercise. Men take more exercise than women, and the proportion of men that never exercise – according to a Scottish report – is 18% compared to 25% of women.

Yeah we’re a nation of sofa-surfing blobs. But of the women who haven’t yet atrophied into burger eating machines, why aren’t more cycling? A random and totally unscientific look at my friends (by which I mean scanning down the Facebook lists) shows me that most of my female friends who exercise, choose running or the gym. There’s one committed cyclist there, and she’s an Ironman triathlete.

Of the others, none of them cycle for fitness and one of them cycles for practical reasons – she lives on a boat, has no car, and needs to get her kid to school. No one cycles for fun, or to commute, or to see friends.

Cycling can make you sweaty. A large proportion of my female friends wear makeup every day. Guys, you may have no idea how vile it is to feel a mask of foundation slide down your skin. Girls, why not cycle to work and put your make up on in the loos! But a lot of people don’t want to do that. They feel awkward walking through the office with a red and shiny face. It’s daft. But just because I don’t give a monkey’s who sees me looking like a tomato, doesn’t mean other women feel the same.

Helmet hair is another one. Again, I lost my battle with sleek, advert-standard hair a long time ago and resigned myself to a lifetime of looking like a bush, so in fact helmet hair is an improvement to my usual style. You’d think, with the amount of products available, a woman who was worried about it could find something that would sort it out when she took her helmet off. It just takes some trial and error.

The clothing is a biggie. When I cycle-commuted as a tutor around Morecambe, it was easy, as it was flat and the distances were less than 5 miles so I could hop on in jeans and arrive ready to teach. But here, there are hills and I’m travelling a lot further. I go in lycra shorts and have a baggy pair of linen pants I pull on before knocking on my pupils’ doors – though I didn’t think ahead last week and was wearing padded shorts, giving my bum a very odd shape under the trousers.

And finally. This is the one no one talks about – periods. Don’t look away. It’s not a female-only discussion, and the fact that everyone gets all antsy about it is part of the issue! There is a myth that women shouldn’t ride a bike when they’re menstruating – a myth not many people believe any more (like you shouldn’t have a bath, or wash your hair, or take any exercise, or whatever!). It’s common for period pains to get better if you take some exercise. But. Whatever sanitary protection a woman uses, her overriding priority is to feel fresh and clean. All the ads telling us about smells and stuff doesn’t help (ladies, a slight scent is normal – a throat-clutching, eye watering stench is not but I would suggest a trip to the doctor would be more useful than a perfumed panty liner). So the idea of sliding into some tight shorts and getting sweaty, for hours, miles from any facilities, just isn’t appealing. And as for the don’t-wear-underwear rule…

A higher profile of professional female cyclists might help, but the biggest push for women’s leisure cycling will be seeing more other, normal, everyday women pootling about on bikes. Showers and changing facilities at work. Safer roads. Off-road cycle paths (rather than cycle lanes, which are just somewhere for the local council to store potholes). Bikes that look cool and are black and silver and sharp rather than floral and curly and cute. We’ve got enough of those, thank you.

Ladies. Stick some wet wipes and a lipstick in your bag, get some fitted Capri pants (it’s true! Lycra is not compulsory!) and beat the rush hour traffic tomorrow. Do you worry about getting muscly thighs? Oh come on. Legs that can twist a man’s head off is a good thing.

picture featured in the Daily Cycle Flickr Group – added by Roermond op de fiets!