Just a hundred years ago, the 1890s bicycle craze hit its peak, with women's enthusiasm for cycling a target of comment and often criticism. Bicycles allowed women unprecedented freedom of movement - no longer hampered by heavy clothing and a chaperone, middle class young women could ride off on their own, see new sights, have new adventures away from their families. Feminists were thrilled, and raved about the exciting new freedoms. Bicycling "has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world," wrote suffragist and women's rights leader Susan B. Anthony. "I stand and rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a wheel." Another suffragist, Frances Willard, took up bicycling at 53 so her example would "help women to a larger world."
But conservatives - mainly men - objected. Bicycling turned women not only loose but fast. It would make women mannish (women bicyclists were caricatured smoking cigars), and bicycle seats would threaten their sexual purity. No, not for the reason you're thinking. Anti-bicycling doctors said it would be sexually stimulating - and that was dangerous to good Victorian women and to their marriage prospects. One doctor warned that the saddle could "form a deep hammock-like concavity which would fit itself over the entire vulva and reach up in front, bring[ing] about constant friction over the clitoris and labia. The pressure would be much increased by stooping forward, and the warmth generated by vigorous exercise might further increase the feeling." He reported the case of an "overwrought, emaciated girl of 15 who stooped forward noticeably in riding, and whose actions strongly suggested the indulgence of masturbation."
Well, the bicycle saddle may not have made a hit as a sex toy, but manufacturers worried that the controversy over women riding would cut into sales, so they rushed to solve the problem. They came up with crotchless designs that kept the genitals from pressing against the saddle. Manuals and catalogs instructed women to ride decorously: sitting upright (none of that pressing forward on the saddle), and not too fast.
But women broke the rules: they put on trousers, rode
centuries, rode bent over in scorching position, and celebrated the escape and independence bicycling allowed them. A new book, Ellen Garvey's THE ADMAN IN THE PARLOR: MAGAZINES AND THE GENDERING OF CONSUMER CULTURE, 1880s to 1910s (Oxford University Press, $17.95 paper), tells more about this controversy, saddles, and 1890s stories about women's cycling.
Ellen Garvey
202 St. Marks Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11238
phone: 718-857-4653
fax: 718-857-7358
e-mail: garvey@panix.com