Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
Speaker 1: the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so
Speaker 1: much for tuning in. Let's hear it for the Man,
Speaker 1: the Myth, the Legend, our own Penny Farthing super producer,
Speaker 1: mister Max Williams.
Speaker 2: Max Penniworth Farthington Williams, Third Esquire.
Speaker 3: That actually isn't too far off from my actual name.
Speaker 4: Huh, it's a joke. Hey, stop watches right? How many
Speaker 4: times a day? Once? I guess yes.
Speaker 1: Twice, technically twice. I am Ben Bullet. You are, mister
Speaker 1: Noel Brown.
Speaker 4: I'm only just now learning how its out time.
Speaker 2: I recently got my first analog watch, and I'm still
Speaker 2: struggling with it a little bit.
Speaker 1: But it's a lot of fun, and we are going
Speaker 1: to have a lot of fun with you today, hopefully,
Speaker 1: Fellow Ridiculous Historians, we are looking at one of our
Speaker 1: favorite contraptions ever, the bicycle, and the role it played
Speaker 1: in women's rights.
Speaker 4: I like to ride my bikes here. I like to
Speaker 4: ride it where I like.
Speaker 2: I just got back from a bike ride.
Speaker 4: It was nice. I love a bike. I love a bicycle.
Speaker 4: I also love women's rights.
Speaker 1: And you were definitely not on a penny farthing. You
Speaker 1: are on something descended from what we call the safety
Speaker 1: bicycle or the safeties from L eighteen hundreds.
Speaker 2: It sounds nerdy when you say like that, but I
Speaker 2: was wearing a helmet, I di am a safe by cyclist,
Speaker 2: and I was riding on a little thing we here
Speaker 2: in Atlanta area called the belt line, and I made
Speaker 2: a trader Joe's run, got some snacks, and rode on back.
Speaker 4: It was a good time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And the safety bicycle is part of the reason
Speaker 1: this is a good time because it did replace the
Speaker 1: penny farthing, which, in addition to looking absolutely ridiculous, is
Speaker 1: also pretty pretty dangerous.
Speaker 4: So the pity.
Speaker 1: Farthing was like an early adopter thing. We'll get to it.
Speaker 1: But what you need to know at the offset here, folks,
Speaker 1: is that there was a sea change in cycling and
Speaker 1: society with the emergence of that safety bicycle. It sparked
Speaker 1: what our research associate Maria calls a cycling craze in
Speaker 1: the United States and abroad.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, anyone who's seen someone ride a penny farthing,
Speaker 2: also known as the bone a bone shaker if deadwood
Speaker 2: is to be believed. It was actually a plot point
Speaker 2: in that show, not necessarily because of its danger as
Speaker 2: a vehicle, but it caught a chain of events that
Speaker 2: led to some tragic plot moving occurrences in the show.
Speaker 4: But if anyone's ever seen.
Speaker 2: Someone riding one of those, like one of those muscleman
Speaker 2: with the handlebar mustaches, you know, it's kind of more
Speaker 2: like a feat like a trick, like riding a unicycle
Speaker 2: or using stilts or I'm sure you know there's big
Speaker 2: wheel on the front, a little wheel on the back.
Speaker 2: There's a reason people don't go to the grocery store
Speaker 2: on pogo sticks. It's more of flex of activity. I've actually,
Speaker 2: I've had the dubious pleasure of riding Penny Farthing bikes
Speaker 2: several times.
Speaker 1: They are difficult, they are not forgiving. But we do
Speaker 1: owe a lot of modern society's rights to the advent
Speaker 1: of the safety bicycle. As Maria tells us, there were
Speaker 1: basically three groups of women in the eighteen nineties who
Speaker 1: were who are part of our story here. One, there
Speaker 1: are people who happen to be women who just want
Speaker 1: to ride bikes because bikes are cool.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they want to ride them where they like, it's
Speaker 4: very freeing.
Speaker 2: It's honestly the invention of the original, the penny farthing.
Speaker 2: I mean, that was in and of itself a very
Speaker 2: freeing innovation. You know, it allowed people to ambulate without
Speaker 2: the use of their legs.
Speaker 1: And this, I like the point about freedom there, noel,
Speaker 1: because our second group will be actual activists, women's rights
Speaker 1: activist who said, hey, this bicycle is a palpable tool
Speaker 1: of independence. This gives us freedom, this gives us agency.
Speaker 1: And then the third group, the bad guys of the story,
Speaker 1: the baddies, the people who said women on bikes, that's
Speaker 1: an abomination. Next thing you know, they'll be wearing.
Speaker 4: Pantaloons wanting to vote right God forbid.
Speaker 1: So this this is our story for today, folks. The
Speaker 1: safety bike did play a huge role in the women's
Speaker 1: rights movement, and it's one that a lot of people
Speaker 1: didn't see coming. Kind of like how hat pins became
Speaker 1: a tool against assault of mashers.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just so all those wolf whistling, mashing men out
Speaker 2: there on those streets, the ladies wouldn't put up with it.
Speaker 4: They'd give them a jab with their hat pins.
Speaker 1: And now we're entering onto the stage. A group of
Speaker 1: people who are very harm for Rump, for Rump, something
Speaker 1: must be done. When faced with a female population that
Speaker 1: had independent transportation and was wearing pants, they were trying
Speaker 1: to react in an ad hominem kind of way. It
Speaker 1: reminds me a lot, you guys, of that strange propaganda
Speaker 1: we saw during COVID vaccination or wearing masks, where people
Speaker 1: would say, oh, if people are wearing masks, you don't
Speaker 1: know if their children being trafficked. This is so ridiculous.
Speaker 1: The opposition said the reason women shouldn't ride bicycles was
Speaker 1: due to something that they called bicycle face.
Speaker 2: Is this related to like, why don't you smile more
Speaker 2: kind of mentality?
Speaker 4: Okay? Cool? Or RB clocking yeah, RBF.
Speaker 2: The safety bicycle, as you said, men, I, was at
Speaker 2: the heart of this epidemic that people were referring to
Speaker 2: as bicycle face, and of course replaced the penny farthing,
Speaker 2: which had been super popular in the eighteen seventies and
Speaker 2: eighteen eighties. Some models included the Aerial in eighteen seventy
Speaker 2: one and the very creatively and banally named the Ordinary
Speaker 2: in eighteen seventy eight. These types of bikes were typically
Speaker 2: associated with young, rich, white dudes, but men of all
Speaker 2: kinds were participating in this sort of like I said,
Speaker 2: feet of strength. These bikes could go up to a
Speaker 2: whopping thirty miles an hour, some say more, and the
Speaker 2: design was favored for this ability to pick up speed.
Speaker 2: But that's really where it ends. As we talked about,
Speaker 2: this is some really odd ball, awkward, unwieldy elements to
Speaker 2: the design of this thing, including the fact that the
Speaker 2: rider's seat, which you well know, Ben, was nearly five
Speaker 2: feet off of the ground.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, it's one of those things where you've got
Speaker 1: to get a running start. I've been teaching my girlfriend's
Speaker 1: niece how to ride bikes, and I'm just so happy
Speaker 1: that the kid is not on a penny farthing. Side
Speaker 1: note for our fellow etymology nerds, it's got a weird name,
Speaker 1: the penny farthing. It's also been called the high wheel,
Speaker 1: but the name comes because of the size difference between
Speaker 1: the British penny and the farthing.
Speaker 4: Coins.
Speaker 1: Wow, penny is way bigger. That's the front wheel, and
Speaker 1: the farthing is a lot smaller. That's the rear wheel.
Speaker 4: I think we all learned something new today, Ben. I
Speaker 4: did not know that.
Speaker 2: Prior to reading Maria's excellent research brief. So as you
Speaker 2: can imagine, and as we've already hinted at, it was
Speaker 2: super dangerous and considered much more of a thrill seeking
Speaker 2: kind of activity, not necessarily known for its practicality. And
Speaker 2: many folks, if we're talking about some more etymology, would
Speaker 2: take a fall or a header as it was known
Speaker 2: and coined from this problem, literally diving headfirst over what
Speaker 2: are referred to as mustache handlebars. I guess people were
Speaker 2: making their mustaches match the handlebars.
Speaker 1: And also, if you please, if you get a chance,
Speaker 1: pull up a picture of a penny farthing. We can't
Speaker 1: tell you to try it at home because they are dangerous.
Speaker 1: And I took a few headers myself. You're going to
Speaker 1: see that.
Speaker 4: It's such a weird contraption. Because the.
Speaker 1: Seat of this vehicle is pretty much parallel to the handlebars,
Speaker 1: it is very easy to go too fast or to
Speaker 1: lose your balance and have a decent wampwamp. This really
Speaker 1: inspired or irritated a guy named John Kemp Starly. We
Speaker 1: don't know how many headers Starly took, but our buddy
Speaker 1: Johnny around eighteen eighty five said, this is malarkey. I'm
Speaker 1: going to invent a new bicycle. It's going to be
Speaker 1: straight seahorse teeth, and I'm going to emphasize how safe
Speaker 1: it is.
Speaker 4: What if we had two wheels that were the same size.
Speaker 1: What if we had gears, Oh my gosh, what if
Speaker 1: we finally tried to fix the brakes?
Speaker 2: For sure, big improvements in all those respects, the brakes
Speaker 2: and the pretty farthing.
Speaker 4: I think we're very, very rudimentary.
Speaker 2: In eighteen ninety, what was deemed, you know, in the
Speaker 2: zeitgeist as safeties were upgraded with pneumatic tires, which are
Speaker 2: very similar to the ones we know today, tires made
Speaker 2: of rubber that are filled with air.
Speaker 4: Lesson not very less.
Speaker 2: Boneek has another reason that that was called that for
Speaker 2: sure a new invention that made for a much more
Speaker 2: comfortable ride just in terms of traversing various types of terrain.
Speaker 2: It soaked up a lot of the impact, Like you're saying,
Speaker 2: ben So by the mid decade, bikes dropped in weight too.
Speaker 4: You know, you don't want to clunky bike.
Speaker 2: Anyone who's ridden one of those new New York City
Speaker 2: city bikes knows that that can be a real scary
Speaker 2: proposition and definitely makes it a lot less fun and zippy.
Speaker 2: So they dropped from about fifty pounds to twenty three,
Speaker 2: which was a serious glow up considering the previous bikes
Speaker 2: and bike like vehicles, which I honestly, I mean they
Speaker 2: call it the penny farthing and not the bicycle because
Speaker 2: it really is more of a bike like vehicle. We would, really,
Speaker 2: I I would argue that it is not particularly a bicycle.
Speaker 2: It's not till we see the safeties that we really
Speaker 2: start seeing what became the bicycle. Didn't Some penny farthings
Speaker 2: also have like two wheels in the back, I want
Speaker 2: to say, they were.
Speaker 1: Like, Yeah, there were also tripod designs, so you'd have
Speaker 1: two big wheels on either side of the seat and
Speaker 1: then you have a little wheel in the back. And
Speaker 1: there was there was so much research going into this
Speaker 1: idea of the you know, from between eighteen ninety two
Speaker 1: to eighteen ninety six, the industry was kind of acting
Speaker 1: like your favorite corporations act about AI today. There were
Speaker 1: so many patents going out for these bicycles. Yeah, feeding
Speaker 1: frenzy is not a bad way to put it. The
Speaker 1: two designs of what we call the safety bicycle were
Speaker 1: the following the original had a crossbar. In eighteen eighty eight,
Speaker 1: they marketed a what they called a quote unquote women's version,
Speaker 1: and the one for women offered a drop frame to
Speaker 1: accommodate skirts, because we can't have people wearing pants, right.
Speaker 1: And you can still see this today in very popular
Speaker 1: bike designs from very popular companies like Shwin.
Speaker 2: And it should be noted too that even today, I mean,
Speaker 2: there are differentiations between what would be considered a women's
Speaker 2: bike and a men's bike. Sometimes it has to do
Speaker 2: with size, but sometimes it does have to do with
Speaker 2: certain features like the frame design and stuff like that.
Speaker 4: That drop r.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and when the first Safeties came out, similar to
Speaker 1: the Penny Farthing, they were pretty expensive. They cost an
Speaker 1: average of one hundred and fifty US bucks per product.
Speaker 1: And this is a time, Maria points out, when the
Speaker 1: average US worker was earning maybe twelve dollars a week.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a pretty serious investment for what at the
Speaker 2: time was probably still is kind of considered a curiosity.
Speaker 4: It hadn't fully taken off yet.
Speaker 1: Yeahs a novelty, right, and it's still the idea of
Speaker 1: the bicycle still sort of has its training wheels.
Speaker 2: Hey, So as we mentioned that the main customer at
Speaker 2: this point.
Speaker 4: Was rich white dudes.
Speaker 2: But there were also, of course counterparts to these rich
Speaker 2: and white dudes who were rich white women and they
Speaker 2: wanted to get on the fun too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and because there was higher demand, the economy of
Speaker 1: gale kicks in and all these manufacturers who have their
Speaker 1: proliferation of patents and their own special spin on the
Speaker 1: velociped they.
Speaker 4: What they call it in Deadwood as well.
Speaker 1: They say, look, we're going to compete with each other,
Speaker 1: so they start reducing their prices. That's a very strange
Speaker 1: thing to a lot of us in the United States today,
Speaker 1: but companies did used to do that. They made bikes
Speaker 1: more affordable for what they called all the riders, which
Speaker 1: was again, as you pointed out, bro, it's a very
Speaker 1: small percentage of the overall population.
Speaker 2: It is a good little view into just a basic
Speaker 2: economic microcosm of like supply and demand and how it's
Speaker 2: supposed to work. They're supposed to be competition in these
Speaker 2: types of spaces rather than you know, monopolies, which can
Speaker 2: lead to prices lowering and or quality raising in order
Speaker 2: for the different manufacturers to differentiate themselves, like in the
Speaker 2: watch game. For example, you've got these really unattainably high
Speaker 2: priced watch protects FP grange, what is it, Automorpga those
Speaker 2: ones that are like you know, the price of a
Speaker 2: car or more. But they're also like decades and decades
Speaker 2: of development and you know, super super super refined processes
Speaker 2: and features, et cetera. And the more mid tier ones,
Speaker 2: you've got them a ton of competition because they really
Speaker 2: have to differentiate themselves from each other.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So first off, yet to think about the complications, folks,
Speaker 1: which is the word for the mechanisms, which is.
Speaker 4: Becomes true with bikes too.
Speaker 2: I mean, we're talking about like it is a relatively
Speaker 2: clockwork esque system when we're talking about gear shifts and
Speaker 2: how many speeds does it have? And you know, what
Speaker 2: are the components, Like how well manufactured and machined and
Speaker 2: engineered they are.
Speaker 4: We're going to start seeing more of that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And so we're still in the late eighteen eighties,
Speaker 1: so it's let's say it's eighteen eighty nine to eighteen
Speaker 1: ninety nine. So in that decade, the number of bicycles
Speaker 1: that are being purchased and used has shot up from
Speaker 1: something like two hundred thousand to one million in the
Speaker 1: US alone. By eighteen ninety five, the United States has
Speaker 1: no less than three hundred separate bicycle companies, and if
Speaker 1: you average out what they were doing right during this decade,
Speaker 1: their safety bikes or safeties probably cost about seventy five
Speaker 1: dollars instead of one hundred and fifty. So the market
Speaker 1: was working at that time in yeah some way.
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2: And as we mentioned earlier, you know women who likely
Speaker 2: had a bit more free time on their hands, at
Speaker 2: least to the wealthy you know, spouses of wealthy businessmen
Speaker 2: and you know people that were working ninety fives in
Speaker 2: the offices or whatever the hell they were doing in
Speaker 2: those days. They often the women would not work, and
Speaker 2: so they had a lot more free time, and so
Speaker 2: of course it made sense that they would want some
Speaker 2: options of how to fill that free time, and biking
Speaker 2: offered a pretty great and active you know answer to that.
Speaker 1: One hundred percent. Yeah, And this is mobility, right, this
Speaker 1: is freedom. This doesn't mean you have to keep a
Speaker 1: horse all the time.
Speaker 2: And to this day, I think people really love biking
Speaker 2: because of some of those very same things. It's functional,
Speaker 2: it's functional exercise that gives you a sense of freedom
Speaker 2: and a lot of reasons. It turns out that motorists
Speaker 2: are kind of pills to bicyclists, is because they're sort
Speaker 2: of like, man, who does that person think he is
Speaker 2: being all free out there not stuck in traffic.
Speaker 4: I'm gonna I'm gonna be a jerk.
Speaker 1: I'm very pro bike and I have serious problems with
Speaker 1: our fair metropolis of Atlanta. You know what I'm talking about, Yeah,
Speaker 1: is approaching bicycles.
Speaker 4: So we have we know.
Speaker 1: That there are still improvements to be made, but we
Speaker 1: also know that there was a culture war about bicycles
Speaker 1: and women riding them, especially this period of history in
Speaker 1: the eighteen hundreds. You would see names in the press
Speaker 1: in real muck raking journalism or real tabloid style breathless headlines,
Speaker 1: stuff like weeld woman, lady Cyclist, or our favorite bloomert Right,
Speaker 1: because if you're picturing illustrations from the news rags of
Speaker 1: the day, you're probably picturing ladies on bicycles wearing these.
Speaker 2: Big, old, fluffy pantaloon esque things that weren't quite pants,
Speaker 2: weren't quite dresses.
Speaker 4: They were bloomers.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that reminds me of this is like our cravat
Speaker 1: conversation we've been having. It reminds me of the phrase
Speaker 1: harem pants. Things that look like a skirt while you're standing,
Speaker 1: but they move like pants because they have that division.
Speaker 1: We know that this is occurring in a greater context,
Speaker 1: a greater milieu. In eighteen seventy eight, there was a
Speaker 1: woman suffrage amendment proposed in US Congress. It's just what
Speaker 1: it sounds like. It said, Hey, should this other fifty
Speaker 1: percent of the population be allowed to vote? It failed,
Speaker 1: It did not pass until nineteen twenty. It is the
Speaker 1: nineteenth Amendment. And didn't think we would say this in
Speaker 1: this episode, but guys, shout out to Wyoming. Wyoming in
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty nine is the first state that allows women
Speaker 1: the right to vote. And you know here in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty six, Wyoming has a relatively conservative reputation, you know.
Speaker 4: Real quick.
Speaker 2: Shout out to the inventor of the Bloomers, by the way,
Speaker 2: which I think is an interesting tie in here. A
Speaker 2: woman named Amelia Bloomer, who was a women's rights advocate
Speaker 2: in the mid nineteenth century. He actually promoted the Bloomers
Speaker 2: as a practical alternative to the restrictive corsets and skirts
Speaker 2: that women were more or less required to wear, and
Speaker 2: it became a symbol of early reform for women's dress
Speaker 2: and kind of dovetailed with the women's suffrage and rights movements.
Speaker 2: They were used often by activists for there again for comfort,
Speaker 2: but also they had a symbolic aspect to them, and
Speaker 2: of course cyclists as well as some early nineteenth and
Speaker 2: twentieth century athletes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so we're seeing freedom of movement on multiple levels,
Speaker 1: exactly on the are the literal level and on the
Speaker 1: figurative larger level. In eighteen seventy five, Scotis again fumbles
Speaker 1: the bag. This will be very familiar to a lot
Speaker 1: of our listeners in the US right now. The Supreme
Speaker 1: Court of the United States said, Look, the matter of
Speaker 1: women voting, that's really a matter for the states. If
Speaker 1: the if a given state wants to say women can't vote,
Speaker 1: then that's fine. Because women are people. We'll give you
Speaker 1: that as they are citizens. But they are there is
Speaker 1: a quote a special category of non voting.
Speaker 4: Aka sub human right some degree, he's animal farm.
Speaker 1: Everybody's equal, but some are more equal than others.
Speaker 4: Speaking of which, bend, are you aware of this?
Speaker 2: Apparently quite awful animated Animal Farm that has just been
Speaker 2: getting shredded. It's like a CGI animated version of Animal Farm,
Speaker 2: weirdly helmed by Andy Serkis, who I think we're all
Speaker 2: fans of, but apparently it is just absolutely misses the
Speaker 2: mark on every aspect of what Animal Farm is about
Speaker 2: and is just like gross out humor and completely a travist.
Speaker 1: Just antithetical. Or Well, just read the book, folks, take
Speaker 1: a you know it's it's such a short read because
Speaker 1: especially because Orwell comes from a journalism background, so he
Speaker 1: writes with density and a clarity.
Speaker 2: And truer now than ever, more valid and interesting. Now,
Speaker 2: you know, Parrot with nineteen eighty four if you really
Speaker 2: want to.
Speaker 1: Get on that. I don't want to hang out with George.
Speaker 1: I love him as a writer, uh and I never
Speaker 1: really spent a lot of time with him, but man,
Speaker 1: he's going to be too smug. If he came back
Speaker 1: to life here, he would be insufferable. He'd be Kanye
Speaker 1: West level smug and Max, we got to go to you.
Speaker 4: You got something here? Yeah, And I just want to know.
Speaker 3: Andy Serkis of Claribscure Expedition thirty three fame, along with
Speaker 3: other things like being dollom and whatnot. But yeah, clareupscare
Speaker 3: shoutout Tonel Farms great, great.
Speaker 1: And shout out to uh Klang or whatever his name
Speaker 1: was Kran And you know in the Black Panther uh series,
Speaker 1: Uh Andy.
Speaker 2: Yeah right yeah. Andy Circus also my favorite role that
Speaker 2: he ever played. Well, he's not a handful of things
Speaker 2: that I really enjoyed. In the film twenty four Hour
Speaker 2: Party People, he plays the genius and irasble, the irascible
Speaker 2: genius producer of a lot of the Factory Records bands
Speaker 2: there in Manchester, bands like Joy Division, and he plays
Speaker 2: them great. He's a total grumpy curmudgeon. It's really really
Speaker 2: great film. If you're into the history of indie music.
Speaker 1: And while we're taking a slight diversion, folks, please give
Speaker 1: Andy Serkis the actor his recognition because he always reminded
Speaker 1: me so his come up always reminded me of te Pain.
Speaker 1: So a lot of people looked at Tee Paid and
Speaker 1: didn't know the guy could really sing because he made
Speaker 1: the artistic choice to use auto tune. A lot of
Speaker 1: people say that Andy Circus uh wasn't was somehow less
Speaker 1: than of an actor because he became so famous doing
Speaker 1: motion capture stuff.
Speaker 2: But goes into that man, I mean, yeah, for sure,
Speaker 2: really good, much like that Doug Jones, you know, got
Speaker 2: famous for playing you know, monsters and wearing heavy makeup.
Speaker 2: It's all about his movements and his you know, the
Speaker 2: nuance that he brings to that. And you know, I
Speaker 2: think Andy serkis as King Kong quite moving and it
Speaker 2: all has to do with the performance.
Speaker 4: So yes, credit where credit is.
Speaker 1: Due, Credit where credit is due. Shout out to you
Speaker 1: if you shout out to you, especially Tea Pain. If
Speaker 1: anybody hasn't seen Tea Pain's Tiny Desk concert, please do
Speaker 1: check it out. No auto tune. The man has the
Speaker 1: voice of a spirit, it does.
Speaker 4: Yeah, check out that Tiny Desk. It's fantastic. But back
Speaker 4: to Velocipedes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, not all women are in the country of the
Speaker 1: United States are lining up to buy a bike, and
Speaker 1: not all women who wanted to bike considered themselves activist.
Speaker 1: You know this this is strange because history always always
Speaker 1: tends to forget nuance. We have to remember that people
Speaker 1: are just people, and some people just wanted to have
Speaker 1: a great ride around that was faster than walking. That
Speaker 1: to them, it didn't necessarily indicate some greater social shift,
Speaker 1: but they were all these people were existing under patriarchal society,
Speaker 1: descended from the Victorian era, which had a lot of misogyny,
Speaker 1: anti feminism stuff. They hated when women could do anything.
Speaker 1: They're riding a bike, what's next voting? They probably said,
Speaker 1: we should never have given this part of the population shoes.
Speaker 1: That's how they started walking around outside. That's where the
Speaker 1: problem began.
Speaker 2: No, it's that same attitude that went into like, you know,
Speaker 2: keeping slaves from learning how to read. I mean not
Speaker 2: to be too aggressive about it, but it comes from
Speaker 2: the same place of you don't want to give them
Speaker 2: a taste of freedom. And as we mentioned, cycling represents
Speaker 2: and represented a certain kind of freedom.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and a simple bicycle therefore becomes this huge ingredient
Speaker 1: in a bubbling cauldron of what this population wants and
Speaker 1: what they're told they cannot do. So no voting, no
Speaker 1: higher education. Let's keep in mind that it wasn't until
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies or so that women in the United
Speaker 1: States were allowed to have credit cards, which is weird.
Speaker 1: Check out our episode on that from a few months
Speaker 1: or years back. We've been at this for a while.
Speaker 4: Which is kind of funny.
Speaker 2: It's sort of a funny concession too, because it's not
Speaker 2: like credit cards are like the best thing for anybody
Speaker 2: to have, especially you know, folks who are using them
Speaker 2: to achieve spending power above their means.
Speaker 1: Shout out to Edward Burnees, also involved in women's suffrage
Speaker 1: as a way to sell cigarettes.
Speaker 4: That's what I'm saying. It's sort of like a little
Speaker 4: bit of a self serving concession.
Speaker 1: One hundred percent. And so at this time in the
Speaker 1: eighteen nineties, of course, women were not allowed the same
Speaker 1: privileges as dudes. So you couldn't vote, you could have
Speaker 1: very difficult time gain the higher education, your job opportunities
Speaker 1: are quite limited.
Speaker 4: At the end of the day.
Speaker 1: American law enshrine, like the legal decision of this country
Speaker 1: was that if you were a woman and you were married,
Speaker 1: which of course they wanted you to be married, then
Speaker 1: you would have no legal identity distinct from your husband.
Speaker 1: You had to do the child and household stuff. The
Speaker 1: UK tried some soft propaganda with this by calling women
Speaker 1: the angel of the house, So why would she ever
Speaker 1: go outside? This is where we enter what we call.
Speaker 4: The new woman. Yeah, we don't want her to think
Speaker 4: that she can have it all.
Speaker 2: A feminist ideal in the eighteen nineties was really represented
Speaker 2: as an educated, social, active, very independent woman that was
Speaker 2: dubbed coined by feminists Sarah Grand The New Woman in
Speaker 2: eighteen ninety four and the safety bike really hit the
Speaker 2: scene at an important moment for the new woman where
Speaker 2: this concept challenged current cultural and gender norms along with
Speaker 2: a lot of other things that were happening kind of
Speaker 2: in lockstep like the Bloomers. The new woman had economic independence,
Speaker 2: held a job, professional roles, could be highly educated, had
Speaker 2: personal freedom, was physically fit and active, enjoyed playing sports
Speaker 2: right alongside the men. All of these things that were
Speaker 2: supported and cultivated by the bicycle and having access.
Speaker 1: To yeah yeah, And this idea of the new woman
Speaker 1: goes across socioeconomic Boundarieseople who are working on the factory floor,
Speaker 1: people who are doing what they called pink collar work
Speaker 1: office jobs, the feminine equivalent of a white collar job.
Speaker 1: These folks could all be the new woman and safeties.
Speaker 1: The bikes were designed with a lady's full dress at
Speaker 1: the time in mind, so we said, look, the skirts
Speaker 1: are going to get tangled. People are going to catch
Speaker 1: a header. This is non ideal. Cycling didn't just encourage
Speaker 1: social freedom, it encouraged physical freedom through changes in women's fashion.
Speaker 1: This is where we talked about Bloomers. We mentioned that
Speaker 1: corsets were cartoonishly restricting, and a lot of skirts had
Speaker 1: these long trains like what you might see in a
Speaker 1: wedding today, and dresses with petticoats were heavy as heck.
Speaker 1: A person's daily dress, not even the fancy one at
Speaker 1: this time, could weigh twenty five pounds, so you know,
Speaker 1: you know, these people had to wear that stuff. Their
Speaker 1: hamstrings were jacked. Man, my hammies, Yeah they were barking.
Speaker 1: Can your hammies bark your dogs? Whichever, but yeah, twenty
Speaker 1: five pounds. A lot of the wire or the frames.
Speaker 2: Of these these dresses, the hoop type skirts, they were
Speaker 2: made of iron and were incredibly heavy. Just the actual
Speaker 2: kind of undercarriage, I think is what they would call it.
Speaker 2: In eighteen fifty one, Amelia Bloomer, who I mentioned previously,
Speaker 2: from New York, along with Elizabeth Katie Stanton, incredibly important
Speaker 2: feminist activists, popularize this new fashion, the short dress over
Speaker 2: loose trousers similar to pants, but they were meant to
Speaker 2: be worn underneath dresses. Of course, the bloomer not to
Speaker 2: be too redundant, but they were. I don't think we
Speaker 2: quite got to this incredibly controversial because they were just
Speaker 2: too much like pants.
Speaker 4: Ben They're too much like pants.
Speaker 1: And while all this conversation is happening, more and more
Speaker 1: people are picking up Bloomers. Maybe it is for a
Speaker 1: larger goal, maybe it's activism, but as Maria points out,
Speaker 1: and I agree with her here, they probably just wanted
Speaker 1: to get out of those heavy, those cartoonishly heavy skirts.
Speaker 2: And years later, and also just to add, they were
Speaker 2: initially kind of more designed as undergarments, and so there
Speaker 2: was a modesty concern here, you know, from the patriarchy,
Speaker 2: I guess, saying that they're, oh, you're wearing underwear out
Speaker 2: in public.
Speaker 1: Yeah, in eighteen This all happened in eighteen fifty one.
Speaker 1: As we said, So if we returned back to the
Speaker 1: eighteen nineties, what we see is that a lot of
Speaker 1: women who were fans of bicycling, again, most of them
Speaker 1: at that point are going to be pretty wealthy and
Speaker 1: pretty white. They adopted the Bloomers because it was just
Speaker 1: more practical, but it was still highly controversial. This is
Speaker 1: the thing, partially, this is a big part of why
Speaker 1: bicycles advanced women's rights in the United States. It meant
Speaker 1: that you could move without a chaperone. It meant that
Speaker 1: you could travel by yourself, You could decide where you
Speaker 1: wanted to go. If you look at a suffragist like
Speaker 1: Francis Willard, you'll see quotes that read the following quote.
Speaker 1: I begin to feel that myself plus the bicycle equaled
Speaker 1: myself plus the world. And there's a poetry to that.
Speaker 4: No question, And it's something that I think we've been
Speaker 4: describing all along the way, even in our own.
Speaker 2: Relationships with bicycles, and how they can still be a
Speaker 2: little bit of a sticking point to people today who
Speaker 2: are like, who do you think you are out there
Speaker 2: and enjoying the world, you know, moving around without having
Speaker 2: to be stuck in gridlock traffic. So the safety bike
Speaker 2: afford a woman a socially acceptable way to Also to
Speaker 2: our earlier point, b outside the home in what had
Speaker 2: been a male dominated space. Now they're out there, we're
Speaker 2: out here, and they were doing it on two wheels.
Speaker 1: Enter the bad guys. Okay, the culture war begins. Why
Speaker 1: they said happy holidays. These people basically yelled, what about Christmas?
Speaker 1: There was no shortage of tin plate propped up experts
Speaker 1: quote unquote who would who would vociferously oppose the idea
Speaker 1: of women on bikes? And they said, there are two
Speaker 1: reasons these are so dumb. There are two reasons are one,
Speaker 1: what if she takes aheader, she's going to be permanently disfigured.
Speaker 1: No one's going to marry her. And then two, which
Speaker 1: I think is the most ridiculous one. They were like, guys,
Speaker 1: look at the seats. These women may be having Orgasmsay right, bikes.
Speaker 4: Oh dear heavens, how dare.
Speaker 1: How a lady have a good time in the United States?
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, given the puritanical kind of bent
Speaker 2: of the time, I could see how ladies straddling a
Speaker 2: thing in public could be a victim of something like
Speaker 2: the male gaze, This idea of like, oh my gosh,
Speaker 2: this is scandalous, but it's not.
Speaker 4: Really.
Speaker 2: Most of these issues are not women's problems. It's problems
Speaker 2: men have with women, and it's oftentimes because of how
Speaker 2: much it threatens them, either you know, financially in terms
Speaker 2: of their level of power and control, or oftentimes sexually.
Speaker 1: Yeah, sorry, bro, it turns out your wife's bike is
Speaker 1: better than you are at police here. That was like
Speaker 1: the hidden concern there, and it was such a trumped
Speaker 1: up malarchy thing for people to pretend to be worried about.
Speaker 1: And doctors at the time were in hot debate in
Speaker 1: public media about whether there are health benefits or harm
Speaker 1: from bicycling. Some said it cured all manner of things,
Speaker 1: and they were probably they were right ish. They were
Speaker 1: wrong about some of it. They were right ish about
Speaker 1: a lot. It's great for it's great for staying in
Speaker 1: shape in a low impact way. But they said, look
Speaker 1: like that means it helps with obesity, heart disease, vericose veins.
Speaker 1: But they also said bikey will cure your anemia and
Speaker 1: your asthma and your melancholia.
Speaker 2: Well, I would agree with melancholia frankly. I mean, this
Speaker 2: is this idea of it just being a cure for
Speaker 2: the blues. Sometimes getting out there and feeling the wind
Speaker 2: in your hair and all that and having that sense
Speaker 2: of freedom can remedy those kinds of feelings. Melancholia was
Speaker 2: of course, kind of a catch all term for just
Speaker 2: the sads back in a time where they really truly
Speaker 2: didn't have much understanding of men health. But I would
Speaker 2: argue that that's true. Maybe some of the more specific
Speaker 2: quote nut doesn't make sense there. And when we say
Speaker 2: the medical community was divided, I think we can say
Speaker 2: it was divided between those members who had their hearts
Speaker 2: in the right place and then the quack sector who
Speaker 2: seems to be on board with big Man.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, the the other bad guys.
Speaker 4: Right, these are our.
Speaker 1: Technically qualified doctors or their pundits, the Tucker Carlson's of
Speaker 1: the day. They would say this is not a healthy
Speaker 1: exercise for women, for the angels of the house. Bicycle
Speaker 1: face is a medical condition that happens to women who
Speaker 1: bit too much because when they are when they are
Speaker 1: biking they're exercising, their faces wrinkle up and it makes
Speaker 1: them nervous and exhausted, and it makes them look ugly
Speaker 1: a kages aka smile more. It's a totally made up condition,
Speaker 1: but the symptoms were described in detail. Those symptoms being
Speaker 1: stuff like permanent facial disfigurement, similar to when your parents
Speaker 1: may have said, don't make that face. Your face might
Speaker 1: stay that way forever. That comes from this bicycle face thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Maria titled the document today. I like to call it
Speaker 1: resting bicycle face, a precursor to the other RBF resting
Speaker 1: bitch face, which is a very pejorative thing. That is
Speaker 1: the root of that whole smile more thing. It's this
Speaker 1: idea that women owe you some sign of affection or
Speaker 1: positive whatever.
Speaker 4: It's just it's dumb and it persists.
Speaker 1: M and then other symptoms would include flushed faces, you know,
Speaker 1: like the faces you make when you're exercising, bulgie eyes,
Speaker 1: clinched jaws, a general expression of weariness.
Speaker 4: Yeah, to get from exertion, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And they never applied this bicycle face idea to
Speaker 1: the dudes.
Speaker 2: Oh, there's so many examples of this stuff, and check
Speaker 2: out episodes of stuff man've never told you about some
Speaker 2: of these topics as well. They've they've covered this over
Speaker 2: the years, the idea of like the wandering womb and
Speaker 2: like all of these you know, hysterical women and all
Speaker 2: of this. There's a lot of smear campaigns specifically directed
Speaker 2: by the health community at women over the years to
Speaker 2: justify some pretty gnarly treatment of it.
Speaker 1: This ultimately ends up being a moral panic, an outbreak
Speaker 1: of again, a culture war time tale as old as time.
Speaker 1: It's an example of fake health scares that were used
Speaker 1: to fight against social change by people who were happy
Speaker 1: with the status quo because they were at the top.
Speaker 1: There were other imaginary diseases when bicycle face obviously seemed malarchy,
Speaker 1: there were things like what they called cayphosis bicyclarum by
Speaker 1: by one more type cayphosis bicyclis sterum cyclist spine.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2: They did warn that cycling often left women vulnerable to
Speaker 2: other general health problems such as graves disease and appendicitis. Yeah,
Speaker 2: there was a publication on the BMJ that published an
Speaker 2: article describing how bicycling could worsen chess problems because of
Speaker 2: the position that you had to ride in, cause urethritis
Speaker 2: and should be avoided by any woman suffering from pelvic mischief.
Speaker 1: That's my favorite term of the day, pelvic mischief.
Speaker 2: And again we already mentioned this notion that it could
Speaker 2: be a way that a woman could pleasure herself, which
Speaker 2: you know, a God forbid and be ridiculous, that's very
Speaker 2: inconvenient for the purposes of riding a bike. I don't
Speaker 2: think anyone's out there you know, trying to get frisky
Speaker 2: on a bicycle scene.
Speaker 1: Right. I want to be very diplomatic, folks, because we
Speaker 1: are a family show. But I'm we're going to share
Speaker 1: this quotation with you about the orgasm concern and Noel Max,
Speaker 1: I just cannot think that whoever was writing this was
Speaker 1: having a little pervy time in their own mind. Here's
Speaker 1: the quote. So off, Mike, I did a reading of
Speaker 1: this that was too controversial.
Speaker 4: So we're just going to give.
Speaker 1: You the words is written. But I hold to what
Speaker 1: I'm saying without any acting or interpretation or intonation. This
Speaker 1: is a really creepy thing for these guys to write,
Speaker 1: they said, quote. The saddle can be tilted in every
Speaker 1: bicycle as desired. In this way, a girl could by
Speaker 1: carrying the front peak or pommel high, or by relaxing
Speaker 1: the stretched leather in order to let it form a
Speaker 1: deep like concavity which would fit itself snugly over the
Speaker 1: entire volva and reach up in front, bring about constant
Speaker 1: friction over the glytorus and labia.
Speaker 4: Yo. Yeah, I don't know I wrote that.
Speaker 2: I don't know wrote well, and thankfully you know the
Speaker 2: the snowflake men of the day were ultimately sort of
Speaker 2: calmed down a bit with the release of something called
Speaker 2: the anatomical saddle, which I can only imagine is something
Speaker 2: like a banana seat or just like a broader seat.
Speaker 2: That seemed to allay some of these fears that the
Speaker 2: patriarchy had and make them settle down a little bit.
Speaker 1: And we are more than happy to report that, thankfully
Speaker 1: this moral panic of the bicycle face was debunked as
Speaker 1: it should have been. It shouldn't have started, but it
Speaker 1: was revealed to be or understood to be ultimately a
Speaker 1: self limiting fake condition. And again, thankfully, by the Earth
Speaker 1: nineteen hundreds, it wasn't something that people were worried about.
Speaker 4: Nah.
Speaker 2: Doctor Sarah Hackett Stevenson, a prominent Chicago doctor, was among
Speaker 2: the group who finally, you know, put the nail in
Speaker 2: this particular coffin dismissing the condition. She wrote in the uh, well,
Speaker 2: to be fair, the phrenological journal, right, which is its
Speaker 2: own thing, of course, Yeah, phrenology, not quoit and also quackery.
Speaker 4: But you know, her heart was in the right place.
Speaker 2: And maybe this was just a popular journal at the time,
Speaker 2: because this was something that was very widely studied, you know,
Speaker 2: in eighteen ninety seven that any trace of such a
Speaker 2: quote face would be temporary, okay and completely gone once
Speaker 2: a woman was proficient in riding her bike. Okay, well,
Speaker 2: yeah she got there, but a little circuitous route right
Speaker 2: ish mm hmm yep. She also wrote that cycling was,
Speaker 2: in fact an excellent exercise for women, and the lost
Speaker 2: beauty of many delicate women may be recovered if they ride.
Speaker 1: They get out and exercise.
Speaker 2: I guess that's true, the lost beauty of many delicate women.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I may be recovered. I don't agree with the framing.
Speaker 1: Great everybody loves a glow up and we also, uh,
Speaker 1: we love this story because we are all three big
Speaker 1: fans of bikes and cycling. Thank you again for joining
Speaker 1: us today, folks. We can't wait for you to hit
Speaker 1: the road or the belt line or the trail with
Speaker 1: us on some future episodes. Also, big, big thanks to
Speaker 1: mister Max Williams. Max, do you have a bicycle? I
Speaker 1: don't want to put you on blast, but I'm curious.
Speaker 4: I actually do not right now?
Speaker 3: I am. I'm not the big bike guy, which is funny,
Speaker 3: Zs is a very big bike guy himself. Okay, all right,
Speaker 3: id of want to petting farthing after this episode, I can.
Speaker 2: See you rocking a bone shaker here, elies Max he
Speaker 2: tried to petting farthing.
Speaker 4: Big fakes, of.
Speaker 1: Course, to Jonathan Strickland, aka the Quizter, who is probably
Speaker 1: the guy who will sell you a gently used penny Farley.
Speaker 2: M m yeah, he's got a garage full of them.
Speaker 2: Huge thanks to research associate Maria for knocking out this
Speaker 2: banger research brief for us A J Mohammad Jacobs, the Puzzler,
Speaker 2: Chris Frosciotis Anddie's Jeff Co's here in spirit, the aforementioned
Speaker 2: cycling enthusiast Alex Williams who composed.
Speaker 1: Arthy Beautiful Yes, big big thanks also to doctor Rachel
Speaker 1: Big Spinach Lance, as well as the rude dudes of
Speaker 1: Ridiculous Crime. If you dig us, especially our recent Dalli episode,
Speaker 1: then you will love them. So hie thee to Thy
Speaker 1: podcast platform of choice and check out some amazing stories
Speaker 1: they have to share as well. Most importantly, thank you
Speaker 1: to Noel.
Speaker 4: Hey to you as well, Ben. We'll see you next time, folks.
Speaker 2: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 2: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,