Bicycle Face

If you are an Australian of a certain age, as a child, you would have been drip fed a steady diet of the Australian poet Banjo Patterson and at the very least you can quote, “T’was Mulga Bill from Eagle Hawk who caught the cycling craze.” But it wasn’t just men who caught the cycling craze, women of 1896 also discovered the joy of cycling and hence doctors of the time warned women that if they rode bicycles, they were in very real danger of developing an affliction. So today we will be exploring one of the original fake new items of the late 19^th Century, a made-up disease that affected women (and some men) called “Bicycle Face”.

Before we launch into the fictitious symptoms of bicycle face, we need to explore what life was like for women at the time. What I like to call very important context. In my clicking and scrolling though newspapers and magazines on Trove, I kept seeing references to a woman called Mrs Grundy, or Mother Grundy. I thought to myself, who on earth is this Mrs Grundy, she seemed to very judgmental of this scandalous cycling behaviour.

It turns out that she too made up. I guess journalists of the time could evoke her name to show they disagreed with some new-fangled pastime or other. Like in the case of, “What would Mrs Grundy say?” In one article she is   to have said, “that fashionable sensations do not last as long as granite.” And let’s face it, she’s kind of right.

However, in many cases her name was used to show a kind of edgy journalism, showing the perspective of the modern thinking society who laughed in the face of the old fuss pot Mrs Grundy. The opening line of an article called “Bicycling for Women” written by “A doctor’s wife” asks, “Is Mrs Grundy dead? Or has she gone to some far-off planet, where they still enjoy the “good old days” …of long ago? … she could never live happily in this …world, which the present bicycle craze is turning topsy-turvy to such an alarming extent that members of the “gentler” sex, ride in “bloomers.” The article goes on to discuss how healthy bike riding is and how it makes life easier. I do want to point out that this writer does not have her name published and is only referred to by her relation to her husband and his occupation. But I guess they are trying to get the audience to trust her because, after all, she was only a woman, and women were not even worthy of voting at this time. Another article’s author in signing off, uses Italics and says simply Lady. (Full stop.) This is now my new favourite way of ending a letter.  I may adopt this in my email correspondence. I think Mrs Grundy would approve.

Confession time, sometimes I have to curtail my inner Mrs Grundy, but only because I can barely keep up with the latest technological trends.

The doctor’s wife made mention of bloomers. If you look it up on Trove, there are 122 thousand newspaper articles that reference bloomers in the decade of 1880-1889. And many of these articles also mention cyclists or cycling. For those who are too young to have owned a pair, bloomers are a kind of loose ¾ pant that are gathered in at the knees and you might see them on an old-fashioned doll. You see fashion up until this point, was very restrictive in terms of movement for women, it consisted corsets and of long heavy skirts that were completely impractical for doing any kind of activity that involved more than minimal movement of the legs. So, the introduction of bicycles, also opened up a conversation about fashion reform. The very fact that I can pop down to my spin class in my active wear is all thanks to the brave ladies of the 80s, 1880s that is, boldly donning their bloomers to ride carefree through the streets on their infernal machines. Scandalous!

But let’s get down to the nitty gritty of “Bicycle Face”. A few years ago, I was listening to an audiobook about the women’s suffrage movement called “You Daughters of Freedom” by Dr Clare Wright- I highly recommend it by the way. And in chapter 24, there was a one-line reference to “Bicycle Face”. This stopped me in my tracks, and I immediately ran to the Trove website and fell into a very deep and amusing rabbit hole. The first article I read was a double whammy about restrictions on women, it was called, “Do you Tipple? A chat on Various topics.” Tippling is drinking alcohol. The writer asserts, “Whenever I see a young lady lifting the champagne glass to her lips I am taken with a cold shiver.” And then goes on to say, “Once women get a love for wine and spirits, they are doomed.” Luckily this author is no longer with us to shudder at the doomed lasses who go clubbing in Surfers Paradise on a Friday night.

The article then goes on to discuss how a well-known Sydney doctor is warning of the perils of bicycle riding. Because of the fear of collision with the many obstacles that the city presents women cyclists such as, trams and pedestrians, “it does not take long for her to develop bicycle face.” This article is the perfect example of how a source can be not particularly reliable, but very useful in demonstrating the attitudes and beliefs about women at the time. His evidence for this diagnosis is “you only have to observe a woman riding through any street to see how her legs are going and her eyes are fixed.” The afore mentioned Lady. (full stop) agrees, “If not corrected in time, the face gradually settles into a haunted, drawn look, the brows become contracted, and there is a rigid appearance about the eyes.” Adding further, “I never think a woman looks her best on a bicycle.”

But don’t think that this malady was confined to the face, no, the more you rode, the more likely that other parts of your body would become afflicted. Your hands could become infected. This description paints a particularly vivid picture, “the bicycle hand is a thing of ugliness and a horror for ever.” The distinctive features of this hand are stated to be that “it becomes flattened, bulges out at the sides, gets lumpy and out of shape, and the fingers all become crooked.”

You also had to take care that your feet didn’t become afflicted. One article managing to be both sexist and racist explains, baby girls often walk like Indians, with their feet pointing together in a V and proclaims that although this can be overcome, if a girl takes up riding a bicycle, this condition will reassert itself. It ends with the advice “watch one next time she dismounts, you will see her pigeon-toeing and leaving crow tracks upon the dust of the road.” 

Of course, not all of the articles were against women riding a bike. Many were written tongue in cheek and recognised the ridiculousness of these claims. Several were touting the health benefits of riding a bike. “Let women cultivate health (says a high medical authority), …, and men will value them more.” This statement is of course still framed to highlight women’s value to men, but at least it is support. He does go on to worry that they will lose their graceful outlines. However, my favourite is the following description, “the bicycle girl flits by him, her trim ankles glancing in the sunlight and her fine figure poised in graceful equilibrium.” Nothing like a glance of a trim ankle in the sunlight.

Now we have heard about the detractors and the supporters, what was the big deal about girls on bikes? Bicycles represented freedom for women, and that in turn represented feminist ideals. Before bicycles became popular if you were a woman and wanted to travel, your options were very limited, walking, a carriage, on horseback. If an upper-class woman was to go outside, they would probably be chaperoned. But the bicycle enabled women to get out into the world and experience a measure of freedom. Not only that, it was a catalyst for women’s dress reform.

An 1899 Australian supporter of dress reform says, “the bicycle may be regarded as the chief dress reformer of the day… Within two years it has given to all American womankind the liberty of dress for which the reformers have been fighting for generations.” The writer does boldly state, “The bicycle has not put many women in trousers—nothing will do that, in this country.” Oh, how wrong you are sir.  121 years later, and us skirt wearers are few and far between, it is trousers all the way for many female folk.

There is a wonderful cartoon in the American Library of Congress that backs up this point titled “The bicycle – the great dress reformer of the nineteenth century!” In the background it shows women and men dressed in all manner of ridiculously exaggerated impractical fashion, and in the foreground a man and woman are wearing their cycling bloomers and boots standing beside a bicycle and shaking hands triumphantly.

To this day, in some countries in Africa, and India, there are programs that give bikes to young women so they can overcome barriers in getting to school and work towards gender equality in education.

So maybe Mulga Bill caught the cycling craze, but it was the women who embraced the bicycle and continue to use it as a vehicle of equality and empowerment.

This is Kelly Chase, on the case.