The Up-To-Date Bicycle Girl

You may have noticed, there seems to have been more than just a slight fixation, during the 1890s, regarding women and bicycles or, more to the point, women riding bicycles. Between poems of various length, and stories of afflictions supposedly suffered by women who rode, others on special women's riding fashion, there was no lack of published accounts, both helpful and fantastical, in the newspapers (and bicycling journals) of the time.

I suppose we should not be surprised, after-all the bicycle was a game changer, ushering in so much societal change, so many opportunities for social mobility. 

Much of this little ditty, by today's terms (and maybe written in today's vernacular) would probably be considered rather sexist. At the same time, though, I think you can see the lines, the stanzas reflecting new changes to old attitudes. 

"Once more she is spinning around us and winning

Our hearts with her sinuous style.

In high-water skirtings, and butterfly shirtings,

And hose you can hear for a mile.

With figure entrancing, and merry eyes dancing - 

Oh! she of all pearls is the pearl,

A winsome young fairy, a sweet huckleberry,

The up-to-date bicycle girl.

She flies o'er the highways, through grass-bordered byways

Like wandering angel a-wing.

Her plump cheeks art flushing with health and are blushing

At kiss of the breezes of spring.

Her eyes snap with fun-light, her wheels in sunlight

Flash bright in their buzz-saw whirl,

As burns she the gravel on hill and on level,

The natty young bicycle girl.

The power of her pistons will brook no resistance,

As down on the pedals they play.

Like arrows she'll sever the winds that endeavor

Her speed to ungallantly stay.

The breezes in frolic with will diabolic

Great banners of dust may unfurl,

But cannot retard her, nor dampen the ardor

Of the up-to-date bicycle girl.

The escort beside her, though famed as a rider,

Strives hard to keep up in the race,

And often he'll wonder why in the blue thunder

She doesn't let up in her pace.

His muscles are paining, his strength is fast waning,

His brain is in overwrought whirl;

Profanity swells him, yet custom compels him

To smile on the bicycle girl.

Awheel in the city, men stare at her pretty -

Well, face we were going to say;

More often their glances, like swift-flying lances,

Are sent where her pedalers play.

Her delicate footies in neat-fitting booties

Revolving in alternate whirl

Draw eyes of male creatures away from the features

Of the coquettish bicycle girl.

Our voices are ringing with pride, while we're singing

The praise of our beautiful state,

Her plains flower-teeming, her mountain peaks seeming

To peer through the paradise gate.

In song and in story we tell of her glory,

In nature's great crown she's a pearl.

But not an attraction in all her collection

Can equal her bicycle girl."

No author's name is attributed to this, but "The Up-to-Date Bicycle Girl"

was originally published in the Denver Post.