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Posted
Friday, April 17, 2009 4:05 PM
| By
Dayo Olopade
Reading this much-e-mailed New York Times story on the joys of traveling through the five
boroughs on a stylish, yet inertial Dutch bicycle, I was struck by how
gender-specific all of the counsel seemed to be. To wit:
Can the bicycle, the urban answer to the wild mustang, slow
down and put fenders on? Can the urban cyclist, he of the ragtag renegade
clothes or shiny spandex, grow up and put on a tie?
Good question—but “Yes, she can” was clearly not the answer
that was intended. And later:
How should you dress to bike to work? Which bike has an
acceptable level of manliness? These are tricky questions. As the parade of
10-speeds, mountain bikes and, more recently, fixed-gear designs knocked the
upright, old-school bicycle off the road, accouterments like fenders and chain
guards came to be seen—by men, at least—as eccentric. If a guy is going to
get on a bike, he wants to imagine he’s Lance Armstrong, not Pee-wee
Herman.
No doubt. But, in the forward-thinking Netherlands,
where 27 percent of the public rides a bike (it’s only one percent of all trips
made in the U.S.
annually), surely women ride, too? And as someone who has personally struggled
with finding outfits to wear that won’t billow and bunch and flash passersby as
I two-wheel it to work (save pencil skirt
and rainy days), I know I could have used some tips, too.
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