In the Victorian Era, Men Warned Independent Women They Would Get ‘Bicycle Face’

So much so that in the 1890s, a term was created — “bicycle face” — to try and deter women from riding bicycles.

Single women would have the same rights as men, such as buying property and writing a will, but married women were completely controlled by their husbands. 

During this time, Victorian women decided to use the craze as an opportunity to assert their dominance in some way, to prove that they were perfectly capable of doing things by themselves.

The Literary Digest in 1895 said that a combination of remaining in the upright position while also overexerting themselves in riding the bicycle and trying to stay balanced was what caused bicycle face. 

To potentially make women believe men would be put off by them or that they would lose their beauty and femininity, they were told that they would either appear flushed or pale, with drawn lips and dark circles around their eyes.

According to Vox, descriptions of the condition varied. Some doctors claimed that once you got bicycle face, you could never get rid of it, whereas others said that it was only temporary (as long as enough time was spent away from a bicycle). 

Some said it was due to women struggling to keep their balance, whereas others said it happened if you rode your bicycle on a Sunday, as this was a day of rest and worship, according to Ely Museum.

Most images of women from the Victorian era depict them wearing long and heavy dresses, but the dress reform, which started with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Amelia Bloomer wearing a “bloomer outfit,” according to the Library of Congress Blogs, made it easier for women to ride bicycles. 

In addition to telling women that they would get bicycle face, they also told women that riding a bicycle would cause exhaustion, insomnia, heart palpitations, headaches, and depression.

Some of the rules, as listed in The Marginalian, were “don’t criticize people’s legs,” “don’t use bicycle slang,” “don’t discuss bloomers with every man you know,” and “don’t ignore the rules of the road because you are a woman.”

They came to this realization when it was noted that most people will be concentrating when riding or driving other vehicles and it didn’t cause any lasting damage to the face, which was noted in the American Medico-Surgical Bulletin. 

Doctor Sarah Hackett Stevenson, who was based in Chicago, was quoted as saying in the Phrenological Journal and Science of Health that riding a bicycle improves your general health and doesn’t cause any changes to any part of your anatomy. 

For many women at the time, this was their emancipation and gave them a bit of independence that they had long hoped for.