Invisible Cyclists and the Politics of Representation

Via Streetsblog I found this post about so-called "invisible bikers" in Los Angeles. Invisible cyclists are working-class people, many of them immigrants and people of color, who ride bikes because they don't have access to cars or reliable public transit. They're "invisible" because mainstream discussions of cycling pretty much ignore them and instead focus on fixie-riding hipsters, lycra-clad speed demons, and other middle-class cycling archetypes. The post points out that "invisible cyclists" face a whole slew of challenges, such as lack of bike parking, lack of access to well-made bikes, lack of access to health insurance, and particularly dangerous routes on which they must travel. These folks are generally not involved in cycle advocacy, and cycling advocacy groups don't court them or pay attention to their particular issues.

One of the central claims of the whole Cycle Chic movement is that representation really matters. Part of the reason that people don't cycle is that they associate cycling with negative things: hideous lycra clothes, dorky bike helmets, and testosterone-fueled assholes, for instance. One way to get people cycling is to change the perception of bike riders by broadcasting more appealing images of bicyclists. If people are taught to associate bikes with hip young women, rather than jerky guys in spandex, then they will be more inclined to ride bikes and to support improvements in cycle infrastructure.

I think this is problematic in part because it's a little naive about how ordinary folks perceive urban hipsters. This may be lost on certain bloggers, but a lot of people think of hip young urbanites as slightly obnoxious folks who follow silly trends and aren't particularly practical or sensible. But that's actually not what I want to talk about here. I want to talk about where "invisible cyclists" fit in this model of the politics of representation.

In a lot of ways, "invisible cyclists" behave in the way that the Cycle Chic people think bike riders should act. They cycle for convenience and transportation, not for sport or for environmental, political and fitness reasons. They often don't wear helmets. They usually do wear street clothes. Mikael Colville-Andersen, the guru of Cycle Chic, says that our bikes should be like our vacuum cleaners: a tool that people use, but not something that defines the person who rides the bike. We shouldn't think about ourselves as "cyclists," anymore than we think about ourselves as "vaccumists" because we clean the floors once a week. I think that most "invisible cyclists" think about their bikes that way. It's a way to get from point A to point B.

And yet "invisible cyclists" are a bit of a problem for Cycle Chic types. If it's crucial to represent cycling as hip and awesome, then it's a bit embarrassing that one of the major cycling populations in America consists of poor people. "Invisible cyclists" belong to highly stigmatized populations: they are often poor, they are often immigrants, they are often people of color. Politicians in several states are getting a lot of mileage out of policies designed to harass people like them. If we render "invisible cyclists" visible, then we risk associating cycling not with the fabulous lifestyles of hot young (usually white) women, but with hardship and social stigma.

There are two ways to deal with this problem. The first is to continue to marginalize and ignore "invisible cyclists" and to hope that improvements in infrastructure will trickle down to them. I suspect that won't work. I live in a neighborhood populated by a fair number of working-class Latino bike riders, and for the most part my city doesn't pay much attention to the infrastructure needs of our area. We don't have bike lanes, sharrows or bike racks, the way that more prosperous areas have. Hell, we don't even have sidewalks. The photo to the left shows the road leading up to my building: note that there are no bike lanes, no sidewalks, and very poor lighting. My city has pretty good bike and pedestrian infrastructure, but there's not a lot of evidence of trickling down.

And the other strategy is to embrace a different kind of politics of representation, one that recognizes all cyclists. We can change the image of cycling not by emphasizing that cyclists are fashionable and fabulous, but by pointing out that cyclists are as diverse as our communities. Cyclists encompass rich people and poor people; people who cycle for fun and fitness and people who cycle for transportation; people who choose to bike over other modes of transit and people who ride bikes because they don't have a lot of other options. If representation is political, then I'd like an inclusive politics of representation, one that aims to make cycling natural-seeming, comfortable and safe for all cyclists, not just the most glamorous ones.

Iowa Bicyclist TV

Via the Iowa Bike Blog

I'm kind of bummed not to see myself in that first segment, on sidewalk cycling in college towns. It was all shot in my neck of the woods.

And for the rest of us...

Lately, I have found myself ranting a lot about Cycle Chic. If you're reading this blog, chances are that you're familiar with the Cycle Chic phenomenon. Pioneered by Mikael Colville-Andersen and his blog Copenhagen Cycle Chic, it's a "movement" devoted to celebrating and documenting stylish young women riding bikes. Colville-Andersen's blog has spawned a whole slew of copycats, and now fashion companies have got in on the trend.



"So what's wrong with that?" you ask. And the answer is that there's nothing wrong with that. I am 100% all for young, fashionable women riding bikes. I think it's swell. I read Cycle Chic blogs. I wanna buy cute stuff from Adeline Adeline.



And yet I am finding myself increasingly annoyed with Cycle Chic. It's not the chic itself. It's that I'm seeing Cycle Chic discussed as if it's synonymous with the phenomenon of female cycle commuters. It's also seen as a way to promote cycling among women and to make cycling a more popular form of transportation in places like the US and Britain, where cycling is seen more as a macho hobby than a way of getting around. For instance, here's Talking Head and cycling evangelist David Byrne, in a book review he wrote for the New York Times last year:

As Mapes points out, when more women begin riding, that will signal a big change in attitude, which will prompt further changes in the direction of safety and elegance. I can ride till my legs are sore and it won’t make riding any cooler, but when attractive women are seen sitting upright going about their city business on bikes day and night, the crowds will surely follow.

Mikael from Copenhagen Cycle Chic is even more emphatic. In a Copenhagenize post entitled "If you want cycle transport, make cycle transport sexy," he makes big claims for his Cycle Chic website:

Changing the status of cycling is really the foundation of what I try to do. It is the cornerstone of the Cycle Chic concept, of which Copenhagenize is an extension. Why has Cycle Chic rolled out around the world over the past three and a half years? It presents images, not only from Copenhagen but around the world, of cycling in a different light. Of cycling how it used to be. The world was ready for this, apparently. The first photo I took was recently called The Photo That Launched a Million Bicycles, which is a wild, humbling tagline, but the status of cycling has changed and continues to change. All over the world.

He then lays out who he thinks is going to be responsible for this revolution:

Changing the social status of cycling - of ANYTHING - cannot possibly begin in areas outside of large, urban centres. It's a fact of life that First Movers live in Big Cities and that the ideas they adopt, if successful, filter down to the rest of society.

Well, that's me told. I'm not sexy. I'm not particularly fashionable. I'm a woman in my 30s, and I live in a town of 70,000 people. I'm never going to be a First Mover in any revolution. My role in the development of American cycle culture is to be a follower, not a leader. Maybe it'll trickle down to me.

And that's kind of bullshit.


My town has a pretty vibrant cycle culture. There are eight bike racks in front of the building where I work, and it's not always easy to find a place to put my bike. Every day, I pass other cycle commuters as I ride to work at 6:45 in the morning, and I pass more cycle commuters as I ride home at 5:00 in the evening. There are four bike stores in our small downtown area. There's a non-profit that fixes up used bikes and sells them for cheap. We have enough bike advocacy organizations that there's a new umbrella group that was just founded to coordinate all of their efforts.



The cycle commuters I see are a diverse bunch. Some of them are young, and some of them are not. Some of them are slim and athletic looking. Some of them are not. Some of them are super fashionable, and some of them wear fancy cycle clothing. Most of them, though, dress like the typical person around here does: a little casual, a little sporty, not in a way that suggests that they pay much attention to what's in Vogue or The Sartorialist. The cycle commuters in my city are not a chic subset of the population. They mirror the rest of the population. They are everyone.


I was not a cycle commuter when I moved here. Before last year, I hadn't been on a bicycle in twelve years. And what inspired me to become a cycle commuter was not any model or a bunch of photos of beautiful young women. I'm not necessarily attracted to things associated with hot young women: I'm neither hot nor young, and I worry that I'm going to look faintly ridiculous if I try to follow trends associated with the young and fabulous.

What inspired me to try cycling was that I knew other cyclists. My brother spent his junior year of college riding a bike around Harbin, China, and he commuted by scooter when he lived in Tokyo. When he returned to the US, he became a cycle commuter, in part because he'd lived in cycle cultures and saw cycling as a natural way of getting around. My friend Lisa, a sporty Californian, rode her bike around our Chicago neighborhood when we were in grad school. Both of them made me more confident that cycle commuting was a reasonable thing to do. And I was inspired by seeing the cycle culture in my current town, which convinced me that you don't have to be brave, macho, athletic or fashionable to get around on a bike.

So I thought I'd start a bike blog for the rest of us. This blog is for early adopters to cycling culture who are not necessarily cute, chic, or hip. It's great if you do live in a big city, but this blog is for people who live in suburbs and smaller places, too. It's ok if you wear a helmet. It's ok if you wear lycra and change into your work clothes when you get to your job. If you get around on a bike, and if you'd like to promote getting around on bikes, this blog is for you.