Failure Through Time: Women on Bikes—Alfonsina Strada—'The Devil in a Dress'

To ride is to be free. To ride is an act of resistance.

Alfonsina Morini Strada, the first woman to ride in the Giro d'Italia in 1924

Failure Through Time is a series about people who resisted oppression, pushed cultural boundaries, and failed to live in line with the norms of their time. This is the sixth essay of this series.

I feel most like myself on a bike. I have since I was a kid. In elementary school, our school had an end-of-year party that took place at an outdoor rollerskating rink. Each year they raffled off bikes to kids. The year I won, I was so excited I fell flat on my face while rushing towards the stage in my rollerskates to claim my bike. I can still see my pink bike with pink streamers clearly in my mind. It was a dream. We lived in a small apartment building with a decent-sized parking lot on a busy road. I was allowed to ride as far as the sidewalk. I’d ride to the very edge of where my world ended to stop where the cars passed quickly by and where I’d dream of going farther. As far as my bike and my legs could take me.

The bicycle has long been a tool for women’s liberation. Bicycles allowed women to roam more quickly and more freely. They symbolized not only freedom, but also athleticism, independence, and bodily autonomy. When I moved to San Francisco when I was 23, I couldn’t afford a monthly bus pass, so I bought my first bike with the little savings I had left. At first, I struggled in facing the kind of hills I avoided riding in Pittsburgh by staying close to campus before my bike was eventually stolen in college and I was too broke to get another one. It took me three months, but eventually, I was often leading the post-work riding packs on Market Street, dodging cars, avoiding doors opening up into bike lines, pounding on hoods and trunks and windows to alert a driver that they were about to kill me. I climbed the biggest hills of the city like it was my job. I showed up soaking wet from riding in the rain to meet a friend for happy hour. I showed up soaking wet from sweat to meet a new group of friends from riding an hour in the sun to get to them. I rang my bell at boys on bikes that I thought were cute, and I rolled up next to them at stoplights, balancing so that my feet never had to touch the ground before the light turned green. I answered questions about my bike with innuendo that made no sense but that made me laugh and feel even more powerful when I rode away from the boys knowing they were looking at my butt as it landed back on my saddle.