Harleys, Stilettos, Freedom
gender cease to matter,” Ms. Miyake wrote in The Times. “It’s just the machine and you. That is the joy of the road. That is freedom.”
Ms. Miyake, who lives in Britain and is the author of “The Gendered Motorcycle,” described the thrill that awaits a rider — any rider:
“There’s the rumble that growls from deep within your machine when you twist the throttle; the sheer distortion of sound and vision at 70 miles per hour; the sudden lurch as you and your bike suddenly pull away, leaving traffic behind you.”
While these pleasures, she wrote, are gender-neutral, “people consistently assume that the people experiencing them are male.”
Among the reasons for this, she says, is the relationship between men and machines in the public imagination. That is, men’s machines are industrial, militaristic, powerful. Women’s machines do the laundry. To this way of thinking, she wrote, “for women, cars remain extensions of the home, tools to shop for groceries or collect the kids — tasks for which motorcycles are not particularly well suited.”
Beyond that, there is the association of motorcycles with aggression, deviance and gangs, and pop culture’s depiction of women- on-bikes only as leather-wearing toughies.
Until there are changes, including “more images of women wearing boring outfits,” Ms. Miyake wrote, “the rest of us will have to keep correcting assumptions: explaining that no, that’s not my boyfriend’s bike.”
The outfits worn by members of the Caramel Curves, an all-women’s club in New Orleans, are anything but boring, but it is unlikely that anyone will mistake their bikes for their boyfriends’. As The Times described their scene:
“The ladies wear helmets ridged with fluorescent pink mohawks and matching vests bedazzled in blingy patches and sequins. Finishing the look are Barbie-pink stilettos. Their bikes are big Suzuki Hayabusas (that they call “busas”) and Gixxers, and Can-Am Spyders, airbrushed in shades of pink, with brightly colored rims to match. And when they stunt, with curving burnouts or wheelies, their tires send off plumes of magenta-hued smoke.”
One member of the group did learn to ride when she sneaked out on her boyfriend’s bike. Another took off on her dad’s. Their yearnings would be familiar in Saudi Arabia. Rochelle Francis, one of the Curves, remembers first riding on the back of a friend’s motorcycle years ago.
“I was like, no, I don’t want to ride on the back,” she said. “I want to ride it.”