Cycle contests indulged in by female riders is not without a strong and novel charm. Ladies as a rule are much more graceful in their riding than the men, and not the least of the attraction being their pretty faces and physiques.
—Minneapolis Penny Press, April 3, 1896
H. O. Messier and other promoters of women’s racing may have been eager to present the sport as wholesome family entertainment, but they were surely also aware of the palpable sexual appeal of the women who labored nightly under the blaze of the arc lights. Rarely in nineteenth-century America had women’s bodies been so openly on display. Recreational women cyclists kindled controversy simply by wearing bloomers, the baggy trousers gathered at the knee that had by then already become a symbol of feminist reform for athletic women. Bloomers made plain the obvious fact that women had two legs and a rear end, and the hose that stretched from the women’s knees to their feet revealed in curvaceous detail what petticoats had long hidden from public view: calves and ankles.
In the early days of the new era of women’s racing, no one’s calves and ankles got more attention than Helen Baldwin’s. During the Second Regiment Armory race in Chicago, Helen had caused a sensation when her trainer sheared off her overtight stockings, leaving her lower legs bare. But that wasn’t the first of her “wardrobe malfunctions.” At Messier’s inaugural Minneapolis race in July 1895, while the other contestants started the race in the “loose knee breeches and sailor waists” that had been the standard women’s racing outfit throughout the high-wheel era, Helen sported tightly fitted riding breeches, similar to those worn by equestriennes.1 Below the breeches she wore tights. Helen may well have been the first American racer of the era to adopt this sleeker, more practical, and more tantalizing uniform. If so, its debut did not go without a hitch. As in Chicago, it was a problem with Helen’s tights that soon riveted the audience’s attention.
Within the very first mile, according to the St. Paul Daily Globe, “her skin-tight knee breeches began creeping up or her stockings creeping down, leaving a pretty streak of pink flesh peeping through the opening.”2 That an inch or two of exposed skin caused such a sensation says a lot about the public mores of the time. Not wanting to stop, Helen kept riding, giving the tights an occasional tug as she went. The tights kept sagging, however, much to the delight of a good portion of the crowd—cheers went up each time the tights went down—until the last few laps, when she managed to pull ahead of Frankie Nelson heading into the final turn. By then one of the stockings had become so loose that it got caught up with her shoe, and Helen had no choice but to reach down and yank it back up. Frankie zipped past her to capture the first evening’s heat. Helen fell to second place, but the spectators certainly didn’t care. The exposed skin on Helen’s lower legs provided all the excitement they craved for one night. Even in second place, Helen easily won the night’s popularity contest. The next day’s headline neatly captured the story in a nutshell: “Lost by a Sock.”
Photographs from 1895 and 1896 showed women racers still in heavy bloomers cinched below the knee and collared jackets with billowy leg-of-mutton sleeves. Often the women wore matching caps, completing the effect of a formal racing “suit.” In one photograph Tillie even wears a small tie. Even these seemingly innocuous outfits raised the collective eyebrow of the typical Victorian-era crowd, but beginning with Helen’s early try in 1895, the racers took dress reform a step further. By the spring of 1896 they began wearing form-fitting wool jerseys and riding shorts over their cotton tights. As one reporter put it after seeing the women for the first time, “There are no flounces, ruffles, tucks, insertions, plaits, ruchings, passamenterie, applique and all that sort of thing. The women simply wear sweaters, tights and trunks.”3 Another put it even more succinctly: “It isn’t a case of bloomers, but tights, pure and simple.”4 These were decidedly twentieth-century outfits.
There’s no evidence that the riders’ motives were anything but competitive. The new outfits, like the bloomers that preceded them, were a practical alternative; they allowed for much easier movement and were of course more aerodynamic than looser-fitting costumes. And it wasn’t just men and boys who appreciated the trend. Women attending the races were likely to be supporters of the “rational dress” movement, spurred on by the bicycle boom, and since men had long raced in jerseys and trunks themselves, the more progressive of the female fans were doubtless encouraged to see Helen and the others adopt the streamlined look. Indeed, the only difference between these new women’s outfits and the men’s were the long sleeves and hose-like tights that concealed, in accordance with Victorian convention, the skin of the young women’s arms and legs. Otherwise, as the St. Louis Republic said in 1897, “the riders wore costumes which in no way differed from those used by their brothers on the track.”5
Because of the snug fit of the jerseys, trunks, and tights, however, it was obvious to all that they were very much women from head to toe. The racing outfits tested strongly held social conventions, adding a visual dimension to the sport that spectators enjoyed and promoters soon enough exploited in their advance publicity. Like women athletes in virtually all major sports, even today, women racers of the 1890s straddled a line their “brothers” didn’t have to. On the one side, they were viewed as tough, talented athletes capable of unprecedented physical feats, but on the other, they were judged as much by their shape and beauty as their riding ability.
Before the Chicago race in January 1896, Messier’s financial backers had promised that “care will be taken to rid the tournament of any objectionable features.” Yet during the week of practice before the start of the race, “Watch the Woman Cyclists” had been a typical headline. One writer seemed almost to beckon his readers, inviting them downtown, urging them not to miss this great opportunity to see eight or ten finely formed women from close quarters. “A crowd of young women in bloomers,” he said, “are practicing on bicycles every afternoon at the Second Regiment armory.”6 Dottie Farnsworth in particular was singled out, not for the last time, as “young and pretty.”7
Promotion for the next race, in Minneapolis in early February, appealed to potential ticket-buyers by promising “red knickers, black stockings and women to wear them.”8 Then Tillie, Helen, Lizzie, May, and several eastern riders were back again in Chicago, this time at Tattersall’s Horse Market and Exhibition Space. Inspired perhaps by the name of the venue, some of the reporters couldn’t resist comparing the women to race horses. At the start of the race, according to the Evening Journal, some two hundred men crowded around the “paddock” as the women were led “by the drivers and grooms,” and “a hum of admiration went up” as the men “passed judgment on [the women’s] physical proportions . . . as if they were horses about to enter a race, for such expressions as ‘form’ were frequently used.” The Journal went on: “The judge announced the conditions of the race, and took occasion to caution the bookmakers and touts to keep out of the paddock and off the track, as it was a fair field and no favors. The judge was further inclined to admonish the crowd to keep away from the entries, as it was known that a few of them were kickers, although that would not, for a moment, prevent any of them from being every inch a lady.”9 This kind of tongue-in-cheek reporting generally subsided once the racers’ skill and athleticism became apparent after the first night or two of the race, but even then the women’s physical attributes were always fair game.
After Chicago, the women moved on to Detroit, a city familiar with bicycle racing, including women’s racing, from the high-wheel era. But it had been several years since the last Detroit race, and fans there couldn’t help but focus on the women and their form-fitting outfits. Every paper reporting on the start of the race felt obliged to provide a detailed fashion report. Lucy Berry, the “rather pretty blond” teenager from Cincinnati, “was attired in a tight fitting suit of blue that showed off her form to perfection.”10 Lillie Williams had on “almost skin tight knee breeches of white” that showed off her “well trained muscles.”11 Elsie Gable, “another pretty girl,” according to the Tribune, was “perhaps the shapeliest girl on the track.” And as usual, May Allen, “by many regarded as the prettiest girl in the outfit,” drew the attention of the crowd, “appear[ing] to good advantage in a brown sweater” and “well-filled stockings.”12
In these early days of the new era, some riders continued to show up in the old-style uniforms, but now they stood out as anachronous. In Detroit Kittie Staples of Rochester “was, as far as dress was concerned, the most attractive girl in the squad.”13 But her heavy costume “was a decided disadvantage as it caught the wind in fast riding.” Likewise, the bloomers of Maggie Smith, the local rider, were “becoming,” according to the Journal, but “looked very heavy and warm and made her seem rather lumbering.”14 Each and every day of the race, Maggie finished dead last. Indeed, sometime between the start of the first Chicago race on January 27 and the end of the Detroit race on March 28, the heavy bloomers and jackets disappeared for good, and the women all adopted either breeches or wool riding shorts cut just short of the knees. Up top they wore sweaters or jerseys. These new racing women were trim and athletic, and they wore clothes designed for speed. That the form-fitting outfits were also visually appealing to the spectators was a happy coincidence for the promoters.
In part because of their good looks, May, Helen, and Dottie often started races as the crowd favorites. Indeed, as the circuit expanded into new towns and cities, the racers were regularly classified according to appearance. “Dottie Farnsworth is the best looker,” said one newspaper at the start of its coverage, “but the others would not hurt a flower parade.”15
Most of the attention the outfits—and the women—received was positive, but it could at times be cruel. Not all the racers fit the emerging pattern of the “new woman”—trim, athletic, and attractive. According to the Detroit papers, for example, it wasn’t just the heavy outfit that slowed Kittie Staples down. Fancifully dressed and pretty as she was, the Journal concluded, “she was too fat for the fast riding.”16 She finished seventh of the nine first-day riders.
In general, Tillie Anderson didn’t get much attention for her looks. Chicago reporters described her “bicycle face” in admiring but purely sporting terms. There was “something glorious,” they said, “in her Norse eyes and the flaxen hair which bids defiance to the wind, tied up as it is with the yellow and blue of her fatherland.”17 Later a reporter did compliment Tillie on her “neat fitting red sweater.”18 In Detroit she was described as wearing “a stunning costume” consisting of a tiny cap, a red sweater, black tights, and black silk stockings supported by blue garters set with precious stones.19 But whereas Kittie Staples was pretty but too fat for racing, Tillie was attractively attired and plenty fast on the track but not very pretty. The Tribune said flat out that Tillie would “never set the world afire with her blonde beauty.”20 The News said she “makes no pretentions to beauty, but she can make a wheel fairly fly.”21 It wasn’t just reporters who felt free to comment on Tillie’s looks. After Tillie charged into the lead in one race, men in the track-side boxes were quoted as shouting, “Good boy, Tillie!”22
Beginning in 1897, William Benedict gradually took over many of the management duties of the women’s circuit. H. O. Messier focused on building the tracks, keeping the records, and acting as occasional starter and race announcer. Benedict, or “King Cotton,” as he was known after a popular song, initiated a profit-seeking approach that more explicitly foregrounded the women’s sex appeal. His agency’s name—the Cycle Carnival Company—says something of Benedict’s orientation. His goal was to entertain.
Benedict hired an aptly named young press agent, J. Robertson Smiley, to pump local reporters with tidbits about the “dashing lady cyclists” in the days leading up to each event. A former actor and theater agent, Bobby Smiley worked the cutting edge of the fledgling public relations industry, crafting an overall image of women’s racing that succeeded in piquing the curiosity of citizens in towns and cities across the Midwest, leading to some of the largest and most enthusiastic crowds yet seen in American sports.
Smiley portrayed the racers as voluptuous embodiments of a new kind of American athlete. He began by reviving a term for the women from the high-wheel era—“cycliennes”—and the reporters on the beat followed suit. He also pushed the notion that this era’s cycliennes were a new breed of superwomen: not only beautiful but also strong and athletic. To support his claims, Smiley sent ahead photographs. Formerly, the women’s photographs, which staff artists rendered as etchings for printing in the newspaper, almost invariably showed the women on their bicycles, faces set hard as if in competition. Now the women had glamorous headshots, showing them in fancy hats, high collars, and even décolletage. Once a track was built and the women had arrived in town, management threw open the doors and invited reporters and even the general public to come witness the women in training. This allowed reporters to describe the women and their riding in the days leading up to the race. One can almost hear Bobby Smiley behind the newsmen, suggesting adjectives. Under the headline “Fair, Speedy Riders,” for example, the Indianapolis Sun declared, “They are all pretty, modest and athletically inclined.” Of Tillie the Sun said, “She is perfectly formed.”23 The Sentinel, also of Indianapolis, promised readers that they would be pleasantly surprised by the “athletic appearance” of the racers, who were, they claimed, “the perfect types of women.”24
One Columbus paper settled on Dottie as the prize of the lot, drawing readers’ attention to an accompanying etching: “Even through the imperfect medium of a newspaper cut,” the reporter said, “it may be readily seen that Miss Farnsworth is a pretty girl, and her appearance is fully as interesting from an aesthetic point of view as from the standpoint of sport alone.” Lest the readers imagine that Dottie was a one-woman show, the reporter reassured them: “She is not the only one, however. There are others in this race, and they are all pretty girls and good riders.” And, he concluded, they are women of good character. “They ride fast, it is true,” he said, “but in other particulars they are not fast.”25
For the most part, race coverage emphasized the women’s wholesome beauty and vitality. After observing the riders in Columbus, a reporter for the Dispatch concluded that their “speed, strength, and physical development” should indeed encourage all women to consider cycling as a primary means of exercise and recreation. “One cannot but believe,” the reporter concluded, “that the exercise would develop more beautiful women, and incidentally create more happy homes.”26
Tillie appears to have responded to the new form of publicity by working hard to produce more flattering photographs of herself. As the Columbus Evening Press had admitted, the newspaper cut, or etching, was an imperfect medium, but even so, Tillie seemed early on to get no help at all from the artists. She had a handful of photographs from 1896 that she or the promoters shared with newspapers in advance of her races—photos in which she is mounted on her bicycle, looking pleasant but serious. Her intent appears simply to have been to show herself as she would appear on the track—strong in the saddle and ready to ride. In the photos she also displayed the medals she’d earned: the eight gold bars from the Century Road Club and the Champion of the World medal the Morgan & Wright Tire Company presented to her in the summer of 1896. The photographs depicted her as a proud athlete.
In many of the etchings, however, her features appear to be haggard or even contorted, her lips curled into a sneer or the lines around her eyes dark and heavy. Perhaps this was accidental or simply due to poor craftsmanship by the artists, but by early 1897 Tillie began distributing what would now be called head shots. In these, her face could be seen more clearly, and the resulting etchings showed her off to much greater advantage. It’s perhaps no coincidence that one of the worst of the etchings appeared in the Indianapolis Sentinel in January 1897, and during that same stay in the city Tillie had a portrait taken in which she wears a velvety collar and cape, along with a dashing hat perched on her curly blond hair. Her head inclines slightly to one side, and the hint of a smile can be seen on her lips. Her eyes in this photograph are soft—not those of an athlete in competition but rather those of a sympathetic friend or lover. Just two weeks later in Columbus, etchings of this photograph began to appear, and comments about her plainness became less frequent.
It seems that Tillie understood the game: in order to be considered a true champion by the public, especially by the gatekeeping fraternity of sports reporters, she needed to establish her physical attractiveness every bit as much as her athletic prowess.