Vintage Biker Chicks!

 

 

Few people would deny that biking has an inherently masculine image. Although many women are bikers, if you say the word “biker” to almost any American, the picture which pops into their head will be that of a bearded and tattooed man in dusty leathers and ragged denim, leaning against a chrome-gleaming status symbol of a bike. So ingrained is this image that it is hard to picture it any other way.  But it was not always so. Though it may surprise many people to learn this, motorcycles preceded their hyper-masculine image by some years, and many early bike models were even marketed specifically at women. Many of our foremothers were dedicated bikers and played an important part in the early biking world.

 

 

One hundred years ago, in 1914, Harley-Davidson enthusiastically promoted the image of the enterprising Miss Della Crewe, who had taken it into her head to Harley across the United States. Harley had been advertising bicycles to women since 1912, and were (in those days) very keen to expand their female ridership. Miss Crewe was a formidable character. In an age where the majority of roads were bumpy dirt tracks, and tires gave a considerably rougher ride than their modern counterparts, she traversed the States from Waco to New York City, a distance of over 5,000 miles. It took her six months.

 

Her steed of choice was a Harley-Davidson V-twin, and the sidecar was occupied by a Boston bull terrier named ‘Trouble’. Trouble was aptly named, as he got her in plenty during the journey. She was stopped twice in Chicago and Indiana as authorities were concerned that Trouble would spread foot and mouth disease, and she was forced to make him a rudimentary sweater to shield him from the biting cold of Ohio. Indeed, the weather was spectacularly bad during Crewe’s journey, snow, ice, and driving rain hurled themselves at her with enough ferocity and persistence to make even the most hardened Hells Angel turn back.

 

Not so Della Crewe. She battled on through meteorological extremes, conquered rough terrain, and stuck it out in the face of some particularly misogynistic attitudes (one farmer nearly refused her shelter, giving as his somewhat counter-intuitive reason the opinion that a woman should not be out in such weather). Upon her arrival in New York, however, Crewe announced that she was in perfect health, had enjoyed herself immensely, and would do it all again if she had the chance. Not long after that, she and Trouble set off to tour South America.

 

 

The very next year, Harley-Davidson found another female figurehead. Effie Hotchkiss of Brooklyn had bought an 11-F with the inheritance left her by her father, and used her own mechanical knowledge to attach a sidecar. Then, with her mother Avis in the sidecar, she set off across the United States. Effie had dreamed of the freedom of the open spaces beyond NYC, and had been advised to take a rest by her doctors. Effie and Avis’s version of “rest” involved the kind of motorcycle trip which would have seemed daunting to almost anyone at the time. Heading south, they traveled through blistering Californian heat. They had a narrow miss with a rattlesnake, but Effie calmly shot the reptile with a handgun and traveled on. 

 

When they ran out of inner tubes in New Mexico, Avis and Effie simply rolled up some blankets and stuffed them into the tire, which apparently worked quite effectively. They reached the Pacific at San Francisco and then turned and drove all the way back, crossing through Nevada and Utah as they went. They covered a total distance of around 9,000 miles, and made world records, although Effie, somewhat bemused by all the fame, insisted that her intention had only ever been to get out of Brooklyn and see the United States.

 

 

In 1916, Augusta and Adeline Van Buren decided to prove to the authorities that women were just as capable of serving on the Front Line during WW1 as men. Accordingly, they purchased a pair of Indian motorcycles (1,000 cc Indian Power Plus bikes with Firestone non-skid tires) and announced their intention to ride across the States. They not only wanted women to be allowed to serve at the Front, they also wanted to make a general statement about the capabilities of women, in the hope that female emancipation may follow. 

 

They pioneered the “biker chick” look, choosing to wear military-style pants and jackets for purposes of practicality, although several regional police forces took objection to the idea of women wearing what was at the time seen as masculine garb. They battled their way through some truly appalling weather and road conditions, as well as remaining staunch in the face of misogynist ridicule and even abuse (which tended to be aimed at their clothing and suffragette stance rather than at their biking). They achieved their objective of crossing the continental United States, becoming the first women to do so solo. However, the US government remained skeptical about the idea of women serving as dispatch riders, and would take another four years to grant women the vote.

 

 

 

With the growth of Hollywood, however, motorcycles began to gain a distinctly masculine sheen. Actors like James Dean promoted the image of the motorbike as a rebellious vehicle, steed of choice for the brooding, dangerous man, a machine which could only be tamed by testosterone, to which women should respond with awe and desire, but not with participation. A distinctly masculine culture grew up around motorcycles, with all-male bike gangs bringing a reputation (often undeserved) of violence and aggression to the motorcycle. This was a culture of which most women wanted no part, and in which they would not have been welcomed anyway. In a way, this hyper-masculinization of motorcycles has worked in the favor of modern female bikers. 

 

 

Just as married people tend to get lower insurance premiums due to (speaking purely statistically) being involved in fewer accidents than single people, so women bikers often find it easier to get cover for their rides, gaining lower bike insurance quotes due to the perceived notion that they are unlikely to behave recklessly upon the road. This is often an entirely erroneous notion, many women are just as big speed freaks and adrenaline junkies as their male counterparts, but the masculine aura which is only just beginning to fade from biking ensures that women are still seen as “safe” and even timid riders.

 

 

 

Nowadays, the advance of feminism has re-opened the world of motorcycling to women. Female bikers are advancing into formerly male territory, and usually being welcomed. Though many women are still reluctant to take up a vehicle which still bears what they see as the tarnish of masculinity (and though some men may resent the intrusion of women into their No Girls club), women on bikes are becoming more common. This is something to be celebrated and encouraged, perhaps by bringing back into the spotlight those early pioneers of female motorcycling, who have often been brushed beneath the carpet by successive generations of masculinizing bike rhetoric.

 

 

 

Della Crewe