When your an activist weaving through the streets on a bicycle, you see the way cities and minds work without rose colored lenses. Perhaps the world becomes to us more crass and less romantic in that we are aware and confronted with the reality that surrounds us. My growth as a bicycle activist and social activist has led me to think differently in how I read the bicycle industry, urban planning, and women’s roles in these realms.
It’s not everyday you’ll hear a woman’s voice representing a bicycle corporation or leading planning developments. They are very few and hardly listened to. One thing that I do know is that women have something to tell us about the city and life we share. Women spend a lot of their time out on the streets, in parks, talking to neighbors, shopping for groceries or household goods, sustaining neighborhood communities, and piloting their children around. Women know what it is like to live in cities, street by street, day by day, better than the men who plan and build them. There is a lot to be said by women in ways that we can nourish communities and bring life to them over the stale roads and concrete pavements.
Women have always found creative ways to be active in these realms but mainly through the use of blogging while being fashionably comfortable on their bikes, which has reached more women in cities. Parts of this blog hold this to be true because bicycle lifestyle and activism encompasses our comforts, beliefs, and personalities as well. Exploiting women for their bodies or getting women to become consumptive shouldn’t be the aim of the bicycle industry or planning. For too long cities and industries have ignored them and thus have impoverished our lives and cities by not listening to them. Although we aren’t always heard in these institutions, we at least have city streets that serve practical activities and our sense of happiness and community.
image @cyclovoalicia
image @cyclovoalicia
Tina, your writing has stepped up lately, I am really enjoying it! Stronger, more confident and not afraid to say what you think. Fantastic! Keep it up girl 😀 Lx
Love your travel adventures (Paris in particular) and all those dreamy images you captured. Please keep the rose color glasses on — at least some of the time!
You really have a good blog. I love reading your post here. Is sound adventure. I love biking, it is one of my past time to leave from a stress day.. keep it up girl.
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