Happy New Year!
I’m bridging a bit of Cyclista Zine into this blog and I hope you all don’t mind. Today’s post is about how I am carrying a new outlook into the new year as I work on cultivating a space for radical bike joy this season. Part of cultivating bike joy is rewriting the narrative and that includes the narratives we tell about our bodies. This time of year is difficult for folks to navigate resolutions for body centric metrics. It’s bad enough that bike media and influencers are pushing “off season” fitness messages, so my message to you is to distinguish what is holisitic and healthy for you. Including unfollowing some of your favorite influencers who push these messages!
While the impacts of these messages are harmful and fatphobic, the impacts can lead to body image issues, eating disorders, and lack of representation of diverse bodies on bikes. While body diversity needs to be centered in bike culture, people can’t fathom body diversity in sport and fitness, let alone fathom that non-abled or larger bodies can ride a bike and be healthy!
We don’t need patriarchal body values being perpetuated in cycling and beyond. Our body does not need to change or stay in shape to cycle all year long. And I find it inherently ableist to push messages that people’s bodies and mental health need to be worked on for the purpose of extraction constantly.
So, my goal this year is to tackle topics of fatphobia and ableism. Both are inextricably linked but the way they are represented in cycling are totally different, and finding radical bike joy comes in many forms of pleasure activism, anti-racism, and liberation. All bodies belong on bikes if they so please and all bodies deserve access to joyful movement without the harsh realities of fatphobia, weight bias, ableist bias, racial bias, and mental health stigma.
Despite our ‘good intentions’ and ideas as ‘good’ people to talk about how “all bodies belong on bikes”, our biases affect the way we engage with people and creating an inclusive space will continue to challenge us to unlearn our biases.
So remember that your body is not an apology, it is not to be fixed because society tells you. You are worthy of rest, nourishment, and love for simply existing.
I look forward to sharing more of this work with you in the new year.
Peace, Love, & Bicycle Grease,
Christina
image via: zines4u