The 19th-Century Women's Liberation Carried by Bicycles

1. Overview

In the 1890s, an urban legend spread in Europe and the United States that women who rode bicycles would develop a condition called “bicycle face.” Its supposed symptoms included a tightly clenched jaw and bulging eyes.

Vox states definitively that the condition was not real. Even so, some doctors and media outlets at the time treated it as a serious health concern. This coincided with a period when bicycles were expanding women’s mobility and influencing the dress reform movement.

2. The Bicycle Craze and the Emergence of a New “Diagnosis”

According to a theqoo post, the bicycle boom of the 1890s began with the introduction of the “safety bicycle,” which connected the chain to the rear wheel, and with improvements to the frame that made it easier for women wearing skirts to mount. As mass production lowered prices, teachers, typists, department store clerks, and even textile mill workers could save their wages to buy a bicycle. Women had, for the first time, a means of traveling alone, and debate arose over whether women should be allowed to ride bicycles. A Library of Congress guide explains that the debate took place at the height of the bicycle craze in the 1890s, and that opponents viewed bicycles as objects that could corrupt women’s purity.

Vox describes a similar backdrop. Many people at the time saw bicycles as tools of feminism. They gave women greater mobility, challenged Victorian ideas of femininity, and were enthusiastically embraced by women involved in the suffrage movement. They are also credited with helping to spur the dress reform movement.

Vox could not determine exactly when the term was first used. However, British physician A. Shadwell claimed in an 1897 article for London’s National Review that he had coined the term several years earlier. In the article, he went on at length about the dangers of the bicycle craze, arguing that “people who can hardly undertake any other form of exercise” were taking it up. A Google Ngram search reportedly shows that mentions of the phrase peaked just before 1900.

3. Accounts of the Symptoms and Their Causes

Descriptions of bicycle face were not consistent. In 1895, The Literary Digest wrote that “excessive exertion, the erect position on the wheel, and the unconscious effort to maintain balance produce a tired and exhausted ‘bicycle face.’” It went on to explain that the face was usually flushed, though it could also become pale; the lips were drawn tight, dark circles began to appear under the eyes, and the rider always looked tired. Others described the condition as characterized by “a tightly clenched jaw and bulging eyes.” The “bulging eyes” became part of the urban legend’s name.

Accounts also differed over how long the condition lasted and what caused it. Some said it was permanent, while others claimed it would subside if the rider stayed off the bicycle long enough. Shadwell attributed it to the difficulty of maintaining balance on a bicycle, compounded by overexertion. Some media outlets, however, blamed it on riding bicycles on Sundays and thus violating the Sabbath. There was broad agreement that anyone could develop the condition, but it was commonly believed that women were especially susceptible.

The theqoo post recounts a more extreme version of the urban legend. It claims that the logic was that a woman who rode a bicycle would develop bulging eyes, a tightly clenched jaw, and permanent wrinkles, becoming so unattractive that she would never marry. The post also claims that women were warned that exercising their lower bodies would strain their pelvis and uterus and leave them unable to give birth, and that newspaper editorials called for regulating saddle angles because saddles stimulated women’s intimate areas and caused them to lose their chastity. However, these claims appear only in this post.

4. Women’s Responses and What Followed

The urban legend collided with the experiences of women who actually rode bicycles. The theqoo post says that women who cycled found firsthand that their formerly pale complexions became rosy and that their indigestion, chronic headaches, and depression improved. It also recounts that doctors at the time recommended exercise in the fresh air, making it difficult for parents to stop their daughters from saying they were going on a ride into the countryside with friends.

Women’s rights activist Susan B. Anthony said in an interview with the New York World on February 2, 1896, that the bicycle had done more for women’s emancipation than anything else in the world. She also said that whenever she saw a woman riding past on a bicycle, she stood still and watched, delighted. These remarks are quoted in the Library of Congress guide.

Changes in women’s clothing were connected to this development. JoongAng Ilbo writes that dresses worn by European women in the 19th century weighed between 9 and 18 kilograms, while the theqoo post gives a weight of 5 to 10 kilograms, so the figures vary by source. According to JoongAng Ilbo, the “bloomers” proposed by Amelia Bloomer in 1849 became controversial and were condemned as immoral, but began to be accepted as necessary clothing as bicycles spread. However, Bae Hye-jeong’s 2021 paper states that most women who cycled in Britain and the United States in the 1890s were reluctant to wear rational dress and continued to wear skirts. The paper argues that this should not be seen simply as the result of conforming to gender norms: some women deliberately chose skirts to ride “safely” or to promote cycling more widely, while a minority continued to wear rational dress.

The theqoo post also says that women of this generation became the main force behind the women’s suffrage movement in Britain and the United States in the 1900s and 1910s. Since this is the post’s interpretation, it is difficult to state definitively.

5. Authenticity debate

The central question is this: Was “bicycle face” an intentionally exaggerated scare campaign meant to keep women away from bicycles, or was it a concern that doctors of the time gave an exaggerated name after seeing tired cyclists? Vox makes clear that the condition itself was not real, so the debate centers on the intentions and context behind the urban legend.

5.1. The view that it was intended to frighten women

This view argues that the timing speaks volumes. The urban legend spread at the same time that bicycles were giving women greater mobility and being used as tools of dress reform and the suffrage movement. As the Library of Congress guide recounts, opposition to bicycles invoked the corruption of women’s purity. This shows that the debate involved questions of morality, not just health.

The descriptions of the symptoms are also considered too implausible to be medical in nature. As the theqoo post recounts, the claim that a woman would develop bulging eyes and permanent wrinkles and never marry sounds less like a description of an illness and more like a threat listing outcomes that women would fear. Add to that the post’s claims about infertility and loss of chastity, and it is difficult to read the warnings as purely well-intentioned concern. This view also sees Vox’s description of the phenomenon as “a made-up health problem designed to scare women away from the bicycle” as consistent with this interpretation.

5.2. The view that it was an exaggeration of genuine concerns

The opposing view points out that the descriptions preserved in contemporary sources focus on fatigue and overexertion rather than overt hostility. The Literary Digest described the appearance of a tired person: an exhausted expression, dark circles under the eyes, and tightened lips. Shadwell, too, attributed the condition to the difficulty of maintaining balance and to overexertion, and criticized “people who can hardly undertake any other form of exercise” for taking up cycling.

Moreover, accounts of the urban legend did not settle on a single explanation. Some said the symptoms were permanent, while others claimed they would subside if the rider took a break from cycling. Most agreed that anyone could develop the condition. Some media outlets even blamed it on riding bicycles on Sundays and violating the Sabbath. Can such a mix of conflicting voices be explained as a single, carefully coordinated conspiracy? From this perspective, it is more natural to see the phenomenon as the result of medicine, religion, and social conventions all expressing their anxieties at once in response to a popular new invention.

Both sides agree that “bicycle face” was not real. However, the surviving sources do not make it possible to establish whose intentions lay behind the spread of the term, or what those intentions were.

6. Trivia

• Comments on the theqoo post recommend Maria E. Ward’s book Woman and the Wheel.
• The Library of Congress guide recommends reading about Annie Londonderry’s trip around the world as an account of women and bicycles. She left Boston in June 1894 and was at the center of a wager made by two wealthy merchants that a woman could not ride around the world on a bicycle. The guide also features Frances E. Willard’s 1895 book Wheel Within a Wheel.
• The theqoo post says that a study of British census records found a noticeable increase in relationships and marriages between people from different towns after the bicycle boom of the 1890s. However, the source is unclear, so the claim’s accuracy is unknown, allegedly.
• The title of a Reddit r/bicycling post was “The 19th-century health scare that told women to worry about ‘bicycle face.’”