Large Fierce Mammal

Cyclist, in Swansea area, c1900 — Can’t you just FEEL the temptation to put something rebelliously exciting between her legs? Source: Digital Archive

The title of tonight’s Dark Sentiment is not a reference to one of those personal expressions of passion referred to as “sex face” which should need no explanation among this crowd, nor is it an insult like “fuck face”. It’s not the facial expression one may get at the moment of perception that an accident is unavoidably imminent, nor has it anything to do with road rash.

Nay, bicycle face is a now discredited medical term that came into vogue in the Victorian era among experts in the settled science of innate female weakness.

Much has been written of this scourge, and I recommend the brief but highly informative Beware of Bicycle Face by Katherine Conroy which you can download here, a portion of which follows.

Many thought women (as the weaker sex) were particularly susceptible to the evils of bicycling. Nowhere was this more apparent than in the cautions against Bicycle Face. The physician, Arabella Kenealy, warned girls that too much bicycling would transform their feminine charms to masculine traits. Worse still, ruddy cheeks from sun exposure and a strained expression in the muscles of the face could eventually result in a deterioration in the nerves, a headache and by some accounts, even dementia.

I can hear it now — “I know it sounds silly dear but we do so want grandchildren and, you know, better safe than sorry!”

All this now brings us to this invitation to outrage written expressly for all of you.

Bicycle Face

By LFM

Goode gentlemen, please harken now,
And learn of this outrage!
No bud deserves a faster nip
As now afflicts our age!

Now some of you may know the joy
And freedom of the ride
To drive the noble bicycle,
With manly strength astride.

But know this now, goode gentle sirs,
The women in your lives,
Wives, daughters, even mothers
Are at peril for their lives!

For now this selfsame bicycle
A man may safely guide,
Has lent itself to devilry
Our weaker sex to ride!

Pelvic mischief gentlemen!
Curving spines and more!
Our girls will turn to manliness,
With barren wombs galore!

No man can let this iron horse
Usurp his angel’s face,
And press into those parts of her
Where he holds pride of place!

With ruddy cheeks and straining jaw,
The woman risks defeat
Before the Devil’s wanton touch
She finds upon the seat!

But there is time enough goode sirs
To stop this ruin’s pace,
And teach our women they are loved
When in their proper place.

Men know their place before the Lord,
Her own must woman learn —
Astride her master’s member
Or awaiting its return.