Cleaner and easier to care for than a horse, bicycles became the rage during the last few decades of the 19th century. High-wheel bicycles were popular in the 1880's, but the much larger front wheel didn't fare well on the rough, dusty unpaved roads of the day. If a rider hit a rock, injury would often result from being thrown over the handlerbars. It was considered a potentially dangerous, masculine pursuit, and women were encouraged to ride tricycles instead.
"Safety" bicycles equalized the size of the wheels, and added pneumatic tires, allowing for a more compact frame that was easier to balance and control, all of which led to a safer ride and less injuries. It also allowed riders to increase their top speed, which made bicycles an even more popular for both transportation and recreation.
Clubs were formed for touring and racing, but they were for men only. Some of this was due to Victorian era social attitudes. But the attire worn by women was also heavy, long, and restrictive and would have made racing impossible. The cycling craze boosted the already growing “rational clothing” movement that encouraged women to shed their long, cumbersome skirts and bulky underpinnings. Some women cyclists chose to wear pantaloons, bloomers (named for New Yorker Amelia Jenks Bloomer, who invented a comfortable, bi-furcated garment similar to pants to be worn underneath dresses), or bicycle suits, but most opted to shorten their skirts to around knee length.
"The woman on the wheel is altogether a novelty, and is essentially a product of the last decade of the century," wrote The Columbian (Pennsylvania) newspaper in 1895, "she is riding to greater freedom, to a nearer equality with man, to the habit of taking care of herself, and to new views on the subject of clothes philosophy."
The women pushing for these fashion reforms were among the fist feminists in the United States, and many of them rode their bicycles to political rallies during the suffrage movement.
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