Can anyone recommend another road bike forum that is not quite so "full-******"?

No it doesn't help the situation at all. I really don't understand why women feel they have to do that in order to promote themselves or their sport. It's sad.

Maybe they're proud of their bodies and their sexuality and aren't afraid to show them off? Sexuality isn't something that needs to be kept in a little box and only unlocked in the bedroom with your legal spouse.

I agree

Not off the top of my head, but feel free to find one and go there. Thanks.

It might seem like a good idea to them ... but I don't think it does much for getting the ordinary woman into cycling.

Agree, but unfortunately most men don't get that and just see it as fuel for the view that women WANT to be objectified.

Where's the fun in that?

My wife was not that keen about cycling but after she saw me lose over 20 pounds by just riding she became much more interested. She now really enjoys riding but I still is afraid when riding in high trafic locations. I find that her timid riding habit causes cars to pull out on her. It also took a long time and a smart salesman to convince her that those thin tires would not slid out from under her.

My point is that some women are afraid of riding due to the risk of a accident. They feel safer running or doing other sports/exercise.

Maybe they're going along with "sex sells", maybe they're trying to say that women can be top-level racers and still retain their feminine qualities (just in case there are any women who are afraid of turning into Tammy Thomas by riding hard).

Those are my guesses. But, yup, presenting themselves as sexual objects only gets them viewed as sexual objects.

You gotta be brave to go full-******.

This is a slippery slope - it may not be terribly convenient when trying to argue about not treating women as objects, but it's Liz Hatch's right to do whatever she wants. It doesn't make her any less of a cyclist or a better/worse person.

Or for getting themselves to be taken seriously as cyclists. Unfortunately, the fact is that sex sells (and more specifically female sexuality), and that's usually because of the average attitude that's been expressed in this thread. And since sex sells, and the goal for most in anything is to make money, the women are going to be put out there in this way, with whatever way to coerce them to do it (money, fame, power, getting to continue doing it at that level) being employed.

The obvious parallel here seems to be Danica Patrick. Model first, race car driver second. And a pretty bad race car driver to boot. Only managed to win one race in a number of years. It's been pointed out several times that a male with a similar record would be long gone out of racing. But yet, Danica still races. Why is that? Danica's still there, simply because her modeling brings name recognition to the organization she races under. Unfortunately for her or other women trying to do the race car driver thing, it's also making it next to impossible for any woman to be taken seriously in such a venture.

And Danica isn't the first example of a woman in sporting events doing this, and won't be the last either.

I don't get where you going with this, sure "sex sells" but that does not mean that woman don't have the right to treated with respect in sports or any other aspect of life.

True, if they have respectable accomplishments. And that's what I was getting at with talking about Danica. Take her seriously as a person, sure. Take her seriously as a race car driver? That's a very tough climb. Especially since I noted that by any reasonable competitive standard she would be washed out of her sport by now.

For that matter, I tried googling "Liz Hatch" to try and find how well she does as a "professional cyclist" (as she calls herself on her blog). The only thing I found besides the modeling photos was that she crashed back in January and that she placed 28th in a Giro stage....what message does that send when it's much easier to find her modeling photos and very hard to find anything about her actual cycling?

On a collective level, no, it doesn't help. But it's pretty damn hard to blame women who go along with the system when, individually, it might make a big difference in them being able to make it at all versus being shut out. And some women will make the calculation, if their real role in cycling is to be looked at rather than to be considered athletes, that they should do it professionally. In the long run, and even in the short run, it doesn't help because of course it's reinforcement of negative attitudes. There are definitely reasons that many women will choose that route. The thing to do is not to blame them - because why should someone like Liz Hatch have to represent all of womankind when she just wants to earn a damn paycheck? - but to break the perverse incentives that make that kind of calculus appealing. Personally, I would rather watch women race their bikes. When I want titillation, there's a time and a place, but it's away from the road.

I don't think hot photos and she being a "professional cyclist" are mutuality exclusive.

I don't think hot photos and she being a "professional cyclist" are mutuality exclusive. I wish I could come close to placing in the Giro 28th Place is quite a accomplishment.

Right. I mean, she's still a good driver (you don't get to race IRL if you're slow), but in that league, her results are pretty blah, and she's made some boneheaded mistakes like the infamous nearly-full-speed spin into a safety vehicle.

She's not even the only female driver out racing now, and other women have placed better, more often, than she ever has.

She's famous for her looks, and infamous for her driving -- which, to me, diminishes the sport itself.

At least nobody takes her seriously and instead recognizes that she's more of a marketing tool than anything else.

*edit* forgot to distill my beef:
She's being treated differently because she's a woman. Can that be called "equality"?

Let's be honest: there is nothing anyone, male or female, can ever do that will prevent women from being viewed as sexual objects by men (and often by other women as well). It's "human nature". All we can do is fight the idea that women are "only" sexual objects. As long as we see them for all they are, there is no point in trying to eliminate the sexual object part.



But here is the thing...Danica is perhaps the female "athlete" that has done the best in an open class sporting event. Yes, perhaps she would have washed out if she was a man and didn't have the marketing ability she does, but she has managed to win once, right? What other woman has ever won any open class sporting event or place near the top like she often has?

The reason female athletes market themselves by their appearance is that they are competing in a lesser, limited, exclusive class for athletes that are not able to compete with the best athletes in the world in the open class. Logically most people want to watch the best performances in the world, and these do not take place in this women's only class. So the women need to do something to attract fans other than their fellow competitors or perhaps young girls who are amateur participants in the same sport. If they want to attract a larger audience, they can do so by stressing the grace and beauty angle of their performance: in other words, it may be slower, less powerful, whatever, but it is done with style and beauty and the athletes look great doing it. More people will watch this and thus the audience becomes big enough for the women to get paid even though their performance is such that they'd never get paid in the open class.

Let's take an example: from a performance standpoint, women's tennis probably lags behind men's as much as women's basketeball lags behind men's. But women's tennis tv ratings are similar to men's while no one watches the wnba. Why is that?

Sticking with Indy cars, Danica's arch nemesis in IRL, Milka Duno, has raced at the 24-hr Daytona and LeMans races (placing 2nd with her team at Daytona), scored five wins in ALMS in 2001, and even placed higher in the 2008 Indy 500 than either Danica or Sarah Fisher (whose pole-winning run at Kentucky still stands as the track record). There was also Janet Guthrie, who raced NASCAR, was the first woman to qualify for the Daytona 500, and drove an Indy 500 race with a broken wrist (that's hardcore!).

There are women in other motorsports that have done well. John Force's daughter has won more than once in NHRA Funny Car drag racing (beating her dad on one occasion), the late Pat Moss has several class wins and a few overall wins in rallying (no small feat, mind you), Katherine Legge raced some Champ car races and was campaigning in DTM last year.

None of them have done a shoot for Sports Illustrated's Swimsuit Issue, though, have they?

Because Eastern European supermodels in short skirts get ratings, while the WNBA is—and there's no nice way to say it—noticeably slower, lower, and less "Wow!"-inspiring than men's basketball.

Exactly. Though I don't mind saying what you only implied: the wnba women are not attractive. If they were, more people would watch it even if it is slower, lower, and less "wow" inspiring. It's just the way things work. And it is not cultural: it's biology.

Same reason women's beach volleyball is one of the highest rated Olympic sports.

Shirley Muldowney > Danica (and about 99.9% of any car racers).

Other than that one girl from NorCal, you are the only one active in these forums. There are a lot of women in NorCal that are into road cycling. Most of them are liberals though, and that is always a good thing.