Grinding Up Saltburn Bank

These female athletes are grinding up Saltburn Bank in the 2026 East Cleveland Classic cycle race. They look powerful, focused, and gloriously free. In the 1890s, those same faces would have been handed a medical diagnosis. Doctors called it “Bicycle Face”¹Bartholomew, Robert E., et al. “Bicycle Face: A Timely Reminder on Discarded Diagnoses in the Age of Anxiety.” *The New Zealand Medical Journal*, vol. 139, no. 1630, 27 Feb. 2026, https://www.nzma.org.nz/journal..

Victorian critics insisted that women’s “delicate” bodies were simply not built for the bicycle. All that balancing, all that wind and speed, would twist a woman’s face into a permanent “pinched, beady-eyed, and frazzled expression”²Hanlon, Sheila. “Bicycle Face: A Guide to Victorian Cycling Diseases.” *Sheila Hanlon | Historian | Women’s Cycling*, 4 Jan. 2016, http://www.sheilahanlon.com/?p=1990. A fate, one imagines, worse than death.

One commentator of the period put it rather plainly:

“the hard, tense, muscular expression… make a good looking woman look masculine, and a homely woman look intensely ugly.”³Bartholomew, Robert E., et al. “Bicycle Face: A Timely Reminder on Discarded Diagnoses in the Age of Anxiety.” *The New Zealand Medical Journal*, vol. 139, no. 1630, 27 Feb. 2026, https://www.nzma.org.nz/journal.

Of course, this was never really about health. The bicycle was a scandal on two wheels. It gave women the ability to go wherever they pleased, whenever they pleased, without a chaperone in sight⁴Bartholomew, Robert E., et al. “Bicycle Face: A Timely Reminder on Discarded Diagnoses in the Age of Anxiety.” *The New Zealand Medical Journal*, vol. 139, no. 1630, 27 Feb. 2026, https://www.nzma.org.nz/journal.⁵Goldman, Shelby Kirst. “Masculine Space: The Final Frontier; A Historical Analysis of the Spatial Politics of Gender through the New Woman’s Access to Brassieres, Bicycles, and Higher Education in the United States from 1890-1930.” Open Works – The College of Wooster, Spring 2015, https://openworks.wooster.edu/independentstudy/6564.. Medicalising “Bicycle Face” was society’s way of herding women back into the parlour by threatening the only two things it thought they cared about: their looks and their marriage prospects⁶Hanlon, Sheila. “Bicycle Face: A Guide to Victorian Cycling Diseases.” *Sheila Hanlon | Historian | Women’s Cycling*, 4 Jan. 2016, http://www.sheilahanlon.com/?p=1990.

Today, that same fierce expression is called “grit” and roundly admired. The lesson is simple. Give people freedom through technology, and someone will immediately diagnose that freedom as a disease.

So next time a “warning” appears about some modern trend, it is worth asking one question: is this genuinely about safety, or is it just the sound of fear dressed up as concern?​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

• 1
  Bartholomew, Robert E., et al. “Bicycle Face: A Timely Reminder on Discarded Diagnoses in the Age of Anxiety.” *The New Zealand Medical Journal*, vol. 139, no. 1630, 27 Feb. 2026, https://www.nzma.org.nz/journal.
• 2
  Hanlon, Sheila. “Bicycle Face: A Guide to Victorian Cycling Diseases.” *Sheila Hanlon | Historian | Women’s Cycling*, 4 Jan. 2016, http://www.sheilahanlon.com/?p=1990
• 3
  Bartholomew, Robert E., et al. “Bicycle Face: A Timely Reminder on Discarded Diagnoses in the Age of Anxiety.” *The New Zealand Medical Journal*, vol. 139, no. 1630, 27 Feb. 2026, https://www.nzma.org.nz/journal.
• 4
  Bartholomew, Robert E., et al. “Bicycle Face: A Timely Reminder on Discarded Diagnoses in the Age of Anxiety.” *The New Zealand Medical Journal*, vol. 139, no. 1630, 27 Feb. 2026, https://www.nzma.org.nz/journal.
• 5
  Goldman, Shelby Kirst. “Masculine Space: The Final Frontier; A Historical Analysis of the Spatial Politics of Gender through the New Woman’s Access to Brassieres, Bicycles, and Higher Education in the United States from 1890-1930.” Open Works – The College of Wooster, Spring 2015, https://openworks.wooster.edu/independentstudy/6564.
• 6
  Hanlon, Sheila. “Bicycle Face: A Guide to Victorian Cycling Diseases.” *Sheila Hanlon | Historian | Women’s Cycling*, 4 Jan. 2016, http://www.sheilahanlon.com/?p=1990