The New York Times a couple of weekends ago had a piece on a show at the Smithsonian on bike history.
The bike has an interesting place in the history of industrial production and consumer capitalism, in addition to being interesting as pure technology.
It also figures in our culture and the ways we symbolize anxiety about change.
One of the items referenced in the
Times piece was this sheet music, dedicated to the
League of American Wheelmen.
The piece doesn't discuss the sheet music directly, but it's another fascinating cultural text.
I read it, I think, very differently than it was intended.
I read it as a woman on bike fleeing a "scorcher," a man speeding and reckless on his bike - and very possibly a predatory or otherwise threatening man, one whose company she does not necessarily relish. Even though the composer is George Rosey, the type and design on the cover suggests the woman might be named Rosey and the man her scorcher.
It is possible the woman herself is scorching, and it is possible she is flirting with the man, playing coy and fleeing rather than fearfully fleeing. It may not be possible to say for sure.
But even though it is only a little more than a century old, it still is a text and set of images very difficult to read today.
A similar image is in a national tobacco ad. Here it seems unquestionable that the Scorcher is a woman speeding and riding recklessly. (It could also point to the origin of the epithet "battle axe" for an uptight or powerful woman - maybe there's a Temperance subtext, too.)
There's clearly a sense in which "uppity" women riding under their own power need to be belittled and put in their place. The potentially independent woman was a threat to the patriarchy!
(Maybe you have other readings of the imagery? I don't think there's one single reading that is right and complete by itself.)