‘Fancy Women’ rewrite rules of cycling
Ece Çelik- İZMİR
The “Fancy Women Bike Ride” event, which set out in the Aegean province of İzmir to encourage women to ride bicycles and spread the idea of car-free cities, has left behind its 10th year.
Women wearing big glasses, flashy hats and smiles on their faces greet people on bicycles on the streets in several cities in the tour organized by history teacher Sema Gür and her friend, Pınar Pinzutti, every September.
Gür and Pinzuitti won the United Nations Bicycle Special Award for their bike ride, which took place in 200 cities in 25 countries this year.
Gür, who learned to ride a bicycle at the age of 39, realized that the number of women in the bicycle tours she participated in was very few.
“When I asked one of the male participants about this situation, I received a disturbing answer that women slow down men. While I was making jokes about this answer with my other female friends, an idea struck me that if they are doing a man-to-man tour, we will fancy up and take a slow tour,” Gür said.
“People generally consider a movement as an activity where we shouted out. We thought of reverse corner activism. We said let’s smile, let’s show that we exist with our bike,” Gür added.
Stating that they decided to change the rules of cycling, which is a quite male-dominated area, Pinzutti pointed out that “Fancy Women” introduced rules such as not going fast, dressing up and waving around.
“We decided to rewrite the rules with Sema and set out to increase the number of women on bicycles.”
Pinzutti noted that though they expected a few women to participate in the tour, after the announcement on social media, about 250 women came to the place where the tour began.
