Laura Lapinskiene

From "Hygienic Saddles" to the "Vehicle of Beauty": Discourses on the Cycling Woman from the Turn of Thecentury to the 1930s in Lithuania Laura Lapinskiene

This study is centered on women and bicycles. Thehistorical-archival analysis of primary and secondarysources reveals the patterns of discrimination ofwomen, their disqualification from participation inpublic sphere as well as professional sport. Thiswork displays how the newly invented bicycle wasperceived as a threat to traditional gender roles andobtained a name of "social revolutionizer." Throughthe analysis of textual and visual publications Iexamine how the bicycle was re-contextualized inLithuania and "gendered" within the popular discourseof mass media from the time of its emergence untilits appropriation for women. The results of myresearch prove the assumption that the shift indiscourses actually means only the alteration ofform. The institutionalized mechanisms of disciplinebecame institutionally unbound, dispersed powerembodied in self-surveillance and beauty practices.