Good (apparently)-
Media and advertising still largely represents mountain biking as a ‘gentleman’s club’ and that means there’s often a focus on the danger and extreme elements of the sport, rather than the benefits to mental health or the opportunity to have an adventure with your friends in the great outdoors.

Bad (apparently)-
“Female cyclists do not generally need to push their limits, race against time and increase their adrenaline when riding rough downhill trails,” “They just want to enjoy the time spent in nature on the bike, and their expectations from the bike are completely different than men’s,”

Am confused.

Media and advertising

some people in the industry

Sounds like a lot of industry navel-gazing whereas for the most part, people who go out and ride just get on with it in spite of “Media and advertising ” and “some people in the industry” and whatever fatuous hand-wringing subject has seized their attention for the moment.

Hmmm, it would appear that I’m a lady then. That’s going to come as a shock to the wife !

Sounds like a lot of industry navel-gazing whereas for the most part, people who go out and ride just get on with it in spite of “Media and advertising ” and “some people in the industry” and whatever fatuous hand-wringing subject has seized their attention for the moment.

I think the OP was suggesting that the writer of the article seems confused. Saying its wrong to advertise cycling as ‘extreme’ as it may be sexist, but then in the same hand saying its wrong to advertise to women by saying they only enjoy the gentle things.

661’s next poster…

Cycling – its average, buy our stuff.

😆

I’ve said it repeatedly on the numerous threads on this subject in the past. As a designer who has worked extensively at the creative end of marketing departments for all kinds of companies, when I hear someone come up with something as tired, cliched and sad as having a half naked female on a poster or advert to promote a product, my heart sinks.

I just think, and generally tend to voice, the opinion: ‘is that it? Thats the best you can come up with? You’re actually so ****ing terminally dull, unimaginative and backward that of all the creative possibilities open to you, you fell back on that? That really is the best you can manage?

Its tragic that in this day and age, people still think like that

I just think, and generally tend to voice, the opinion: ‘is that it? Thats the best you can come up with? You’re actually so ****ing terminally dull, unimaginative and backward that of all the creative possibilities open to you, you fell back on that? That really is the best you can manage?

While I applaud your sentiment would it be fair to say that they keep falling back on that cliche because it’s been shown time and again to work? Set against all that evidence, all the other creative options start to look like a bit of a risk.

Its tragic that in this day and age, people still think like that

Yes – but these marketing ‘people’ are just representative of ‘people’ at large.

Until consumers stop being duped by obvious sexist advertising it will be an easy fallback for the marketing ‘people’.

I lose count of how many adverts I accidentally see (I try to switch the TV over most of the time) that I say to my wife afterwards “so, the message is ‘buy our product and you’ll get to shag a fit woman'”.

Luckily I am immune to all this as I tend to only go shopping when I really need something and all my internet purchases are preceded by a ‘sort by price ascending’ filter.

…do not generally need to push their limits, race against time and increase their adrenaline when riding rough downhill trails,” “They just want to enjoy the time spent in nature on the bike…

Apparently I’m a lady.

Its tragic that in this day and age, people still think like that

It’s true, but then you have a woman supposedly standing up for equality saying:

“Female cyclists do not generally need to push their limits, race against time and increase their adrenaline when riding rough downhill trails,” “They just want to enjoy the time spent in nature on the bike, and their expectations from the bike are completely different than men’s,”

Which is pretty much saying “you’re not really very masculine if you just want to go for a ride”.

Now the 661 advert was most likely as you said, the result of a complete lack of original ideas. But look at the shop window of any clothes shop, full of good looking women wearing the products. Where do you draw the line between good looking female models advertising clothing to women, and the same but aimed at men? Maxxis and the socks are obviously on one side of that line, 661 you could (tenuously, it’s a fragile straw man at best) was doing it’s best to say “look, hey ladies, you can look good in body armor, it’s not just all about looking androgynous covered in mud on a hillside in wales”

And before someone says “body image” or “it’s not supposed to be about looking good, it’s about riding a bike”. Just look at ANY MTB advert, not a single 40 something with a slight paunch, it’s all Gee Athertons chizzled abs.

And/or it’s just more click-bait.

And/or it’s just more click-bait.

will shortly be “un-following” singletrack towers on twitter unless they pack in the click baiting bolleaux.
We’re not all twelve.

661’s next poster…

Cycling – its average, buy our stuff.

661s stuff is average at best ime 😉

hence the need to have naked ladies selling their stuff?

What click bait?

It’s only click bait if what is at the end of the click isn’t what the headline suggested was there.

That’s the whole point of a headline! To intrigue you enough to read on. This is not new – it’s how the media has always worked and always will. It’s a good thing. Honestly, the whole click bait accusation thing really boils my piss.

Plus, the OP seems confused. I know he admitted as such. The Bad quote was not the opinion of Kane, the author but a quotation from a company who reckoned that was a fair generalisation to make about women. The whole valid point of the piece is that out on the trails equality seems to be the norm but in the world of marketing there’s some ground to be made up. There is, in effect, a disparity between the real world and what marketers think is the real world.

This is not click bait. This is a valid point well worth making.

bah its all a load of bollox

Pretty overwhelmingly unremarkable article really, badly written and full of inconsistencies.

(handbag/ Fairly typical for these parts, if I may say /handbag).

As much as I implore the need to address this issue in MTBing (and everywhere else in life), the Czech marketing blurb ‘do not want to push their limits, race against time and increase their adrenaline when riding rough downhill trails,” “They just want to enjoy the time spent in nature on the bike..’

Pretty much describes to a T my GF’s attitude to biking. It’s the fact that the quote implies that ‘all women’ are like this that is wrong. Part of me feels that some of the outrage at this quote may be due to a lost in translation thing. The elephant in the room… is that probably quite a lot of women (in proportion to men) do enjoy just riding their bikes, rather than getting involved with the stupid ****tish aggressive competitive male side of things that is marketed so attractively, and lapped up so hungrily, by most of us..

It is so, so easy to get outraged by everything on the internetz though.

It’s not the best article, but has been written by an “apprentice”, so I’m willing to give the youngster a bye on this one. The general sentiment, if not the execution, is well meaning. However, it brings nothing new to the debate, so will probably do as much harm as good.

Nothing to get too frothy about…

will shortly be “un-following” singletrack towers on twitter unless they pack in the click baiting bolleaux.
We’re not all twelve.

Sorry, forgot, this is STW, there’s obviously loads to get frothy about. 🙄

The elephant in the room is that probably quite a lot of men and women do enjoy just riding their bikes, rather than getting involved with the stupid ****tish aggressive competitive male side of things that is marketed so attractively to most of us..

FTFY

I don’t see anything remotely ‘clickbait’ on STW….

fin25 – Member

The elephant in the room is that probably quite a lot of men and women do enjoy just riding their bikes, rather than getting involved with the stupid ****tish aggressive competitive male and female side of things that is marketed so attractively to most of us..

FTFY
[/quote]

FTFY also.

I don’t see anything remotely ‘clickbait’ on STW….

Potentially interesting headline on a popular topic, followed by a article with nothing new in it. It’s not “local man earns £2685978333 and gets all the gurlz, click here before this loophole closes”, but it’s not exactly high quality journalism.

It’s a whole month since we last did it

Mark – Resident Grumpy

What click bait?

It’s only click bait if what is at the end of the click isn’t what the headline suggested was there.

That’s the whole point of using half neekid ladies! To intrigue you enough to read on. This is not new – it’s how the media has always worked and always will. It’s a good thing. Honestly, the whole click bait accusation thing really boils my piss.

Changed that for you.

as a designer myself and having working with loads of clients, I’m glad to report, without exception – companies do seem to be very thoughtful about avoiding anything sexist. i think that as an audience we are also far less likely to just accept stuff thrown in our faces.

i remember as a kid, the peanut backing cards in pubs, page 3 etc etc etc and all sorts of hideous misrepresentations of women. slowly everyone will understand its not cool.

maxxis worked it out recently. it just going to take some longer than others…

“Female cyclists do not generally need to push their limits, race against time and increase their adrenaline when riding rough downhill trails,” “They just want to enjoy the time spent in nature on the bike, and their expectations from the bike are completely different than men’s,”

The problem with saying that women “generally” conform to the quote above, is that those of us who don’t conform (and who actually do like pushing our limits, racing, and doing silly things whilst going downhill fast) are seen as a bit un-feminine by both genders.

And it raises a psychological barrier to those women who might want to ride their bike in a “masculine” way but don’t want to be seen to be “abnormal”.

What click bait?

Maybe it should be called “Do Mountain Bike Marketing Departments Have A Sexism Problem?”

A lot of people just buy a bike and ride it around with their friends and aren’t generally forming stereotypes about other riders, so saying Mountain Biking has a sexism problem sounds misleading.

The issue seems mostly contained within the industry doesn’t it?
And I’d be surprised if it was unique to MTB’ing, in fact, maybe the article should compare the advertising to other types of cycling, road riding, triathlon etc. Are they all the same? Is it unique to the “adrenaline” side of things, in which case do Snowboarding, Skateboarding suffer the same marketing issues?

It does seem to be more of a problem in marketing than in real life. I see plenty of women and girls out riding. There’s loads of kit out there for women. The top end female athletes are as much a household name to me as the men. I’m sure there are still a few issues, I know woman only skills courses are popular. I presume that’s to get away from some male macho dick ruining it but I suspect most people would like avoid him. The sooner the marketing companies catch up, the better

Mark – Resident Grumpy
What click bait?

e.g. when STW kept tweeting link to the mechanical doping article, despite no new content.

FEB16:
Video: The (6 year old) Boys Are Back In Town http://singletrackworld.com/2016/02/video-the-6-year-old-boys-are-back-in-town/ …

FEB17:
Six-year-old twins on bikes absolutely shredding it.
http://singletrackworld.com/2016/02/video-the-6-year-old-boys-are-back-in-town/ …

FEB13 and FEB14 Millar piece

or “How could this potential buyout affect the way we shop?”
links to an older article about the CRC/Wiggle rumour that had already been tweeted. It doesnt link to an article about anything to do with “the way we shop”. It’s clickbait. (then another 3x tweets linking to article)

3x “Top tips of the pros” tweets
3x “Icelands legends” tweets

etc
etc

I can manage to remember a tweet. All 140 characters. I dont need another one tomorrow.

Is it me, or are some of you deliberately mis-reading the quote “female cyclists do not generally…”? It’s clearly being held up as a bad example of a mysogynistic approach to marketing, in this instance by a czech bike company. It’s NOT a quote from someone wanting to encourage gender equality, is it.

I’d be interested in the following analysis…

Take a sample of print publications (yes print because it’s a well defined sample group) from action sports (and maybe more general sports publications).

For each one:
Editorial pictures: %s of Male, Female, Neither (eg landscape) or Both
Ad pictures: %s of Male, Female, Neither (eg landscape) or Both
Number of “suggestive” Ads: Be they bikini or 661/Specialized Nurse type.

Also some sort of comparison of whether people are clearly models or althletes by sex too.

I wouldn’t mind betting that compared to Moto, Surfing, skate etc. MTBing comes out rather well.

Is it me, or are some of you deliberately mis-reading the quote “female cyclists do not generally…”? It’s clearly being held up as a bad example of a mysogynistic approach to marketing, in this instance by a czech bike company

yeah but the top quote by a laydeee appears to my eyes to be put forward as a statement saying that MTB marketing is bad because it focuses on the extreme side, wheras the second similar statement is lambasted as everyday sexism. Which was where my confusion came from, not from who said it…

Why do a comparison on a very selective, poor performing baseline? It might show that mtb mags might be a bit better, but it’s no comfort if it’s merely less sexist than more sexist mags, but more sexist than it needs to be.

Stevet1 – it’s because the second statement is from a manufacturer prescribing what women should want, whilst the first comment is about promoting plurality. That’s the disctintion i’d make anyway….

@Stoner – for me what you are describing isn’t clickbaiting. It’s using twitter to promote yourself cleverly as (unless you only follow a few people) tweets are easily missed in the noise of a busy timeline. Whilst I can see your point and accept it might annoy, I’d say it’s unjust to put STW’s twitter feed on the same level as genuine clickbait feeds.
RM.

I have to say though that the article doesn’t help it’s cause by being so quote heavy, with a number of voices trying to blend into the central argument. Brave of STW to give space to an apprentice on what was the most viewed news story/topic of last year! 🙂

The point was that when the Chech company said it there was righteous indignation, but when a woman says it on a panel discussion about women in MTBing then it’s apparently OK.

The double standards is between people saying “that’s not what we want”, and marketing departments saying “well, actually, that’s what the majority of you do want”.

The PC way to promote it would be to just show pic of anyone, any shape, color, sex whatever in the adverts. But that’s not what happens, we get black and white photos of white men from Rapha, and boobs from Maxxis. Both could be argued as sexist (or even marginally racist) in their own way. Or they’re just acknowledging that biking is the sport of white men.

@legolam

…those of us who don’t conform (and who actually do like pushing our limits, racing, and doing silly things whilst going downhill fast) are seen as a bit un-feminine[/s] totally freakin’ awesome

FTFY 😉
.
.
.
(There is also a likely psychological barrier to some men who might want to ride their bike in a chilled out way and not push their limits, but don’t want to be seen as ‘unmasculine’ in the eyes of their peers)

I can manage to remember a tweet. All 140 characters. I dont need another one tomorrow.

You don’t but then we don’t tweet JUST for your benefit Stoner. What you mistakenly assume is that once you have seen a tweet everyone else must have. Twitter is a stream. At any particular moment only a proportion of users will see any particular tweet. We have close to 50k followers. On average a tweet is seen by 10% of that number, leaving 90% who have not seen it. We retweet the same link to stories often in order to reach the people who didn’t see it the first time. Of course there will always be people like you who sit on Twitter 24/7 and see everything. Most other users have other things to be doing.

The answer of course lies in your opening gambit. Just unfollow us.

It’s still not clickbait.

“there’s often a focus on the danger and extreme elements of the sport, rather than the benefits to mental health or the opportunity to have an adventure with your friends in the great outdoors.”

This is true, but it’s nothing to do with gender.

“Media and advertising still largely represents mountain biking as a ‘gentleman’s club’”

This is also true but not really anything to do with the other point.

It just seems really confused tbh, only a small minority of dudes are really into the danger/extreme side of our sport/hobby. (and then there’s lots of others who’d like to think they’re extreme) This isn’t a gender split, it’s just an imbalance of writing/visibility.

And no wonder, because it’s easy to write about, it’s interesting and it presumably sells.

I’m a bit of both….

Does that make me transgender?????

I don’t see the need to constantly distinguish men from women in mountain biking. Some people like racing, some like the more extreme stuff, some want a long ride in the countryside. We don’t even need women-specific bikes. And we definitely don’t need women’s kit in pink and purple!
I’m not into ‘downhilling’ but I like to push myself, learn new skills and I like a bit of adrenaline – fairly similar to the group of mostly men that I go biking with.