A bike company's sexist marketing campaign has female cyclists outraged
Superior Bikes is a bike manufacturer in the Czech Republic.
It makes a line of downhill mountain bikes for women, and the marketing campaign has the cycling community up in arms.
Women, Superior seems to think, want a bike that is light, easy, and stylish.
Fair enough, but according to Superior, what riders don't need, apparently, is "to push their limits, race against time and increase their adrenaline when riding rough downhill trails."
The female mountain bike community is predictably enraged. Many took to social media to vent their frustrations.
Here's what the page for Superior's women's line looks like:
How quaint.
Here are some quotes from posts made on the Superior Bikes Facebook page in the last couple of days:
- "Very patronizing and wrong assumption!!!! Very poor marketing and a very fast way to loose the respect of a growing, dynamic and amazing demographic of the Mtb world."
- "Your website text under the heading 'MTB Lady' is extremely offensive to all women, no matter what our nationality is, our age or whether we ride a bike or not."
- "You're kidding me right? Do I look like I'm worried about mounting and dismounting safely at any time? Bad enough your marketing team thought up this sexist and misogynistic spiel about your MODO collection, but who was the genius that approved it? Geezus."
We've reached out to Superior Bikes for comment on the controversy, but have not heard back.
It's worth pointing out that this comes just a few weeks after pro downhill mountain bike racer Amanda Batty very publicly quit writing for the cycling website Pinkbike because of harassing commenters and instances of sexist writing from other contributors.
In spite of this sexism, female bikers are still doing their thing.
If you are interested in seeing women shred on mountain bikes, check out last weekend's UCI World Cup race in Albstadt, Germany on Red Bull TV.
