If you’re a bicycle owner active on Instagram, you’ve seen the mysterious preponderance of scantily clad women posing suggestively with bikes. I name them mysterious because I am honestly surprised, “Who’s double-tapping these items? Who is overlooking how this woman will ride this motorcycle without pedals for long enough to think this is sexy?” That’s why I was pleased when a chum introduced me to @gravel_tryhard.
The Instagram account has only been around since January 8, but it has already collected more than 3,000 fans for its hilarious parody images and movies of distinctly sexualized snapshots. [Want to be a #bossbabe on the hills? Climb! It gives you the workouts and mental strategies to conquer your nearest peak.] I asked the writer of @gravel_tryhard for a Q&A, and they agreed that she should remain anonymous.
(“I am, amongst other things, the social media face for the enterprise I work for,” she explains. She knows it’s only time before someone connects her with the account. “But we’ll burn that bridge while we get there.”) I knew our chat would be exciting—which it became—but we also had a fairly thoughtful discussion about the actual harm of sexist pictures on biking social media and how humor can be one of the most effective weapons towards it.
BICYCLING: What inspired you to start this account? @gravel_tryhard: It’s been this long-standing internal comic story among some cycling pals and me that there’s this area of interest in the cycling community online: very short, high-definition photography of girls behind on a bicycle. Whenever we stumbled through particularly bizarre times of this genre, we’d send them to every different. I am not a social media character. I don’t have Facebook; I don’t have Twitter.
But a friend talked me into starting an Instagram. Somehow, those two thoughts were merged in my head. What’s your goal for @gravel_tryhard? I’ve been doing the biking component for a while, so once I see these things, I snicker. I’m like, “How is she sporting those stilettos on that bicycle? How did this company think this ad was an excellent idea?” It’s ludicrous. But imagine a lady looking to decide whether or not to get into biking, and they search “girls’ biking” on Instagram—what does she see?
I might have become around and left if that became me years ago, earlier than I sold my first Avenue bike. I could’ve said, “Well, this sport is for boys. It’s approximately searching adorable; it’s not approximately operating hard, getting muddy, and conquering your boundaries. It’s simply just about impressing men.” I wanted to find a manner to speak to that girl and inform her that no, girl cyclists observe these things, which makes us unhappy; however, it also makes us snigger. And if I can flood the one’s tags with stuff that makes that girl laugh, rather than stuff that makes her assume, “I’m no longer top enough; this sport’s now not for me,” instead of questioning that, she’s smiling.
Most of your parody pokes fun at sexist advertising portrayals of women. But I observed that influencers, like @wattage_cottage and @getliftedmiami, or even men like @ultraromance, aren’t off-limits. Is the account also a way of poking amusing at influencer tradition? This is a truly touchy and complicated subject matter. What I’m making fun of are snapshots. And of the path, it’s tough to separate that from making amusing of human beings. Some humans think that the influencer stuff isn’t an honest game or no longer a lot in order-making fun of marketing.
But if you’ve got an influencer who’s created this curated photograph of a cycling lifestyle that is poisonous and dangerous to girls but also coming from her heart, is that k? Influencer advertising is marketing. @getliftedmiami has her Bianchi factor, @wattage_cottage is selling her socks. Saying that this form of advertising and marketing shouldn’t be a challenge to satire, I don’t suppose that’s proper in 2019. I’ve attempted to locate methods that are mild. Actually, a variety of the influencers I’ve parodied have ended up leaving fantastic feedback and following me, which tells me that I’m doing this properly because I don’t want to harm women.
My goal isn’t always to get these girls to take their images down or put some clothes on. I aim to produce something for the girl viewing their pictures. I genuinely love that you have the idea of this through a lot. And I’ve noticed that in your posts, you name plenty of the people you’re parodying, including the one’s influencers, “boss babes.” I discover some non-irony there, a true affection. I am pleased and thankful that you observed that. I certainly have actual affection for almost everyone I’ve created these responses to. I recognize them. You can inform them simply by searching at them, and you will see that most people have athletes’ bodies. They’re glaringly working tough. It takes quite a few words to get yourself made up like that and create beautiful, curated, constant lifestyle pics. I am sincerely and truly inspired to use it.