Whip It

This is not what real women look like

When I was in my early teens I read a book about a girl near my age (early junior high/middle schoolish).  She was an outdoorsy, tom-boyish type who lived outside a small town and enjoyed normal, active kid things like baseball, climbing trees, riding horses and chasing frogs in ditches.  But she had recently had her bedroom redecorated in frilly pale-pink and white French provincial, and was beginning to find her old interests embarrassing.  Over the summer, a new family moves in down the road, with a boy of her age.  Expected to be friends, they are awkward and tongue-tied when introduced, and when they're left alone they quickly become sulky and argumentative, get into a fight, and have to be separated by their parents.  This is, of course, because they are attracted to each other, but are too young and naive to recognize their true feelings (so are their parents, but I got it right away).  So they spend most of the summer moping, day-dreaming, but avoiding each other, and quarreling when they meet.


Eventually the girl's mother decides to have a heart-to-heart with her, the one starting out "your're getting older now, and going through a lot of changes . . . "  Mom comes in to the pink and white bedroom where Girl has been sulking all afternoon, carrying a pink and white paper bag from the local ladies' boutique, and says, "I think you should begin wearing these . . . a brassiere and a tight little girdle."  Girl has a shrieking temper tantrum, throws the bag against the wall, and slams out of the room.

Later on Boy comes over, bashfully apologizes for acting like a jerk, and invites the girl to the community club dance coming up at the end of the summer.  She accepts, then drifts dreamily upstairs to her pink and white room, to try on her new bra and girdle.

This is Victoria's Secret:  with the right lingerie, a girl is ready for anything.

I was so disgusted I would have thrown the book across the room, if it hadn't been from the library.

In case you're wondering what any of this has to do with bicycling, think of the difficulty most women have getting used to the idea of wearing spandex cycling shorts with no underwear.  Once we start riding frequently, or going on longer recreational rides, we find a little padding is necessary - in the shorts, but it really has no use in bras.  But there is no style of underwear that won't make panty lines under spandex, except maybe thongs, and I don't even want to begin to imagine how those would feel after twenty miles in the saddle.

During the dark winter months, when I amused myself with watching DVDs on my intimate 9x17 inch computer screen, I found an antidote to this stuff, and a welcome addition to the sadly limited young-woman-coming-of-age genre.  Whip It, starring Ellen Page and directed by Drew Barrymore, has nothing to do with bicycling, but it is the story of a rambunctious, non-conformist, but otherwise normal, ordinary young woman finding a path to independence on wheels.  In this case, the wheels are roller skates, and the heroine lies about her age to create a new identity as Babe Ruthless, a member of the Hurl Scouts roller-derby team.

For anyone still mystified by the depths of the female psyche, I also recommend The Devil Wears Prada, a more traditional chick-flick about a young journalism grad (Anne Hathaway) who temporarily sells herself to the fashion industry.  Plus, the DVD includes clips demonstrating the hazards of high-heeled shoes.