Trek Women Who Ride

[Kano]

Karen-
Don't forget the program is billed as "Women Who Ride- Five women just like you".
If they want to play it like that they should give us a little diversity.

They're nothing like me. They're nothing like Andrea and Velogirl who race. They're nothing like Slowbutsteady who would like to lose some weight, and they're nothing like rij17, a latina (a large part of our population in many income levels).

i think when this all plays out it might come under the heading of "it seemed like a good idea at the time".

The truth of the matter is that nobody is just like anybody else.

These five women have each faced their own life challenges and have chosen bike riding as a way to get through the day. We here on TE are a multitude of women who have each faced our life challenges and have chosen bike riding as a way to get through the day.

Without looking very far beyond the photo on the front page, I found that one races single track. Two do triathalons. One rides a hybrid. One's a mom who rides her road bike to recharge her mommy batteries. There's diversity in their riding styles. If we look a little farther, we'll certainly also find diversity in their reasons for choosing riding.

The point in my original post is that we weren't looking very deeply at these women as we complained about a lack of "diversity." I'm saddened that we are judging this book by its cover.


For what it's worth, my guess is that the "strategy" for this campaign is to sell riding a bike to "Jane Average." It's similar to Martha Stewart recently signing with SVP to promote sewing as a hobby. People who are avid, top of the line sewing machine owners appear to be in quite a tizzy about this, but they're not the target demographic.

Just like avid sewers don't need to be "sold on sewing," people who race or do superlong distance riding like some of our members don't need the sales pitch.

It takes a lot of care to choose a group of women to be "women just like you" who won't intimidate "Jane Average," and keep her on the sofa!

Yes, SO FAR we're only seeing stuff on the Trek web site, but the campaign is really just getting started. Let's see what's to come before we call it a flop, eh?

Karen in Boise