As someone who is a member of one of the aforementioned minorities, I would be more offended to find out that they had overlooked an inspirational story to try and include a token person just so people felt better about having "diversity."

Maybe it's naive of me, but I'd like to believe that the women chosen spoke out to them. I'm sure it is a difficult decision to choose just five people when they probably received thousands of stories from women who felt they had something worthy to share. They chose individuals who were willing to share their touching stories in the hopes that we, also individuals, would find a common thread.

Do we really need to be exactly the same whatever, to identify with one another. Can we not identify with the plight of a girl left to raise her siblings in Africa because her parents were taken by the AIDS epidemic. Or maybe a Muslim man trying to live his life in this country without being looked at as the enemy. Or a mom of a soldier dealing with PTSD. And I'm sure almost everyone is familiar with Anne Frank. I have very little in common with these people, but yet, their lives have touched me.

Some of the responses to this thread leave me wondering if people have actually bothered to read these women's blogs. There are complaints that these Trek women are not like me because XYZ. But if you read the blogs, you'd know that there is a woman who has started to race. A woman who couldn't drop $$$ on a bike; she had to save for six months while riding a borrowed bike. A mom who is juggling her home life with training for a Tri. A woman who had bad knees who went from walking a block to biking 30+ miles. And maybe the women who lost weight are not so heavy now (Geez, they both lost at least a person each! ) but they definitely are not a size two either (not that there's anything wrong with that). And hey, who knows what these women's natural hair colors are. I know that my current color is not the color I was born with.

So, it seams to me that some of the responses are based on these women's appearances. Isn't part of "diversity" not judging others by what they look like?

These are WOMEN WHO RIDE BIKES! Isn't that what we're here for?

[end rant]