Woman competing in Tour de France

[VeloVT]

My take on this: it's probably true that the joke was intended to be about the president of the company and not about women, but there is enough latitude to reasonably misinterpret it that they should have killed the idea anyway. It's a little bit like that New Yorker cover with the Obamas dressed as militants/extremists with a picture of Osama Bin Laden and a burning American flag behind them in the Oval Office. The cover was actually poking fun at the fear-mongerers/hate-mongerers, NOT at the Obamas, but the image was so powerful that the fear-mongering message subsumed the irony/subtext. While the cartoon was actually quite clever and punchy, putting it on the cover was a bad decision for the aforementioned reason. Sometimes you have to look at all of the messages that you could be sending, and not just the message you intend to send.

[beccaB]

I called Trek travel who sent me the original e-mail and asked to speak to the person in charge of that e-mail and was actually directed to Tania Worgull's voice mail. I left a message about how upset I was and about how poor taste this is and left her my phone number if she has the courage to call me back. I was told that she actually generated the e-mail. I'm really upset that I actually fell for it. Yes, I know about the gullible thing. I also wear my heart on my sleeve and have given to causes I later found out were bogus, thus changing my attitude on charitable giving. This certainly changes my attitude on the Trek bicycle company, although my husband thinks I should sit on it and calm down before I cancel my order for the new bike.

[shootingstar]

This certainly changes my attitude on the Trek bicycle company, although my husband thinks I should sit on it and calm down before I cancel my order for the new bike.

Agree with him --just wait for Trek's response.

Don't take this too personally --a tendency of many women re: jokes/pranks. Alot of guys laugh off this stuff, when they do it among themselves. After all, I nearly fell for it myself, since I wondered who this 'woman' was.

I do think this was delibrately planted into our forum to see our response..a women's cycling forum.