Sepia Saturday 138: Keeping on your toes

Riding a bike while wearing high heels? These wonder women are probably wearing girdles too. In the 40's, 50's and even the early 60's an anatomical jiggle anywhere on the body was considered unladylike and in bad taste. A girdle was essential, even on a bicycle! I fondly remember my friend's mother coming home from her job, going straight to the bedroom to remove the offending garment then rubbing her back against the door jamb. She'd moan and say, "Someday you girls will know what this is all about". Fortunately, we never did. Thankfully, my generation burned their underwear. Selling a girdle to a woman in the 70's was like selling a refrigerator to an eskimo? What for? 

I googled "riding a bike in high heels" to see if there was any advice on the matter. Biking is coming back in hip urban areas and cities all over the world are re-figuring their highways to allow for more bicycle traffic and offering incentives to those who choose to ride them. Websites with riding advice abound. The single most important rule of high heel riding seems to be that you pedal with the toe part of your shoe. Do not, as these ladies are doing, let the pedal cradle in the arch of your foot. This is dangerous as is riding without a helmet and doing that tandem thing over the shoulders. What is that anyway? Could anyone really ride a bicycle wearing today's foot fashions?

Ultimately, there are some things you do in high heels and some things you do not. At least that's what I thought until my friend Nancy sent me the story of the legendary Maurice Wilson, who attempted a climb of Mt. Everest in spite of an incredible lack of experience. He didn't make it -  you can read the whole story here.

Whttp://www.bbc.co.uk/insideout/yorkslincs/series3/everest_mountaineering_climb_maurice_wilson.shtml

But Maurice, who owned a woman's clothing store, was even more complicated than your ordinary nut case who crashed a plane into Everest and then without training or experience attempted to climb it. When his body was found, there was women's clothes in his rucksack and some claim "he was decked out in woman's underwear".  But wait, there's more......

In the 60's during a climbing attempt by the Chinese, a woman's shoe was found at 21,000 feet.
Enough said.

For more stories on this photo, cycle over to Sepia Saturday.