The mechanical Eve: The commercial image of women in bicycle advertising during the belle époque
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.14195/2183-6019_18_1Keywords:
commercial communication, woman, bicycle, sports, carAbstract
Why are there so many iconographic representations of women riding bicycles?
Why are these representations concentrated around 1900?
To answer these two questions, and others that may arise, we will make a small analysis of the advertisements, covers and photographs of the so-called Belle Époque.
For this purpose, we have taken a group of images of women made with different techniques. A total of 473 images were taken for this purpose. From this first selection, made with the sole criterion that the woman is the protagonist of the message, and although we do not intend to make a quantitative analysis, we have already obtained a first knowledge: “women cyclists” make up the second group numerically after “women readers”.
Following Barthes, we can already affirm that what is repeated has a meaning, and that our mission must be to discover what lies behind the numerous representations of this woman cyclist.
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