Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1895-08-26
WORN BY BICYCLE WOMEN.

IL Paris Was Under q Government
FOUNDED on Love and Beauty.
From the Journal des Debats.
A celebrated operetta talks of people who
say that they are Spaniards. and who are
not Spaniards at ALL If the public journals
are to be believed, the bicycle, like Spain,
has its imposters. There are on our boule-
wards, particularly the Saint-Michel Boule-
ward. persons who wear costumes of cy-
clists. and who are not cyclists. They are
thus disguised 'fn order to attract atten-
tion."
According to the same papers, the police
project, moved by this guilty masquerad-
ing has proposed an ordinance by which
every woman clothed in what the American
women of the Chicago congress called "a
divided skirt" and what we call trousers,
shall have to prove on policemans de-
mand that her uniform is that of an au-
thentic bicyclist, and not merely q new
fashion. Other journals assert that this in
formation is erroneous, and that the police
project has never considered project to
regulate the clothing of "cycle women"
These journals demonstrate that sucli 4
project would have been ridiculous, odious
and, finally, impracticable. They demon
strate this with great abundance of solid
arguments. 1t cannot be denied that it
would be extremely difficult to discern the
true from the false bicyclists; that the
policemen charged with enforcing the law
would need rare faculties of tact, sagacity
and divination; that, doubtless, deplorable
errors would be committed; that French
citizens have already too little of personal
independence; that they are annoyed in
most of their actions by innumerable Or
ders and that 1t is superf1uous to make
them still more slavish. All this is true; if
one thinks only of liberty and of the i'm
mortal principles of 1883, bicyclists have
the imprescriptible right to wear trousers.
But If one thinks of aesthetics? Let US
government in love with beauty or at
least inimical to ugliness-a government
whose first care is to retain for modern
things little harmony and little style,
Greeks. that 1.-THE most religious act is to
exhibit pure FORMS" That government
would be weary of the forms, more and
more hideous, that the French people ex-
hibit delightfully."- to the light Of day. 1t
would be weary of the pulled sleeves that
overthrow the proportions of the feminine
body. destroy the lines and appear to be
made to conceal deformities. 1t would be
weary of the bicycle. Perhaps its use
would be tolerated for men. since it serves
country physicians, and since, in our utili-
tartan age, man is not expected to be hand
some. But the government inimical to
ugliness would try TO save what remains
of beauty in the world, and prohibit wo-
men from using that sinister machine
which makes geometrical angles of their
supple and sinuous curves, breaks their
the odious alternate motion Of their as
cending knees, makes them resemble re-
molders, dogs in turnspit, or monkeys
climbing, or the zinc automatcns which
came to US from America last winter
The state inimical to uglness would rid
Paris of these criminally hideous things,
and work In its cwn way for street decen-
cy. But 1t would fear to provoke a riot or,
perhaps. revolution, if its prohibition of
the bicycle was made too suddenly. a
subtle project of police would intervene.
He would promulgate noiselessly the ordi-
nance mentioned a moment ago. People
here are SO accustomed to being vexed by
the government that persons subjected to
this regulation would not protest loudly.
But they would be annoyed; inquests Of
police agents, affidavits, errors, constant
watching, would become torments to them
Little by little most of them would abandon
trousers in favor of the skirt. They would
not stop there; for the skirt Is embarrass-
Ing and heavy, and exacts special ma
chimes, less sure and less strong than the
others. Many persons would renounce BIZ
cycling entirely. There would remain only
few obstinate persons and with them it
might be possible to be successful by sup
Elementary regulations, which, for exam
pie, would permit bicycling only to women
whose LONELINESS was dazzling Thus,
ingenious despotism might efface the most
execrable assault that men ever commit
ted against aesthetics. What pity that
in this dream everything is Illusion, from
the police project project to the thought Of
government founded on love of beauty