Post-War Missed Opportunities

World War II had seen women take on traditionally male roles across society—working in factories, serving in resistance movements, maintaining economies while men fought. Many expected this would translate to greater sporting opportunities post-war. Instead, the 1950s saw retrenchment of traditional gender roles, with women encouraged to return to domesticity.

The Masculine Mystique

The Tour's post-war reconstruction emphasized hypermasculinity. Champions like Louison Bobet and Jacques Anquetil embodied different masculine ideals—Bobet the suffering hero, Anquetil the cool calculator—but both reinforced cycling as male domain. Media coverage focused on riders' masculine qualities: their toughness, their role as family providers, their attraction to female fans.

Women appeared in Tour coverage primarily as wives, girlfriends, or podium hostesses. Their role was to support, admire, and decorate, never to participate. This visual vocabulary—suffering men, supportive women—became so embedded in Tour imagery that challenging it seemed to challenge the race's essence.