I recently read a titillating piece of short fiction about tough, boyish women on motorbikes. It surprised me that, even in the twenty-first century, this image still felt somehow subversive. The female biker is nothing new, but whether a real flesh and blood woman or a fictional character, society still experiences a collective frisson at the thought of her.

Motorbikes have always been symbolic of rebellion. As a traditionally male mode of transport, the bike is seen to embody the spirit of independence, dominance and danger. These factors are amplified all the more when the rider is female. Many men feel intimidated by this. It’s common, especially in the bike community, for them to react by reducing women to pillion-fodder – merely decorative accessories for vehicles, whether or not the woman herself is the bike’s sole rider.

However, the iconic girl-on-a-motorcycle image is one that intrigues and arouses me. The closest I ever got to being one myself was a couple of years on a moped as a teenager, but nevertheless I chose to wear full leathers, gloves and the biggest, butchest pair of boots I could find. My tough image was somewhat undermined by the fact my bike wouldn’t go over 40mph. Still, it was a start.

Here’s part of a rather telling article from the Deccan Chronicle on the allure of the motorbike in Indian culture, and how men perceive female bikers:

‘…The sight of a woman on a bike is an instant turn on. Megan Fox in super hot pants straddling a bike in Transformers 2 and Priyanka Chopra in Don up the oomph factor while they accelerate and sizzle on a machine.

“A hot woman riding a Harley Davidson, dressed in a leather suit and wearing red lipstick — it’s every man’s fantasy,” says adman Prahlad Kakkar.

Anshumani Khanna, creative director, DDB Mudra says, “If you have a good looking woman and a motorcycle, then you are the envy of every person in the group. And that’s what most men want — to be envied. Bringing women and bikes together is not the closest you can get to appeal to men’s sensuality, but it’s definitely an appealing image, it has always been.”

Kakkar calls a motorcycle a modern-world replacement for the stallion, which has traditionally been a symbol of power and virility. For a long time, a women on a horse was seen as something erotic, now the motorcycle has replaced it.

Women are no longer just the titillating element on a bike. The “men’s territory” has now been invaded by women biker groups. They love speed and the adrenaline rush as much as their male counterparts. A remarkable change was seen in the show Stuntmania, which had four women stunt bikers out of the 12 participants. They not only stunned everyone with their skills, some performed better than the men. “If a man can ride a bike and perform stunts, so can women, and we have proven that,” says 25-year-old Smitha Gondkar, a professional stunt biker and one of the participants in Stuntmania Season 2. She loves her Pulsar 250 as much as any other biker would. “Biking is liberating. It makes me feel free. The fear and excitement is something you don’t get anywhere else,” she says. When Smitha started riding bikes, men wouldn’t take her seriously. “They used to consider me as just another babe who was there to be a pillion rider. It was frustrating,” she adds.

Vartika Pandey, another avid biker based in Pune, recently rode across 12 states to spread awareness about smoking. Being a woman biker makes her feel special. “I love the sound of my bike and the way it looks as much as any other biker. My bike is like my companion…”’

Full article here.

From the Guardian article by Catharine Arnold on the late Paul Raymond’s biography, offering an insight into the world of gentlemen’s clubs and erotic publishing:

“Raymond arrived in London at the same time as the striptease boom. While nude tableaux had been popular since Queen Victoria’s day, it was illegal for the performers to move. The Lord Chamberlain could close down a show if he considered it obscene. Raymond swiftly exploited a loophole in the licensing laws by making his club “members only”, although he endured battles with council officials, the police and moral watchdogs throughout his career. When Raymond opened his Revuebar in 1958, it proved an instant success. At a time when it was fashionable in London to be northern, this middle-class Catholic schoolboy from Glossop reinvented himself as a hard-boiled spiv, gaining credibility with the Krays, Frankie Fraser, Peter Sellers and Diana Dors. Soon he was boasting that his income from the Revuebar was £2,000 a week, 10 times more than the prime minister, Harold Macmillan. He’d never had it so good.

Raymond’s genius was to package mainstream pornography as a lifestyle accessory. The self-appointed “king of the keyholes” understood the voyeuristic aspect of male sexuality, providing a titillating, rose-tinted world populated by statuesque strippers with names like Creme De Cocoa and Tempest Storm. By appealing to the lowest common denominator, Raymond built up an empire worth £650m, ranging from magazines such as Men Only to a property portfolio. By the time he died he owned most of Soho. But there were lapses of judgement. An attempt to emulate the Bunny club drew the threat of legal action from Hugh Hefner. Raymond sold up to John Aspinall and shamefully left the club as normal one evening, minutes before his entire staff were fired. An attempt to cash in on the emerging gay scene with a transvestite revue floundered until it was rescued at the eleventh hour by one of Raymond’s proteges – Danny La Rue.

Showbusiness disasters make good copy, and Willetts provides a string of anecdotes, such as the lion-taming act that featured in one of Raymond’s early national tours. This involved two girls posing nude in a lions’ cage, while Nikolai the lion-tamer put three elderly big cats through their paces. The routine nearly ended in tragedy at the Nottingham Empire when Rana the lioness lashed out with one paw. With admirable sang-froid, Nikolai stared her down and completed the performance, as his white glove turned crimson and the girls remained motionless on their pedestals in poses of frozen immobility that would have impressed the Lord Chamberlain himself.

Another life-threatening act involved Miss Snake Hips, who performed with a nine-foot-long boa constrictor. When, on her opening night at the Revuebar, the boa got aggressive and started to squeeze, Miss Snake Hips had to be rescued by former heavyweight boxer turned doorman Nosher Powell. One gimmick, which featured naked girls swimming in a giant fish tank, nearly ended in tragedy when a performer passed out after being overcome by chlorine fumes. After this, Raymond restricted himself to less dangerous acts, such as one featuring a horse trained to remove girls’ underwear. A simple trick – sugar lumps attached to the lingerie at strategic points – ensured that neither strippers nor animal were injured.”

Full review here.