Card 33, from the Girl Cyclists series (N49) for Virginia Brights Cigarettes 1887

Editor: This is Card 33 from the Girl Cyclists series, made around 1887 by Allen and Ginter for Virginia Brights Cigarettes. It's a print, photograph and drawing all in one. I find it striking how this woman is presented as both sporty and stylish, an image to sell cigarettes. What strikes you most about this image? Curator: I am struck by the deliberate pairing of progress and constraint. Consider the bicycle – a symbol of freedom and the modern age, allowing women increased mobility and independence. Yet, this is presented as a cigarette card, a disposable consumer item, immediately framing the woman as an object to be consumed, quite literally up in smoke. Do you see the symbolism embedded in the flowers twining through the spokes of the big wheel? Editor: Yes, now that you mention it, it feels like they’re trying to soften the image, or perhaps make it more conventionally feminine? It seems to contradict the powerful image of her with the bicycle. Curator: Exactly! The flowers can be read as an imposition, a sort of taming or controlling of this newfound freedom. Consider the cultural anxieties of the late 19th century around women's emancipation. The flowers, chosen specifically, might offer a clue to understand these tensions. Editor: That's fascinating; I hadn't considered that interplay between freedom and restriction so explicitly. So the image, seemingly simple, contains a whole conversation about gender and progress at that time? Curator: Precisely. It speaks volumes about how society grappled with the changing roles of women, packaging empowerment with old ideals for popular consumption. Editor: I see it now, so this is about the larger implications behind these sorts of everyday commercial images. Thanks, that gave me a lot to think about. Curator: My pleasure. Cultural memory persists even in the most fleeting of images!