Power-to-Weight: Cycling and Body Image in a World Where Skinny Rules

But here it comes back to haunt me; in some way it’s still holding me. Maybe it’s because the cycling community is so stuck on the physiological benefits of a high power-to-weight ratio that the psychological minefield of weight control and body image are being ignored. I can’t remember the number of times I’ve seen a riding buddy after several months and been greeted with “Hey! Wow, you look great—super skinny. You must be in excellent shape.” I am ambivalent about this compliment. On the one hand, I am frustrated that “skinny” is clearly intended as praise … and yet, on the other hand, there’s that private exultation, which frustrates me still more.

I suppose what really worries me is that if I—having been brought up living a conscientiously wholesome, low-fashion, no-TV, high-exercise lifestyle; having grown to adulthood as a healthy professional athlete; and having consciously discarded the harmful body image messages crowding the mainstream media and entertainment—if despite all this, I still succumb subconsciously to our culture’s unrelenting maxim of “Thin Is Better,” then how can one ever really escape it?

I don’t know how many cyclists suffer from eating disorders or weight control obsessions. I’m not even sure that it’s a problem in our sport. However, I think that since it’s so clearly a problem in our society at large, that it’s probably wise as a community to take careful stock of how we present the issue of power-to-weight, especially to junior riders coming up in the sport—both boys and girls. The psychological implications could ultimately prove to be as important as the physiological ones.

Illustration by Daryl Cagle