The Tour de France Is Moving Against Its Sexist Traditions

The Tour de France is the most highly anticipated, popular cycling event worldwide. The grueling 21-day-long road-cycling race fosters a strong connection to its history, France’s history, and race tradition. However, until the 2020 Tour, the race maintained an incredibly antiquated, objectifying, sexist tradition. At the end of every stage (day of racing), the winning cyclists of each category — the general classification (overall), the sprint point classification, the mountain point classification, and the best young rider — mount a podium to receive their respective jerseys, awards, and recognition from the spirited crowd and the media. This podium ceremony formerly employed local women models, referred to problematically as “podium girls,” to pose alongside the riders. Officially called hostesses, they were dressed to represent advertisers and would pose with the winning cyclist, smile for pictures, clap alongside them, and then kiss them.

Thankfully, in 2020 the race modernized this practice, employing one host and one hostess for each classification. Conveniently, as a result of the simultaneous introduction of pandemic protocols and male hosts, the kisses and physical contact between the hostesses and cyclists are a thing of the past.

But before I congratulate the Tour on this change, I have to consider how this practice affected me as a young girl. I grew up watching the Tour attentively each summer and it quickly became an important event to me. I always knew something was off about the “podium girls,” and I had heard family members call it “old-fashioned.” But in sad evidence of how early I had internalized misogyny, I didn’t identify the podium tradition as itself odd, imbalanced, and objectifying. Instead, I blamed my discomfort on my own assumption that conflated beauty with unintelligence and unimportance. This was the only role for women in the Tour de France and I couldn’t picture myself in it.

I didn’t know it then, but many of these women are pursuing advanced degrees and are polyglots. They work long, grueling days representing the race and sponsors at the Tour and withstand a lot of pressure. But it should not have taken that knowledge for me to realize that the hostess position was reductive and that my assumptions were horrifically misogynistic and simplistic. And I can’t imagine I was the only young kid who made these assumptions.

Not only is the Tour male-centric and, until very recently, blatantly sexist, but it is also overwhelmingly white. Given that the cycling industry benefits both culturally and financially from the interest of young people, the Tour should be incentivized to make stronger efforts toward inclusivity. Many competitors and commentators grew up watching the Tour de France. As the flagship event of the sport, it is consistently cited as a major source of inspiration for the greats and future greats. But this narrow representation almost exclusively serves white men and perpetuates a cycle of exclusion.

I’m obviously not the first person to realize that the elite cycling establishment is sexist.

In the objectifying tradition of “podium girls,” a culture of sexual harassment, the lack of coverage of women’s cycling in sports media, and the historical lack of an equivalent women’s event, it’s clear that the sport and society itself have significant work to do. But the change regarding podium girls hasn’t made the ceremony any less celebratory; in fact it has shifted the focus and culture of celebration in the Tour from rewards themselves to a greater appreciation of riders’ performances. I’ve observed that mid-race photos are being used considerably more often for news and social media coverage than podium photos, indicating this shift.

Two major changes, the creation of the 2022 Women’s Tour de France and the shift in the podium girl tradition, make me hopeful. This exhibits two major facets of sexism in the Tour being finally addressed: changing sexism within the men’s race and creating major opportunities for women’s cycling. Hopefully, meaningful changes will continue to be made within the race and a more welcoming environment will emerge in professional cycling.