"Cowboy" a Connected Bike Brand for Men? Gendered Representations and Uses

Connected e-bikes operate from a smartphone and provide access to various options to 'facilitate' cycling and tools for self-quantification (McArthur et al., 2019, Piramuthu 2016). These e-bikes are part of a continuum of “masculine” imaginaries linked to bicycles (Spinney, 2024, Bonham et al. 2015), cars (Norton, 2021) and digital technologies (Jouët 2003). Our research focuses on studying a brand called “Cowboy” Brussel-based, named one of the best inventions of 2022 by TIME magazine. After several years of selling a single model of a black-connected e-bike described as “sporty” and “powerful”, the brand faced criticism for featuring only white men in its communication (Lapeyroux et la., forthcoming). From 2021, the brand modified its communication to include women and racialized people to expand its marketing target. Cowboy launched a new, less sporty range of e-bikes, in different colors and evolved its gendered discourse.

To capture the new gendered imaginaries conveyed by this brand (De Lauretis, 1987), we carried out a socio-semiotic analysis (Julliard, 2013) of the gender performance of cyclists (Butler, 1990) in the representations of the Cowboy brand's website and Instagram page. Then, to analyze how changes in the brand's communication have impacted gendered uses, we conducted fifteen interviews with users of the brand's bicycles with diverse profiles (gender, sex, age race) circulating in Brussels with different models of Cowboy bicycles. This research is conducted at the intersection of gender, class, ethno-racial and age relations (Crenshaw, 2005). We will see that, Cowboy’s digital communication focuses on a “trendy”, ultra-connected, design, urban e-bike for young professionals (men and women) with diverse racial backgrounds among cyclists and ambivalent gender performances. Uses are predominantly gendered, despite the resistance strategies put in place by cyclists, most of whom are active, wealthy white people between the ages of 22 and 65.