I bought my first pair of men’s cycling shorts by accident. Sort of. Fine. The truth. I was in a store in St. Paul, shivering through the post-ride process after biking over in weather that had started dry and finished with horizontal sleet off the river, and picked a pair off the clearance rack without looking at the label because I just wanted to put dry pants on and sit down.
Got home, changed out of my jacket, realized the label said men’s medium. And then rode eleven miles in them, forgetting nothing was uncomfortable about them because nothing was. Here’s the part of that story that doesn’t make it into when you google ask women swear on the internet: At no point during those eleven miles did I think, Hey, these were made for men. Something feels wrong. The fact that those shorts didn’t come up and tell me they were boys’ clothing is the part people skip when they ask “can women wear men’s cycling shorts?” The answer is hell yes we can, and many of us do because we realized nobody could actually tell from how they fit
The chamois isn’t gendered, it’s shaped, and shape doesn’t always align to labels
Here’s the truth of what IS different between men’s and women’s shorts. The padding. The thing inside called a chamois. It’s shaped differently to account for sit bone distribution and contact pressure points that vary from body to body. Women’s pads are supposed to be shorter and wider at the rear, men’s longer and narrower through the center. Except when they’re not. I’ve tried on maybe nine or ten pairs of women’s shorts over my three years riding to campus (fun fact: bike I bought second hand on Craigslist for $80, love it still) and seriously considered purchasing and only three of them sat where marketing promised they would. The others just ran small and had flowers stitched into the leg instead. Different, sure. Better? I don’t know.
My coworker Denise,female elementary school teacher who bikes thirty miles a day when the weather’s nice enough in CO isn’t cold, started wearing men’s shorts against her better judgement about two years ago after pulling her hair out trying to solve a saddle sore problem that was transmitted to me in far more graphic detail than was comfortable during a staff meeting. And when she finally gave up on girls’ styles, what she found was that the men’s shorts didn’t magically fit better than women’s. But the cut on that specific brand of men’s short happened to put more seat on her pelvis and less around her thighs than any women’s cut she’d tried, which is the precise combination she needed to stop the rubbing that no number of women’s “specific” models had cured.
To her credit, she didn’t set out to find a pair of boys’ underwear. She set out to find something that worked and treated the labels as clues, not demands. She needed the shape of men’s because of how her pelvis and thigh meet on a bike saddle, not because she needed something men typically shop for.
Cycling shorts aren’t inherently gendered clothing the way button up shirts are. Guys generally have broader shoulders than ladies, so when you reach for a large shirt from an unknown brand, you have reason to expect the seams will line up with your bones better if it’s labeled men’s. But bikes don’t care if you’re male or female. All they care about is your muscles and how they apply pressure to fiberglass and rubber. A women’s pair from a quality company and a men’s pair from that same company are both going to use very similar fabric, very similar pad technology, just cut from slightly different patterns. For some riders those patterns will line up better on your end depending on whether you pick the mens or womens size. For some riders it wont matter. But the tag sewn into your shorts has way less influence over that outcome than the measurements listed on the label do, and yet almost no one pays attention to the measurements, shorts they purchased excepted, until things start rubbing at mile six.
When I stopped shopping by gender and started shopping by measurements
I could have told myself all this years ago. I just didn’t realize it until after I stopped dividing every online search by male vs female bodied riders. Once I started cross referencing the listed waist and inseam sizes instead of letting marketing try to decide for me, which was obvious in theory and took me embarrassingly long to actually practice. The first pair of men’s shorts I bought that way are the ones I rode home from that snowy day in St Paul in. I now own four pairs of men’s and one pair of women’s, and that women’s pair is literally the one I wear the least, not because it sucks but because the men’s just happen to fit my particular combination of thigh-to-hip curve better. Does that mean my sister, or Denise, or hundreds of thousands of female bikers will magically find women’s cuts do that same math and settle there? No. Maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t. Either way it’s not because the tag says that’s where you should shop. It’s just where the numbers line up for you.
Bonus shitty perk to buying dudes shorts? In my experience they come with a $5-$15 price decrease from whatever women’s pair uses the same fabrics and design and feels just like it does on your body. Look, I bought these the same week I was grading maths about fractions at my day job so I recognize how slapped together that connection feels. I’m not going to suggest there’s a huge conspiracy to charge ladies more for underwear. But if there absolutely is not and women’s just cost more because the market’s smaller and production runs are cut down as a result, I will also never encourage anyone to overpay for a product just because of what label is printed on it.
So no, not every girl should run out and buy boys underwear tomorrow. If you’ve got womens shorts that fit, love them all you want! Life’s too short to beat yourself up over a label that got you what you need.
I didn’t even understand mine until I hit that saddle sore wall myself. And trust me when I tell you that DENISE does not give one flying fuck that her go to shorts are from the boys section. To her, they’re just shorts that don’t injure her, and the second someone starts moralizing about what that means for all women we’ve missed the point.
Does your lady parts know what section of the store it came from? Yes. Does your bike saddle? No. Does it matter? Also no.
Gareth teaches in Leeds and dresses for four proper seasons, including the sideways rain. He writes about practical clothes, weatherproofing that actually works, and coats he’s put through a full Yorkshire winter.
