Cycling Weekly has apologised for what it described as an “appalling lack of judgement”.
UK cycling magazine Cycling Weekly has issued an apology after a sexist caption appeared alongside a picture of a female rider in this week’s edition.
Hinckley Cycle Racing Club, from Leicestershire in the UK, was the subject of a regular feature called ‘Ride With’ in this week’s issue of the magazine, in which a photo of a female club member was captioned “token attractive woman”.
https://twitter.com/Chapeau_Velo/status/903333298361032704?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fnewswire.storyful.com%2F
A member of the club pointed out the error on Twitter on Thursday, August 31, with Cycling News issuing a full apology several hours later, an apology that is included in a pinned Twitter post on the Cycling Weekly Twitter page.
In a statement, Cycling Weekly editor Simon Richardson apologised for “an appalling lack of judgement” by a member of the sub-editing team and said that it is not a reflection of the culture in the Cycling Weekly office.
You can see the apology in full below, followed by a number of complaints on social media once the caption had been spotted.
— Cycling Weekly (@cyclingweekly) August 31, 2017
Pic via Twitter/Cycling Weekly via Storyful
https://twitter.com/Chapeau_Velo/status/903339085149995008?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fnewswire.storyful.com%2F
Better question: who the hell thought is was ok to casually use in mockups? Printing was a fuckup, placement was culture.
— Polkageist, Esq; stiricide@mastodon.lol (@stiricide) August 31, 2017
No word as yet on this?! As a female cyclist, I find this disgraceful. It's hard enough to get ladies to join us!
— Lesley Watson (@Saffysoot) August 31, 2017
So are @cyclingweekly going to publish a picture of their token unattractive bigot or will it be a group photo? #cycling
— Rob Hughes (@RobsWebquarters) September 1, 2017