Sk8r Grl: Can I Make it Any More Obvious?

Skating has influenced a ton of culture; most of us have owned a pair of Old Skool Vans, played Skate 2 on someone’s PS2. More recently, skateboarding took the world stage at the Olympics which saw 13-year-old Momiji Nishiya become the youngest ever gold medal winner for Japan in the Women’s Street competition this year. The inclusion of skating at the Olympics represents a huge step forward, bringing skateboarding from the fringes to the mainstream. It’s awesome that skateboarders are able to represent their countries on such a huge scale. Once you learn how to skate it’s a pretty cool way to spend your days and learn a new skill, not to mention it’s probably a more reliable mode of transport than New Zealand’s bus system. However, getting into skating can prove difficult, especially for women trying to get into the scene. 

Liv has been snowboarding at a high level since she was around 12, and skating was a good way to stay on form during the off-season. Reflecting on the Olympics this year, Liv found it odd to see skating on such a structured platform. “Skating culture is often associated with like being free spirited, skating the earth you know, stuff like that. So, to see it being judged like that was kind of ironic,” she says. The way Liv pictured it, she assumed it would be one huge game of S-K-A-T-E and then the last three standing get the medals. She thinks it’s cool that skateboarding has hit the mainstream, especially for young women. However, she recalls the early stages of learning to skate that she felt her learning the skill was a bit of a spectacle at the skatepark. “When I was learning how to drop in, everyone was watching my dad teach me, I feel like it’s not really a thing when a guy learns to drop in, but it was so fascinating when it was me,” she recalls. She felt that people went out of their way to praise her because she was a girl learning to skate, but at the same time she was just doing it to have fun and improve her skills, like everyone else there. “It feels like there’s no transition between being a beginner and a hardcore skater, which the pressure of social media doesn’t help with,” she points out. 

Mia remembers getting a skateboard when she was eight, which her brother helped her pick out. “It had a dragon on it which was pretty cool. As soon as I got it I got my skateboard license, which is a piece of paper from my primary school that said I was allowed to use my skateboard at lunchtime with the other kids,” she recalls. “I thought it was weird that I was the only girl who had a board, like I couldn’t understand why no one realised how cool it was.” As she got older, she kept skating with her brother and his friend and remembers having no insecurity about going to the skatepark or the rec centre with them. “When you’re a kid you don’t think about the politics of that stuff, I was doing it because I thought it was fun, I wasn’t thinking about what it meant.” She recalls her first time dropping in, which was a lot more understated than Liv’s experience. “I was watching all the boys do it at the rec centre and I was like okay that looks easy I’m going to try it.” It went terribly, she fully faceplanted and slid across half the floor, but no one really noticed so she kept doing it until she got it right. “I think when you’re a kid it’s so much easier to learn how to do something, because when you mess up people are just like ah, she’s learning.” When Mia was 19, she bought herself a new skateboard and decided to try getting into it again. But instead of that same blind enthusiasm for it, she felt scared and judged about it. “Me and my friends would go skate in carpark buildings or round the waterfront. We didn’t feel comfortable doing it and practicing where other people might see, which in hindsight is so stupid, because there’s no minimum skill level for showing up to a skatepark and falling on your ass,” she says. 

That’s true. In theory there’s no entrance exam. Tony Hawk isn’t gatekeeping the entrance insisting you do a perfect ollie to be granted access to the skatepark. Despite this, when her and her friends decided to go to the skatepark one evening, they got there and heard the sounds of other people there. The fear of being judged for learning and not being able to perform at the same level caused them to turn around and not go. “I just need to get over this fear that everyone is waiting for me to fall off and laugh at me.” Her fear is not unfounded, there’s currently an Instagram page called “girls getting hurt” which literally just posts pictures of women hurting themselves doing sports, or any kind of physical activity. The fact that watching women suffer while doing something they might be trying to learn is so popular is a pretty off-putting sentiment, considering the page has nearly a million followers. 

Abby decided to get into skateboarding after lockdown and went into the skate shop to get all the parts to assemble a board. While being served, she felt the guy working wasn’t taking her seriously at all. “The guy was so condescending, he kept bringing out flower decks and stuff, assuming I just wanted something to hang on my wall, which was so frustrating.” That kind of interaction has fed into Abby’s hesitation to learn something that she’s wanted to do for a while, worrying if people would be thinking similar things about her if she went to a skatepark to practice. Another reason for her hesitance is that she feels learning to skate is only really acceptable when you’re a kid as well. “Also, when you’re older you kind of develop a better sense of risk and fear, and the ground just seems so much further away than when you’re a kid.” Despite this, Abby feels that skating should be taken more seriously by others. “People who skate spend hours learning a new skill and honing in on a talent that is viewed pretty flippantly and almost as a rebellion type of thing, but that shit is really hard. Something like learning the piano for hours is seen as respectable and dedicated but for some reason skating isn’t? It doesn’t make sense to me.” 

For women, skateboarding has come pretty far, there’s a sense that people are becoming more accepting of the fact that anyone can skate, and that it is a serious sport. It’s pretty surprising that it took this long to hit the mainstream stage of the Olympics, considering race walking is a thing, and one year live pigeon shooting was included as an event at the games. At the end of the day, if you want to learn something then you can find a way around it. Whether it’s barking aggressively at anyone who wants to use the skatepark while you’re there or finding a way to ignore the judgements of others, you should probably give it a go. Who knows, you might be a gold medal winner one day.