A woman in skateboarding isn’t something you hear about often. It’s a male-dominated sport and this fact has ingrained a certain mindset in skating culture. Despite this, I have always been interested in skateboarding. My older cousins always skated and in high school I drifted towards “skater” kids because I always found them to be surprisingly smart and very accepting. However, a recent trip to my local skate park changed my view on the sport and some of the people who participate in it.
My friends invited me to come to the skate park after school and I was wary because every time I’ve been there, it’s been a little boring — I broke my old board and am terrible at bowl skating anyways. My friend Matt told me he would teach me and let me borrow his board. He taught me some basics and it was honestly pretty fun.
But I began to notice something as my time there wore on: I was the only girl at the park for 3 hours. I only saw one other girl in the entire 5 hours I was there. It was about a 10:1 ratio the whole time.
In addition to feeling out of place because of my gender, I was explicitly warned about my safety. I was told to watch out for one man, who is about 300 lbs., six-foot-five, and probably around 30 years old. It became clear that he was a bully who enjoyed making fun of everyone. Before we even got out of the car, I was told that he also hits on every girl that walks into the park.
I also started to hear sexist comments after I attempted to drop in even after my friend Matt refused to. Though he told me he’d teach me the trick, Matt stood on the edge of the ¼ pipe for over an hour (if you’ve never been to a skate park, that’s like a foot-high ramp) and everyone there harassed him and even made bets about whether he’d do it or not. Finally, I ended up doing it myself. This prompted everybody to tell Matt, “Look, dude, even a girl can do this!” They also told me that I was “pretty good for a girl,” which just made me feel embarrassed. Why did I have to be good within a separate, gender-based category? Why couldn’t I just be pretty good for a person? And why was Matt’s masculinity questioned just because he didn’t want to do the trick?
While this experience was disappointing, I will continue to go to the skate park. We have to start creating a gender balance somewhere – maybe my presence there will encourage other women to skate, too.
