Skater girlhood and emphasized femininity: ‘you can't land an ollie properly in heels’

TLDR

The authors conducted semi‑structured interviews with 20 British Columbian girls who varied in skateboarding involvement to examine how they construct a skater identity through peer images at schools, skate parks, online, and music videos. The study found that skater girls positioned themselves within an alternative girlhood, using skater discourse to negotiate and resist emphasized femininity, with middle‑class “in‑betweeners” strategically employing this discourse to distance themselves from sexism in skate culture and to forge a positive identity.

Abstract

This study draws from interviews with 20 girls in British Columbia, Canada who participated to varying degrees in skateboarding culture. We found that skater girls saw themselves as participating in an 'alternative' girlhood. Becoming skater girls involved the work and play of producing themselves in relation to alternative images found among peers at school, at skate parks, online and in music videos. The alternative authority of skater girl discourse gave the girls room to manoeuvre within and against the culturally valued discourse of emphasized femininity. A subgroup of middle class skater girls, the 'in‐betweeners', used skater girl discourse as a way of distancing themselves from the sexism evident in skater culture as well as emphasized femininity. They used one discourse against another and took advantage of contradictions within skater discourse to forge a positive identity for themselves.