Sidebar feature story

The Boys and Girls Skateboarding Club

Pictures of scantily clad women. A pungent cocktail of body odor and marijuana. The aggressive, barely intelligible yawp of hardcore punk rock blaring from the speakers. 

For years, skate shops were openly hostile to anyone who wasn’t a teenage boy.

They served a critical function. Treated as outcasts by polite society, skaters found a sanctuary in the dank confines of a skate shop, populated almost exclusively by similarly hormonal adolescent boys who felt rejected by the outside world. 

But, as more women entered the sport the dynamic has evolved.

Gone are the bikini-wearing models laying atop a bed of skateboard parts, the testosterone-heavy atmosphere and the exclusively male-centric clothes.

Now, space is being made for a growing number of women, including an influx of products made by and for them.

Though female skateboarders are not new to the sport, the skateboarding industry has historically done almost nothing to accommodate them.

“For years, I’d just wear dude clothes. Over-sized T-shirts, beanies, shoes — I looked like a little kid and no one could tell I was a girl!” says 27-year-old chef and skater Marisol Heredia. “I didn’t want them to know. But now I do.”

Now, where there used to be rows of baggie sweatshirts and XXL t-shirts, female skaters can find more petite fits or feminine items, like the infamous ”Thrasher” — the popular skateboarding magazine/bible —logo emblazoned on a bright pink tank top or the Vans Old Skool offered in narrower sizes.

”It’s one of the few spaces where women can be feminine but exhibit power,” says 32-year-old graphic designer and former skater Elizabeth Acle. 

Acle, who works at a well-known Silicon Valley startup, says she sees countless women in the workplace wearing outfits clearly inspired by skateboarding and punk rock.

”You’ll see a lot of Vans shoes, leather jackets, beanies, fashionably dirty Converse sneakers — I mean, those things don’t even seem particularly skate-related anymore,” she says. ”They’re just part of the popular culture.”

As skateboarding has permeated through the mainstream, some gatekeepers are finally giving it the recognition it deserves.

Female-focused fashion magazines like Vogue, which recently dedicated an entire issue to skateboarding, have glamorized the sport’s aesthetic. 

Brands like Forever 21 and H&M and designers Jeremy Scott and Gosha Rubchinskiy have even been accused of stealing, resulting in lawsuits and apologies. 

For their part, skateboarders are suspicious of fashion’s motives.

”There's a lot of cultural heritage surrounding skateboarding with those old graphics,” former professional skateboarder John Rattray told Esquire Magazine in 2017. 

Brendon Babenzien, founder of the cult streetwear brand Noah, elaborated on the frustration felt by skaters, saying ”one day you're an outcast and the next day everybody wants to wear the clothes you're into and lay claim to it? You're going to be a little annoyed by that.”

Of course,  some women feel differently.

”I get that it seems like exploitation,” says 15-year-old Lara Botto. ”But it’s also a great way to get people into skating. Guys like to think that only girls are interested in fashion, but I’m sure a bunch of dudes are attracted to skateboarding at first just for the clothes,” she says.

Regardless of what men think, using fashion as another point of reference for some women serves a more critical function: to highlight the difference between men and women in the sport.

As one female skater quoted in University of New Mexico sociologist John N. Carr’s ”Skateboarding in Dude Space” noted, skate ”culture isn’t really my culture. And I don’t want to make it my culture.”

Ultimately, skateboarding is about self-expression, says Botto.

”The link between personal style and skateboarding is obvious and so great. If other women see us expressing ourselves in every possible way — whether that’s through our skating, our fashion sense or ideally both — and that inspires them to do the same, then everyone wins,” she says.