The distinction of risk: urban skateboarding, street habitus and the construction of hierarchical gender relations

Abstract

This paper explores gendered relations and identities which evolved amongst street skateboarders. Drawing from Bourdieu, we suggest that various social fields such as ‘skateboarding media’, ‘D.I.Y. (Do It Yourself) culture’, and ‘lifestyle/action sports’ overlapped and worked to maintain gendered divisions within street skateboarding based upon the logics of individualism and embodiment. Masculine habituses were most closely associated with risk‐taking behaviours and technical prowess; they became significantly rewarded with social and cultural capital. Conversely, women’s habituses were considered as lacking in skill and aversive to risk‐taking. Women thus came to be positioned as inauthentic participants in the street skateboarding social field and were largely excluded from accessing symbolic capital. Corporate‐sponsored and supervised skate events which were explicitly set up to be gender inclusive provided a strong counter to ‘street’ practices. These ‘All Girl’ events were considered ‘positive’ and ‘empowering’ spaces by the women in our study. We explore how these spaces might work alongside women‐focused niche media forms in order to support resistant femininities and practices which might underpin more egalitarian gender relations in street skateboarding.

Keywords:

• skateboarding
• youth culture
• gender
• Bourdieu
• social field
• embodiment

Introduction

Many scholars have examined the gendered cultures of action or lifestyle sports such as skateboarding, snowboarding, BMX biking and windsurfing in a wide range of international contexts including the Canada, the USA, New Zealand and the UK (Beal 1996; Kusz 2001; Wheaton 2004; Kelly et al. 2005; Thorpe 2006). It has been noted that the recent influx of women participants in some of these sports has been a boon to the action sports industry. Indeed, many executives within this action sports industry have identified women as being the crucial component of expanding their market. ¹ Coinciding with their explicit targeting by the action sports industry, women are increasingly participating in skateboarding, snowboarding and surfing. ² Because of the industry’s more recent attention to women and the reported increase in female participants, we are interested in examining whether and in what ways gender identities and relations have shifted in skateboarding.

Accordingly, we chose to investigate the positioning of women skateboarders from a discursive and material perspective. We thus conducted a study around the social logics, practices and identities associated with women’s street and ramp skateboarding based in two metropolitan areas of California, San Diego and San Francisco. As part of conducting this line of inquiry, we attended two women‐only skateboarding events. This experience specifically raised questions as to how the social contexts associated with skateboarding created and sustained particular gender relations. The two ‘All Girl Skate Jam’ events took place in a small and enclosed skate park in southern California. Only women were allowed to skate – this was a reversal from the usual male‐oriented skate event. We asked many of the women skaters to discuss their thoughts about this event as well as their everyday skating experiences. The women’s responses implied that this event provided them with a rare opportunity to skate with other women. They noted that in urban or street contexts where men often skated and indeed dominated, women were made to feel unwelcome which discouraged them from skating. The women’s comments further indicated that they preferred skating in the presence of other women.

Reflecting upon the women’s comments about the ‘All Girl Skate Jam’, we came to realise that none of us had ever witnessed more than one woman in any group of skaters in our work in the USA; we certainly had never seen a group of women skating in urban spaces. ³ From our nearly daily experience of watching young men use urban spaces such as streets, curbs and public skate parks to skateboard, we had taken it for granted that men occupied these spaces and marked (e.g. ‘grinded’ or ‘carved’) them as their own. This triggered a series of questions about how often we saw any group of women using urban skate spaces in mostly unsupervised conditions. The following questions became compelling to us: Is it that women do not feel ‘free’ or empowered to use these types of skate contexts, especially in groups? Do men consider these spaces to be their own? What social conditions contribute to women’s lack of presence in urban skate contexts, and might these conditions underlie the emergence of the women‐only skateboarding event? Could it be that women tend to feel more comfortable skateboarding together in typically supervised and/or corporate‐sponsored environments?

The cultural organisation and distribution of capital within street skateboarding

We turned to the work of Pierre Bourdieu (1984, 2002) in order to illustrate how gendered power relations and social dynamics have emerged and been reproduced within street skateboarding. In our view, Bourdieu provides a way of specifically illustrating how individuals use, invest in and control skateboarding contexts relative to broader social practices. Bourdieu argues that symbolic capital is distributed and appropriated within distinctive yet overlapping social fields which collectively constitute society. This symbolic capital is valued and accumulated according to the underpinning logics and practices which constitute each social field and the broader collection of social fields. Individuals and groups struggle over the embodied meanings and practices which constitute the social field/s; positions of power are delineated according to the prevailing ways in which the embodied self is recognised and legitimised. Kay and Laberge (2002) have used this notion of amalgamated social fields to describe the social field of Adventure Racing, which is articulated relative to the ‘larger field of sport as well as in relation to specific external fields namely those of risk recreation, adventure tourism, corporate/human resources, and entertainment/media’ (p. 31). In another example, Urquía (2005) conceptualised the social field of Salsa dancing as existing at the intersection of other related social fields such as jazz clubs, world music events and ballroom dancing. Following these examples, then, we use the concept of social field to refer to various social contexts that have currency within street skateboarding including ‘skateboarding media’, ‘lifestyle/action sports’ and ‘D.I.Y. (Do It Yourself) culture’. ⁴ We also highlight the emergence of a ‘women‐only skateboarding’ social field. These social fields influence each other even as they are distinctive, and are organised and work in similar (but not identical) ways to each other. We investigate how these social fields represent practical investment by skateboarders and how concomitant struggles over power and representation give rise to the state of relations within and between these fields.

In exploring the operation of these social fields individually and collectively, we suggest that certain skaters stand to gain higher amounts and forms of symbolic and material capital, while others become devalued. The ways in which individuals come to be valued within a particular social field and across the range of social fields is determined by the recognition of their embodied attributes. These embodied attributes are defined as the habitus. According to Urquía (2005), the habitus is ‘a subconscious manifestation of social structure that includes social habits, values, ways of being, thinking and moving, which are collectively generated by social actors while being reinforced in others’ (p. 387). Those individuals whose habitus most closely matches the idealised practices and taste distinctions which operate within a particular social field can access material, social and cultural benefits. The habitus, carrying the residue of specific cultural, social and personal histories, represents a form of physical capital that can be translated into economic capital (e.g. money, services, property), social capital (e.g. power and status) and cultural capital (e.g. educational and professional opportunities). These material and symbolic forms are valued according to the prevailing attitudes, behaviours and practices which structure specific social fields. We pay close attention to the ways in which symbolic capital, in particular, was negotiated and taken up by skateboarders in ways that provided them with authority and power within their social fields. This perspective takes into account the notion of symbolic violence, whereby skateboarders are considered as being complicit with their domination and subjugation; that is, we closely consider how skateboarders were not only positioned by specific logics and practices, but how they also actively participated in them as well (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992; Bourdieu 2002).

This Bourdieusian perspective underpins our investigation into the fluid operation of power, practices, and capital distribution at the micro and macro levels of street skateboarding. We suggest that those individuals with ‘insider’ knowledge of the prevailing taste distinctions which organised the social fields were able to significantly accrue symbolic capital. We pay attention to how these skaters were simultaneously able to define and benefit from these knowledges and distinctions; this proximal positioning in turn supported their claims to authenticity. Following Bourdieu (2002), we closely consider how masculine domination works as a form of symbolic violence; we contend that male power was supported by the everyday symbolic structures operating within and amongst various social fields associated with street skateboarding in California. We acknowledge that relative to the specific opportunities and constraints provided by these social fields, skateboarders enacted various strategies which served to constitute their embodied subjectivities (Hunter 2004; Kay and Laberge 2004). From this perspective, we also shed light on how embodied masculinities and femininities became interpellated in normative and hierarchical ways within this field. We also closely consider how alternative subjectivities and concomitant sets of gendered practices might have emerged.

The constituting practices and distinctions associated with urban skateboarding

In order to contextualise the operation of embodied practices which were ascendant in our research context, we now turn to outline the broader street skateboarding social field as it was constituted by the related social fields of ‘D.I.Y. (Do It Yourself) culture’, ‘lifestyle/action sports’ and ‘skateboarding media’. Arguably, these fields operationalised distinctions of individualism and risk which were further structured according to the acceptable and desirable practices for gender in this social context.

Ramp skating requires specially made obstacles such as an empty pool ‘bowl’. This activity takes place in private backyards and driveways, as well as in municipal or corporate sponsored spaces that are often adult supervised. Street skating more explicitly takes place in everyday public spaces which are typically unsupervised and ‘off‐limits’. However, Nolan (2003) argues that the distinction between street and ramp skating is fluid as some skaters participate in both activities. He further adds that many skaters navigate the streets in order to get to and from skate parks, which may also be unsupervised. We therefore acknowledge that street and ramp skating overlap in some of their practices and identities. Our analysis, then, takes into account the fluidity of these social fields and the ongoing negotiation of symbolic capital.

Street skateboarders explicitly enact an urban identity that invokes freedom, non‐conformity and engagement with risk. Indeed, the street skateboarding social field has been defined as ‘dangerous, poetic, authentic, rebellious’ (Rose and Strike 2004, p. 25). The notion that skaters regularly seek out and use spaces which are typically off‐limits is integrally linked with the idealisation of freedom; at the same time, there is a significant valorisation of risk that is linked with the use of typically unsupervised, dangerous and off‐limit spaces. Indeed, Walk (2006) describes skateboarding as a masculine‐oriented culture that involves voluntary ‘self‐mutilation’ and ‘risk taking in which the definitive measure of social life made vital is the life routinely and systematically nearly ended’ (pp. 2–3).

These ideals of freedom and risk are integrally linked with D.I.Y. culture. Street skaters are often portrayed or refer to themselves as being ‘self‐made’; this D.I.Y. ideal purports that skateboarding is a socially democratic enterprise where individuals can freely participate and construct unique styles, practices and identities. Longtime skater Jocko Weyland (2004), for instance, describes street skateboarding as a ‘democratized’ activity which attracts ‘diverse aficionados’ reflecting a ‘heterogeneous social makeup’ (p. 122). Street skating thus involves an element of risk, as individuals are left to their own devices in navigating the social and physical realms of skateboarding. Authentic status is bestowed upon those individuals who are able to exemplify the core values of risk taking and D.I.Y. through their social interactions, way of speaking and dressing and use of urban spaces (Beal and Weidman 2003).

However, it has been argued that one consequence of skateboarding’s identity shift towards the ‘street’ values of individualised and democratised risk and social rebellion has been the marginalisation and exclusion of women. Commentators have noted how women skaters have become marginalised as skateboarding has increasingly aligned itself with a ‘street’ and anti‐social attitude over the past three decades (Beal 1996; Porter 2003; Kelly et al. 2005). Within the broader social field of action/lifestyle sports, it has been argued that men have most often become associated with the distinctions of risk, freedom and social rebellion, and have concomitantly taken up positions of power and accessed symbolic and material capitals (Wheaton 2000; Kay and Laberge 2004; Thorpe 2006).

We also suggest that diverse media forms constitute a representational social field that crucially underpins gendered distinctions and practices within street skateboarding. It has been extensively argued that women have been marginalised and objectified in specialist skateboarding magazines such as Transworld Skateboarding, Thrasher and Skateboard which have the most currency amongst skateboarders (Beal and Weidman 2003; Porter 2003; Wheaton and Beal 2003; Rinehart 2005; Walk 2006). Porter (2003) comments that this trend provides a strong counter to the socially democratic ideals which are often invoked in skateboarding culture:

These (sexist) images are rarely confronted by or balanced with representations of female skateboarders, even though there is an idealistic attitude that skateboarding is an inclusive subculture, open to anyone regardless of gender, as well as race, sexuality and ability. (p. 76)

Although there are some stories and pictures of women currently in niche skate magazines, these depictions are few and far between. Furthermore, there is only one specialty skate magazine, SG: Surf, Snow, Skate Girl Magazine, which explicitly caters to women. Indeed, most depictions of women skaters have been found in mass media spaces such as Outside and Sports Illustrated for Women. ⁵ These mainstream spaces overwhelmingly showcase women ramp skaters; women street skaters have received very little coverage by either mainstream or niche media outlets.

Within the majority of niche magazines, the stories and images overwhelmingly depict young men performing sequences of high risk tricks and wearing little or no protective gear (Walk 2006). This element of risk is highlighted in magazine sections such as Thrasher’s ‘Hall of Meat’ and Skateboard’s ‘Skate Anatomy’. Walk (2006) highlighted one particular call for submissions to Thrasher’s ‘Hall of Meat’ which stated: ‘SEND IN YOUR MEAT… We’re looking for a few gnarly pics of road rash, brain drains, broken wings, wet noodles…’. Representations of skateboarding spaces in these specialist magazines are overwhelmingly street‐oriented, often exoticising ‘urban, industrial or post‐industrial artifice’ (Walk 2006, p. 10). Further revealing the ascendancy of street‐oriented skateboarding within wider skate culture, there is limited coverage of contests that use ramps.

Brayton (2005) describes the risk‐oriented version of ‘street’ masculinity found in the specialty media as anarchic, ‘unkempt’, ‘rebellious’ and gangster‐like. Walk (2006) links this heroic ‘outlaw’ masculinity with ‘heterosexist adventure’; that is, the specialty skate texts chronicle the young men’s ‘predatory pursuits of girls and women’ along with concomitant narratives ‘of sexual conquests and defeats’ (p. 10). Along with niche skate videos which are either produced by the specialty magazines or by skaters themselves, these symbolic depictions construct powerful notions of ‘authentic’ identities and ‘core’ participation (Wheaton and Beal 2003).

This overview of street skateboarding and its constituting social fields sets up our analysis into how distinctions of risk and authenticity structure gendered relations. We particularly focus on how these distinctions are employed by men to maintain boundaries between themselves and women (Veenstra 2007). We propose that within street skateboarding, men are most able to take up positions of familiarity with these taste distinctions; this ‘closeness’ allows them to gain symbolic capital and positions of power while simultaneously delimiting women’s participation. Indeed, as part of investigating the core logics which lead to power struggles and differentials, we closely consider how men’s construction of a valued habitus and associated forms of symbolic capital involved the practice of actively excluding women from urban skateboarding spaces. At the same time, we pay attention to the recent emergence of women‐focused representational spaces (e.g. media) and material contexts (e.g. ‘All Girl’ skate events). Thorpe (2008) notes that ‘the rapid expansion of media outlets and distribution channels’ associated with women’s snowboarding has created ‘numerous and even contradictory discourses’ which support alternative gender practices and femininities (p. 202). Following on, we closely consider how women‐only skate events as well as evolving women‐focused mainstream and niche media spaces might disrupt accepted understandings of femininity in the street skateboarding social field.

Methodology

The study which underpins this paper was initiated to expand on previous research on gender relations in skateboarding which had tended to focus either on participants (Beal 1996) or the media (Wheaton and Beal 2003). As part of extending previous research, then, we decided to examine the interactive dynamics of different skateboarding social fields such as skate media, urban or ‘street’ skateboarding, and corporate sponsored skate events relative to gender logics and practices. In order to investigate the social meanings of these three intersecting research components, we explicitly chose to observe and interview people who skated at various skill levels as well as individuals who worked in the skateboarding industry and media. Skaters often had a working knowledge of media and industry practices, while their media and industry counterparts sometimes came from skateboarding backgrounds.

Observations and semi‐structured interviews were conducted with the participants in California from 2000–2003. Most of the 33 participants we interviewed lived in northern California, whereas most of the media and industry people we interviewed were in southern California. The range in age was 16–28 years old. Of the 33 interviewed, 25 were men of whom 18 were white, three were Asian‐American, two were multi‐raced, one was African‐American and one was Hispanic. Six of the eight females were white, one was Hispanic and one was Asian‐American.

During the interviews with the skaters, we sought to assess how the participants used different skateboard contexts (e.g. ramps and streets) and texts (e.g. print and electronic media) to construct gendered identities and social practices. In addition, we spent many hours observing different cohorts as they skated in urban areas. We also attended two ‘All Girl Skate Jam’ events in southern California and interviewed several of the participants, as well as event organisers and members of the media. Our attendance at two industry forums designed to help facilitate marketing action/lifestyle sports provided insight about the ‘internal’ debate over the framing of authenticity and gender.

Interview questions were structured to investigate the contested meanings of various skate fields as well as skaters’ claims to authenticity as manifest in their description of experiences and social practices. Generated data was considered fluid and specific to the individual research locations. This followed an interpretive framework whereby research interactions were considered to be micro‐sites of shifting power relations. According to Scheurich (1997), both the researcher and the participant take up multiple and contradictory subject positions during the research process. Scheurich proposes that interviews and observations cannot tell objective ‘truths’ about participants’ lives, but instead support multiple and contingent interpretations of participants’ social practices, experiences and identities. From this position, we intentionally distinguish our conceptual analysis from the participants’ description of their reality (Quantz 1992).

We drew upon our previous knowledge of skateboarding culture to interrogate data which emerged out of questions surrounding skate media. We have been involved in researching skateboarding culture for several years and have become somewhat familiar with both specialty and mainstream skate media discourses; indeed, this basic knowledge originally led us to frame the study in ways that paid attention to the impacts of skate media texts on everyday social relations. However, we also came to realise during the process of examining the data that we needed to enhance our understanding of gender logics and practices as found in skate media. Therefore, as the data emerged, we also embarked on a focused examination of skate media discourses as found in a variety of electronic and print formats, including magazines, ‘zines, websites, television shows, movies and videos (both self‐made and corporate sponsored). Following Thorpe (2008), this media analysis was not implemented in order to detect a ‘singular “truthful” representation’ (pp. 201–202) of women and men skaters; instead, we aimed to investigate ‘evolving patterns of discourse’ (p. 201) which involve ‘multiple and competing’ (p. 202) versions of skateboarding as a gendered activity.

During the data analysis phase, we decided to turn to the work of Bourdieu; his work around the habitus, social fields and symbolic capital became particularly compelling to us because it offered an analytical means of organising and conceptualising the various interests involved in street skateboarding. At the same time, Bourdieu’s concepts seemed to provide an analytic through which to gauge how skateboarders came to invest in skateboarding practices in order to gain legitimacy, power and authority. Also, we felt that Bourdieu’s work enabled us to more powerfully illustrate how skateboarders engaged in gendered practices relative to social fields associated with street skateboarding (e.g. D.I.Y. culture, lifestyle/action sports and masculine youth culture). Analysing the data through the perspective of symbolic violence, we came to consider these practices as representing symbolic struggle, and as reflecting the construction of embodied identities.

The gendered distinctions and practices of street skateboarding

The privileging of masculine habitus according to the distinction and operation of risk

We now turn to more explicitly outline how the distinction of risk worked within street skateboarding to recognise masculinity as authentic, and thus imbue men with social and cultural capital. It was apparent throughout the interviews that risk‐taking constituted a form of habitus that both men and women skaters wanted to claim and embody. Skaters often stressed that street skating was an inherently dangerous activity, especially in comparison to other sports and forms of skateboarding. One young man, Andy, claimed that skating was different from most sports because it was more dangerous: ‘you will fall and you will get injured’. Another young man, Sean, noted that skateboarding was ‘a great way to build a strong threshold of pain’. Sean then went on to explain that girls were not ‘decent’ or ‘respected’ skaters because they would rarely attempt difficult tricks and would only ‘putt around on the board’ and ‘just hang out’ like ‘groupies’. Sentiments such as these implied that the embodiment of risk‐taking dispositions worked as the primary social mechanism through which gendered skaters became positioned as either legitimate or inauthentic.

Skaters also frequently distinguished what constituted significant forms of risk. A key distinction involved the opposition of ramp and street skateboarding styles. While physical risk to one’s body is ever present in both forms, ramp skateboarding was seen by the street skaters as being a ‘protected’ middle‐class activity because of the adult supervision and requirement to buy and wear protective gear. Ironically, most of the street skaters we talked to were also suburban (white) men, like their ramp skating peers. They fluidly participated in both ramp and street styles. However, despite the contradictory nature of their skating identities, the men made recourse to a version of masculinity that was grounded in notions of an urban underclass. For instance, one young man named John affectionately noted that street skateboarding originated with ‘white trash kids’. Another young man, David, explained how street skateboarding was a ‘working class’ activity. He derided the fact that other skaters were ‘rich suburbia kids’ who were more concerned with buying brand‐named gear than doing the activity itself. Following Brayton (2005), we argue that these men affiliated themselves with the lower classes in order to construct ‘streetwise’ masculinities that distinguished them from a ‘soft’ and ‘feminine’ version of middle‐class masculinity (p. 364).

The distinction of risk was used to underpin the men’s street masculinities. Men who became associated with risk‐taking behaviours and attitudes gained symbolic capital because they were legitimised and recognised within the social field/s. From these positions of authority, the men came to enact a form of symbolic violence upon women. For instance, the men described women as ‘posers’, ‘putt putts’ and ‘groupies’ because they were considered as being less capable of handling pain and pulling off difficult tricks. The sentiment that women were inauthentic participants in the street skateboarding social field was offered by several of the men in our study. From Tom:

Tom: There’s one girl that works with Joe (his friend) that says she skates, but we have yet to see her, we kind of want to see it to believe it, she would kind of be what we consider a poser, but she says she skates.

Interviewer: Why (are there so few women skaters)?

Tom: I don’t know, they don’t want to get hurt…

Tom later noted that when he did see women skate, they used long boards to perform in a slower and safer slalom style rather than attempting tricks. The perception that women were unable to handle physical pain also dovetailed with the notion that they were (hetero)sexual accessories for the men. From John:

Interviewer: What have you noticed about female skaters?

John: They’re hella hot. They fall on their boobs.

Interviewer: Why do you think that there are less female skaters than males?

John: Because it is a higher impact sport. It hurts to fall and to bleed.

John went on to describe the women he encountered in skateboarding spaces as ‘groupies’. Another man, Raul, also expressed this (hetero)sexist sentiment when he noted that ‘Anytime I see girls around they are just watching, ‘cause they want to pick up on us’. In describing the women skaters as sexually promiscuous, unskilled and afraid to take risks, the men positioned the women as being outsiders to street skateboarding. In this way, the men reified their own authentic status.

In the few instances where men did acknowledge that women could be competent skaters, they qualified their comments by claiming that even professional women skaters were not as good as most men. For example, one young man named Emilio was aware that Elissa Steamer was a talented professional street skater; however, he positioned her as an inauthentic skater by stating that she was only a famous professional because of gender tokenism. From Emilio:

Elissa Steamer, she’s a professional skater, but she’s not as good as, not to be sexist, but other male professional skaters … she’s a pro because she is pretty good and she’s a girl.

Porter (2003) suggests that Elissa Steamer is now recognised as a ‘household name amongst skateboarders for her dominance in the street discipline’ (p. 78). Porter goes on to argue that Steamer has been portrayed as a technical, risk‐taking and aggressive skater in advertisements and videos of the board company ‘Toy Machine’. ⁶ However, Emilio’s comments demonstrate how even the most recognisable and seemingly authentic women street skaters were still considered tokens and ‘not as good as’ their male counterparts. Emilio attempted to re‐assert his superior status even though he was not even close to the same skill level as Elissa Steamer. His statement implies that masculinity is necessarily equated with ‘authentic’ participation at all levels of street skateboarding.

It became evident, then, that the men we spoke to considered the ‘girls’ to be outsiders to the street skateboarding social field. Street skateboarding became overwhelmingly constructed as a masculine context where men’s habituses could most often become translated into forms of social and cultural capital. In her study of snowboarding, Thorpe (2006) noted that a boarder’s status within the field was determined by the accumulation of ‘prestige’ and ‘authority’. Furthermore, she argued that respect and status were bestowed upon certain men because their habituses signified risk‐taking, physical power and technical prowess. Their habituses thus provided them with access to significant amounts of social and cultural capital; high status and respect were significant markers of authenticity since money had only limited value in snowboarding culture. Similarly, we suggest that the practices associated with street skateboarding set up the conditions whereby respect and authority distinguished men and provided them with capital, since they were seemingly able to place themselves at risk and perform difficult technical tricks.

In contrast, women’s habituses had less exchange value, despite the fact that women also frequently valued risk‐taking. As part of describing how symbolic violence became exercised upon women, then, we also argue that some women contributed to this subjugation by aligning themselves with the dominant logic of risk. For instance, a young woman named Michelle once described her commitment to street skateboarding as following: ‘I like to push myself, and the fear factor … as long as my body holds up I will keep skateboarding’. She added that she had recently broken her foot during skating. Another young woman named Laura commented that ‘skateboarding is all about hanging out and being with friends, and wrecking your body’. The ways in which some of the young women assimilated to the dominant discourse of embodied risk‐taking was similar to the practices found in Kelly et al.’s (2005) study of women skaters in Vancouver, British Colombia. Indeed, some of the women in their study noted that skaters had to be ‘fearless as shit … because when you fall … it hurts’ (p. 134). Two of them went so far as to say that they respected men skaters because they would often take more risks in comparison to women.

Yet, even as Laura and Michelle invested in the distinction of risk, it was the men who became most distinguished as risk‐takers. As such, men took up higher positions of power from which they could freely use the skateboarding spaces and determine local patterns of use. Michelle, for instance, noted that ‘I am the only girl that ever skates at my park. There aren’t a lot of girl skaters. I mean wherever you go you are usually fighting (with the men) for a spot’. In the next section, we highlight comments provided by the women skaters to further describe how the linkage of risk with a street form of masculinity created social conditions where women became systematically excluded from participating and were given only limited opportunities. We then argue that women have created and invested in women‐only representational and material social fields in order to challenge the lower social status attributed to them within street skateboarding.

Women’s negotiation of representational and material street skateboarding fields

In this section, we closely consider the skater’s comments in order to illustrate the logics of capital distribution within media and everyday lived contexts. We pay attention to gendered distinctions operating within the street skateboarding social field and examine how they influence women’s skateboarding. At the representational level, street skateboarding often valorises rebellious masculinities; however, when women are represented, it is often with sexist assumptions and depictions (Treas 2000; Rinehart 2005; Walk 2006). Walk (2006), for instance, highlighted an interview in Thrasher where one professional male skater described women as promiscuous ‘chicks’ and ‘bitches’ who want to ‘pick up’ on men. Women skateboarders in our study were quite aware of these trends and commented that magazines, both specialist and mainstream, promoted skateboarding as a masculine pursuit. These magazines depicted a traditional (hetero)sexist form of femininity whereby women were portrayed as ‘girly’ sex objects and portrayed as being less able to handle the physical demands of skateboarding, as noted in the following exchange. From Abby:

Interviewer: What do you think of magazines like YM (an American teen magazine)?

Abby: I think that they are definitely trying, like they are trying to get it in there. And they are trying to promote girls; some times they don’t do a very good job at it. They make it look dumb and girly. Like ‘Oh, ouch, you fell.’ Kinda like girly. At least they are trying to promote that girls can do what guys can do. Skating is definitely a male‐dominated sport. It is hard to get into.

Interviewer: Do skate magazines represent your experiences as a skater?

Abby: Um, not really. They pretty much don’t. They have all of those girls in bikinis. They are bare‐naked but holding a skateboard. It isn’t for girls’ skating it is for guys.

Specialty magazines, in particular, were perceived by the women as celebrating the exploits of men who were seemingly able to pull off technical tricks and cope with physical pain. Another woman skateboarder, Michelle, noted that ‘There aren’t a lot of girl’s skate magazines out there. Boy’s skate magazines, they make, I don’t know, it’s not good for girls’. When asked to explain she replied, ‘It puts all guys doing tricks and no support for women. If they mention women it’s not in support of skateboarding. It’s just kind of a guy’s magazine’. Another woman, Carly, noted that ‘girls’ were not supposed to read the skateboarding magazine Big Brother because ‘it’s full of gross boys stuff’.

In suggesting that the imagination and representation of street skateboarding directly shapes gendered practices, we argue that the women’s descriptions of skateboarding texts parallel the sentiments described by the men in the previous section. Electronic and print skate media texts are very popular with men who skate. Walk (2006), for instance, has noted that the combined readership of the three top specialist magazines (Transworld Skateboarding, Thrasher and Skateboard) is approximately 500,000. He has argued that skate ‘zines, websites, and videography complemented and extended the content found in these magazines. In our study, the men mentioned that they extensively read skateboarding magazines and watched videos. These sources often informed their understanding of authentic skateboarding practices and identities. As one man noted, magazines worked as a ‘reference guide’. Indeed, the men often remarked that one’s insider status was often maintained by displaying a deep knowledge of representational content (see Wheaton and Beal 2003).

We thus argue that the men’s avid consumption of media representations led to them implementing exclusionary and marginalising gendered practices themselves. The women’s comments directly implicated the men’s role in reproducing these practices within various social contexts. At a local level, the women noted that they were often harassed, intimidated, or chased away from street spaces. Many ended up quitting skateboarding altogether. From Abby:

You know, you’d skate in a parking lot or something and the guys would say stuff to you, know they are better, I guess ‘cause they are getting used to it. The girls if they see you skating they will call you over to skate with them but the guys are more wary.

Later from Abby:

Actually, where I grew (up) I knew about ten girls who have a skateboard but they don’t go out anymore. Like they don’t like skating in front of the guys ‘cause they will watch them skate board and they get all freaked out. I have been heckled with them before and they will never go out with me again. They get scared of all the guys because they (the guys) are really intimidating…

Another woman named Carly commented that the men made skateboarding spaces uncomfortable for the women. She commented that the men would treat the women ‘like dogs’ and said that the men always challenged her knowledge of skateboarding. She also mentioned that during the skate sessions her boyfriend would push her to skate ‘harder’ by calling her a ‘poser’.

Those women in our study who were able to consistently access street spaces were usually allowed to do so only after being mentored by a male ‘insider’. Our observations revealed that it was highly unusual for groups of women to skate together, as this informal ‘mentorship’ system only involved the initiation of a few select women. Kelly et al. (2005) remind us that men act as ‘gatekeepers’ to street skateboarding spaces such as parking lots and streets, which leaves ‘very little room for girls’ (p. 551). We similarly suggest that the women we spoke to had very limited opportunities to find value in street skateboarding, unless they occupied ‘the traditionally feminine subject positions of watcher, fan, or girlfriend’ (Kelly et al. p. 551).

In contrast, the women described the typically supervised skate parks where women‐only skateboarding events took place as being ‘positive’ and ‘empowering’ spaces. This was in contrast to the men, who found less value in these ramp spaces and valorised street spaces. Indeed, as we mentioned earlier, the men linked ramp spaces with a devalued form of masculine habitus that was considered suburban and feminine, even though they sometimes ramp skated themselves. The women commented that they enjoyed skating freely with other women in these ramp spaces, even though some of them preferred the street style. They described how the women‐only events worked to specifically recognise their habituses and reward them with social, economic and cultural capital (e.g. skateboarding gear, money, higher status and recognition):

Interviewer: How do you think the (women‐only skateboarding) event is affecting skating?

Abby: It is definitely in a positive way. I am pretty sure that it is one of the only skate competitions where girls actually get prizes. Like the amateurs will get snowboards, skateboards, surfboards and the pros will get money. It’s awesome. Definitely for the better, like I have met a lot of girls. If I see a girl skating, I’ll be like ‘Oh my gosh’. I will write down all the websites for her and like let her know she isn’t the only girl skate boarding ‘cause you never see any girls skateboarding and you start to think you are the only one. And I will tell them about all the websites and say, ‘You’re not the only one out there, swear to God!’ and try to get them out. It is definitely a good thing. Definitely a good feel to it.

This exchange highlights how the ‘All Girl Skate Jam’ event became an important social context for women to skate without fear of being intimidated, excluded and harassed by men. Indeed, despite being set up as a ramp space, the event was unique in that it also showcased famous street skaters such as Elissa Steamer and Jaime Reyes manoeuvring on street‐type obstacles. These women were recognised as authentic (street) skateboarders and were rewarded accordingly. In this way, we suggest that this women‐only event represented the emergence of a distinctive and alternative social field within street skateboarding, and skateboarding more broadly. The women‐only event was indicative of a symbolic struggle at the micro level (California). At the same time, we suggest that this event had broader implications as it involved famous skateboarders and was broadcasted throughout the USA. At both the micro and macro levels, then, we suggest that the ‘All Girl’ event made a contribution to cultural change in street skateboarding.

Abby’s previous reference to several websites further demonstrates how an emergent women‐focused representational field overlaps with and supports the material field of the ‘All Girl’ event. Despite the currency of (hetero)sexual masculinity within street skateboarding representations, Porter (2003) has noted that ‘female skateboarders are no longer waiting for male‐owned and operated media productions to accommodate them’ (p. 77). Porter described a plethora of emerging internet websites, forums and skate ‘zines which challenge dominant gender stereotypes associated with the street skateboarding social field:

In the last ten years, female skaters have been designing websites, producing videos, distributing hand‐made zines, and organizing ‘all‐girls’ competitions, which has increased their visibility and developed a sense of confidence that there is a ‘scene within a scene,’ rather than lone female skateboarders struggling to acquire space and recognition within a male‐dominated subculture. (p. 76)

Thus, similar to their male counterparts, the women in our study negotiated gendered symbolisms found in skate media texts in order to construct their ‘lived’ social practices and identities. We argue that the women‐focused media spaces exist in a reciprocal relationship with the women‐only skate events; working together, they provide a strong counter to men’s dominance in street skateboarding.

Discussion

Kay and Laberge (2004) remind us that Bourdieu’s concepts of social field and valued capitals are useful analytical tools for examining symbolic power and gender inequality in non‐traditional sports. They suggest that gender dynamics crucially define and constitute the internal logics of action/lifestyle sports, leading to hierarchies of power and struggles over symbolic capital. In drawing upon this notion of symbol struggle, we highlighted how certain tastes and practices endemic to urban skateboarding in California worked to maintain gender inequalities. We argued that the ability to street skate was significantly influenced by one’s gendered form of habitus. We highlighted how the converging social fields of D.I.Y. culture, skateboarding media and action/lifestyle sports often worked to recognise men as holders of authenticity; men’s habituses were linked with the principle distinction of risk‐taking. Their dominant status meant that they could create and operationalise codes of authenticity within both material and representational contexts. Crucially, this meant that men were able to significantly access social and cultural benefits while excluding or dissuading women from doing likewise. Men thus constructed their masculinities in relation to the absence of women and simultaneously came to define and use street spaces as part of gaining ascendant social positions in street skateboarding culture.

The ‘All Girl’ skate event was explicitly framed to challenge the male dominance of street skateboarding. We spoke with event organisers and volunteers and they described how the event was designed to include and promote ‘all’ women who skate. The event itself was open to ‘girls’ from ‘all ages’ and ‘all abilities’. Indeed, our observations indicated that there was a wide variety of femininities reflecting diverse abilities and ages, as well as racial, classed and sexual backgrounds at the event. According to Rinehart and Grenfell (2002), corporate social contexts are intentionally set up in ways that are less discriminatory because the development of a broad consumer base is most important. Thus, corporate skate spaces such as those found in the ‘All Girl Skate Jam’ are usually supervised and set up to ensure the safety and full participation of all skateboarders. It could therefore be argued that this model makes an important contribution to a more gender‐inclusive social field. The women’s skateboarding performances were recognised and highly valued by their peers during the events. We therefore argue that the ‘All Girls Skate Jam’ legitimised the presence of women as skaters while also providing a context where they could translate their habituses into capital and concomitantly access power that was normally withheld from them in street spaces.

However, in acknowledging the contribution of the actual ‘All Girl’ event towards gender inclusivity and in the provision of capital to women skaters, we argue that the media presented a version of the event that emphasised a normative and thus non‐subversive form of femininity (e.g. family friendly, middle class and heterosexual). For instance, in covering the event in San Diego for the on‐line magazine, EXPN, Miller (2000) described the women skaters in ways that were suitable for mainstream middle‐class families. All of the adult women except for one were described as mothers. The other woman was described as an aunt. In addition, the presence of men and the masculine standard were used to legitimate and position the women skaters within a gender hierarchy. For example, famous men were mentioned as showing up to support the women skaters, and professional skater Tony Hawk was quoted as saying, ‘I saw some surprisingly good skating, stuff on par with male pro skating’ (Miller, 200, para 9). The ‘All Girl’ event thus presented the women skaters along the lines of traditional femininity, where women were seen as being supported by (and even aspiring to be like) their male counterparts. Indeed, the women organisers of the event told us that they deliberately wanted to showcase women skaters in ways that would allow them to be accepted by the dominant (masculine) skateboarding culture, the action/lifestyle sports industry and broader society. The hope was that women skaters would gain public exposure and sponsorship deals. Therefore, even as the event was structured to support an emerging niche of women skaters who hailed from diverse backgrounds, the event also attempted to appeal to broader audiences through the promotion of traditional femininity. The contradiction between the ways in which the event was represented and actually experienced became clear through our observations. We noted that some of the ‘All Girl’ participants actually resisted the traditional notions of (hetero)sexual femininity being represented by the event. That is, they smoked in between their runs, tended to swear profusely, many were supported by women partners, and a handful scoffed at the family‐oriented spectacle in which they were participating.

Heywood (2007) suggests that the action sports industry promotes and rewards a traditional version of heterosexual femininity that is linked with self‐responsibility, personal choice, and health and happiness. As a result, women from alternative backgrounds are seen as peripheral participants in the context of action/lifestyle sports culture. Thorpe (2008), for instance, has argued that even as women make significant inroads into snowboarding culture, they are still primarily showcased when they represent heterosexual attractiveness. She argues that ‘despite well‐meaning strategies to promote snowboarding for girls and women, the widespread practice of foregrounding heterosexually attractive women tends to symbolically erase women who appear lesbian, bisexual, queer, or “unfeminine” (pp. 202–203). We similarly question how ‘All Girl’ skate events structured by notions of gender equality and the D.I.Y. rhetorics of ‘taking advantage of opportunities, working hard, and exercising individual responsibility’ (Laurendeau and Sharara 2008, p. 27) might serve to disrupt existing gender practices and identities; especially at the representational level, these events seem to support only those women who are most aligned with the distinction of traditional (hetero)sexual femininity. These corporate‐supported spaces were set up to privilege a singular version of femininity only, and as such, enacted a form of symbolic violence that was directed towards women who are expected to comply with this dominant logic. However, our observations of the ‘All Girl’ events indicate that some women challenged the ways in which they were expected to comply with a status quo version of femininity even as others gained symbolic capital by making recourse to traditional femininity. Thus, even as the ‘All Girl’ social field was set up in ways that encouraged women’s complicity with traditional femininity, we suggest that the conditions of the event actually came to support various coalitions of women who negotiated the prevailing practices and logics in diverse and even contradictory ways. The various social practices and identities interpellated by women in this social field represented both resistance and complicity to prevailing notions of embodiment.

Conclusions

It has been suggested that women are increasingly becoming involved in skateboarding and find significant value in the street version of this activity (Board‐Trac 2002; Porter 2003; Kelly et al. 2005). However, based on our analysis of skateboarding in two regions of California, we suggest that street skateboarding is a particularly problematic endeavour for women as this activity is typically structured by male power. And despite the promise of all‐women skate events such as those we observed in southern California, we would argue that when women do skate and gain capital in this context, it is often conditional to them being isolated from the ‘street’ in a mostly ramp‐oriented format. Furthermore, they tend to be recognised and rewarded within this context only if they represent traditionally (hetero)feminine values that are acceptable to broader audiences. As such, we are still left concerned about how these ‘All Girl’ events might impact upon everyday gendered practices and relations in the ‘street’. In the street, men are still considered purveyors of risk and are thus able to maintain their status as holders of ‘insider’ or authentic status. As such, they ‘remain the overall winners’ even as ‘minor victories are conceded’ (Urquía 2005, p. 387) to women who exist in a more peripheral women‐only social field that has limited capital and thus influence on changing power relations in street skateboarding more broadly. We therefore argue that the symbolic violence directed towards women in street skateboarding is not easily resisted or transformed. We suggest that challenges to masculine domination can only take place through the erosion of the symbolic order through which male‐associated qualities of the body remain ascendant. Power that is linked with the legitimation of the masculine habitus can only be shifted when existing practices and perceptions are simultaneously disrupted; only then will the symbolic capital that is integrally associated with masculinity come to be seen as feminine as well.

We therefore contend that strategies to increase women’s presence in skateboarding are, by themselves, insufficient to disrupt existing gender patterns. We suggest that social practices which directly challenge the symbolisms of a male‐dominated social field and serve to legitimate proliferating and alternative gendered practices and identities have the most potential to benefit women skaters. Indeed, our exploratory conversations with women skaters and observations of them in the ‘street’ have indicated that women skaters actually take up and deploy a wide range of femininities and gendered practices. Kelly et al. (2005) have described how women skateboarders in their Canadian study took up a range of feminine identities and gendered practices. They took up practices which constituted ‘emphasised femininities’ (e.g. acting ‘girly’) and ‘alternative femininities’ that opposed this version. At the same time, these femininities were distinguished by one’s personal and social style (e.g. ‘trendy’, ‘anti‐mainstream’ and ‘geek’) as well as social class (e.g. middle or working class). We contend that this type of analysis into proliferating femininities demonstrates how women enact a range of gendered identities and practices in ways that disrupt the dominant symbolic order of street skateboarding.

Porter (2003) has also noted that women skaters have resisted the gender boundaries associated with stereotyped feminine behaviours and attributes through the creation of various media projects. Arguably, in comparison to the more mainstream and corporate ‘All Girl’ event, micro and niche media spaces provide a more significant context for women skaters to disrupt the masculine orientation of street skateboarding. Kelly et al. (2005) suggest that girls create a skater identity ‘in relation to alternative images found, for example, amongst peers at school, at skate parks, on the streets, in songs and music videos, in skater magazines (online and in print) and so on’ (p. 145). Following on, we argue that the street skateboarding social field, currently organised to support and privilege male power, can be greatly transformed by the presence and uptake of these women‐focused representations which emphasise alternative femininities. As these representations gain currency, it is our hope that other women‐focused skate contexts as well as the wider street skateboarding social field begin to recognise and reward a diversity of gendered habituses/identities and provide participants with valued capitals in more egalitarian ways. Further analysis can help reveal how women skaters re‐negotiate their limited social position within street skateboarding by creating and reproducing proliferating and alternative taste distinctions and social fields. The increased presence of alternative femininities structured according to fluid configurations of race, ethnicity, social class and sexuality might serve to re‐alter the street skateboarding landscape, which currently supports a form of masculinity that is overwhelmingly white, middle‐class and heterosexual. Following Porter (2003) and Kelly et al. (2005), we also suggest that women skateboarders fluidly construct femininities which reflect a diverse and even contradictory range of personal and social identities and styles.

However, we suggest that it is the representational and corporate realms where alternative femininities are most evident. Due to the symbolic violence enacted by men, we contend that women are rendered nearly invisible at the street level. As such, it seems to us that women will have to struggle greatly at both the symbolic and material/everyday levels in order to gain access to the street spaces currently occupied and dominated by men. As it stands, only those women skateboarders who represent the appropriation of prevailing male‐associated dispositional qualities are given access, albeit in severely restricted ways. We suggest that any challenge to the restrictive gender logics which underpin the authorisation of symbolic capital in street skateboarding fundamentally involves the increased presence of women at the level of micro‐practice. The struggle of women to use street spaces, and to be concomitantly recognised in diverse and even contradictory ways, will work alongside more representative struggles to challenge the gender order which currently defines street skateboarding as an essentially masculine activity.

Notes on contributors

Matthew Atencio is a Research Fellow with the Development Physical Education Group at the University of Edinburgh.

Becky Beal is Associate Professor with the Departmennt of Kinesiology and Physical Education at California State University‐East Bay.

Charlene Wilson is an independent scholar based in San Francisco, California.

Notes

1. The third author overheard an industry representative at the 2002 Action Sports Convention state that women are more likely to consume the accoutrements of lifestyle sports compared to men, and thus should be consciously targeted.

2. Within skateboarding, for instance, it has been noted that in 2002 women comprised 26% of all skateboarders. This is a substantial increase from 7.5% in 2001 (Board‐Trac 2002).

3. Both authors have interviewed and observed skateboarders in various locations in the USA, including Oregon, California and New York City.

4. D.I.Y. culture emerged as part of the countercultural movements of the 1950s and 1960s in the USA; the D.I.Y. cultural ethos invokes the capacity of individuals to produce music and art without recourse to formal networks and corporate structures. Thus, those who participate in D.I.Y. culture view their identities as entrepreneurial, or as ‘self‐made’.

5. The December 2003 issue of Outside magazine highlights ramp skater Lyn‐Z Adams Hawkins. The ‘All Girl Skate Jam’ was highlighted in the September 2001 issue of Sports Illustrated for Women (this magazine went out of print after the December 2002 issue).

6. Steamer has since left Toy Machine and now skates for Bootleg.