Faces of women's skateboarding
Call it the Internet, call it Instagram, call it a generation of parents who have normalized the idea of taking their daughters to skate parks at an early age or just call it "about time." After decades of feeling as if women's skateboarding was just about to take off, it seems as if it actually might be this time. Case in point, 17-year-old Allysha Bergado, who finished sixth at the Women's Skateboard Park debut at X Games Barcelona and has also skated on Nickelodeon and the Disney Channel. Read on to find out more about a few of the women who make up the now-connected global community of female skateboarders.
"There are a couple of skaters who might not be known at the X Games, but they have this following," says pro vert skater and Hoopla skateboards co-founder Mimi Knoop. "Nora Vasconcellos is an example. She's done well in contests, but she's not as known as a contest skater. She's got a big personality, she's funny, but she's also good at skating. She's developed this whole following online."
"Back in the day," says the U.K.'s Rogue skateboards founder Jenna Selby, "if [a girl] walked into a skate park, almost everyone would stop and stare at you then ask, A) 'Can you kickflip?' and B) 'How good are you?' As if there is this mythical scale you work from to define how good you are! It could be quite daunting and unfortunately put many girls off. "Nowadays though, thanks to YouTube, Instagram and Facebook, most people have seen a woman or a girl on a board, so they don't give the same reaction when they see one in a park."
Leticia Bufoni has more than 211,000 followers on Facebook and nearly 123,000 on Instagram. Her 15-second Insta-clips of her skateboarding regularly clock more than 10,000 likes and hundreds of comments. And yet, "Leticia does not have a real board sponsor right now," says Meow skateboards founder Lisa Whitaker. "She can get boards easy on flow, but she can't get any company to put her on the team."
Lacey Baker, Alexis Sablone
"The first year of Meow," says Lisa Whitaker, "I told Lacey, 'The level that you're skating at, you deserve to be on a team that could do so much more for you. So as much as I'd like you on Meow, you're not allowed.' "She came to me after a year and said, 'If I get on another team, they're just going to put me on flow. I'd much rather be on Meow, where I can have some input and be a part of something.' ... So now she's on the team."
"Action sports is at a point where it's pretty mainstream," says Mahfia's Kim Woozy. "People are way more open to the idea of being sponsored by a corporate company. Before, you were a sellout. Now there are no lines." Case in point, Samarria Brevard is sponsored by movietickets.com, along with Mimi Knoop, Nora Vasconcellos, Andy Macdonald and Alex Sorgente. In a world where female skateboarders have trouble getting endemic sponsorship, more mainstream partnerships like this might be where the women's market is headed.
Lizzie Armanto has become one of the more prominent faces of the new generation of women's skateboarding. She came into her first X Games appearance hot, taking gold in the debut of Women's Skateboard Park at X Games Barcelona last summer with technical lip tricks and stylish airs. As far as exposure goes, however, the X Games aren't the only thing Armanto has going. She is also one of the only women to get a two-page spread check-out interview in Thrasher magazine.
"Initially, I started [Rogue] because women weren't getting any coverage [in the U.K.]," says Jenna Selby, who founded the skateboard company in 2000. "There were a lot of good riders about, and the idea was if you got these riders and put them on a team, visited parks and local skate shops, you'd be more likely to get noticed and get more coverage -- more importantly, the right type of coverage."
Skateboarding has always been international, but now that women are connected online, they actually know about each other. "For want of a better word," says Selby, "Lucy Adams is basically our most famous female skater in the U.K."
Josie Millard, Lucy Adams
"Josie Millard is Lucy Adams' protg and has amazing potential," says Selby of the two women pictured here going at great lengths to get to a skate spot. "I'm very excited to be filming with her."
Lexine Lee and Kaz Kuo are part of a small group of female skaters in Shanghai who like to meet up and skate at a marbled street spot called "Love Park." Though skateboarding is taking off in countries like Korea, where the culture is evolving free from gender bias and constraints, China is a bit of a different story. In a one-child culture, where kids attend school 11 to 13 hours a day, skateboarding is not an encouraged activity. Still, these women persevere in their love for the activity and eagerly consume media of other female skaters worldwide, citing Lacey Baker in particular as one of their idols.
"It's exciting because, for the first time, because of the Internet, girls are able to see what other girls are doing at the highest levels," says Kim Woozy. "They know exactly who's who and what good style is because of Facebook and Instagram. So they're able to develop the culture authentically because they know what to model it after."
Austrian Julia Brueckler, seen here skating a park in Barcelona, will be making her X Games debut this year in Austin, Texas.
"Girls like Amy Caron and Vanessa Torres have a lot of fans. They're legends in the girls skate community. So I thought [with Meow Skateboards] I could give them a platform to be seen," says Lisa Whitaker. "All of them are working; they all have full-time jobs right now. So I told them, 'You do what you want to do, and I'll support you by giving you a platform and creating content we like.' It's just something fun to do with my friends."