Skate like a girl

Alicia Fillback just put her latest edit out and it's covered in awesome sauce. She knows how to skate down hills and does it in style. This is not a problem, like I said it's awesome and she's a huge inspiration for me as a skater. The Cook Your Own Damn Meals edit she did with Carmen Shafer is still one of my favourite skate videos of all time, and I the first time I watched it I remember just wanting to be able to skate like that. Two years on and I'm firmly moving towards that goal.

What I'm pissed about is someone on facebook, after watching the video trotted out the “she skates like a guy” line and meant it as a compliment. And it's a compliment that often comes from the mouths of guys who will tell you that gender has no place in skating because skaters are skaters.

Except when they're girls it seems.

I can't speak for Alicia, and what drives her passion for skating but what I do know is that she skates like someone who understands the form of DH sliding and has begun to master it. I also know that form isn't gendered, form is merely technique and anyone can learn technique given enough drive, determination and most importantly of all, time. I get that there aren't a whole lot of female riders who skate that way and people are used to only seeing guys skate that way, but that doesn't mean that understanding and mastering form is an exclusively male domain, or that any girl who understands and masters the form has to skate like a guy, or be one of the boys, or any other of the tired cliches that people trot out in order to do it. If skating truly is genderless then she skates like a skater, and if you do want to bring gender into it, then she skates like a girl, a girl who rips.

End of story.

Except there's more to the story... I think the whole skating like a guy stereotype of girls who shred can put off other girls who want to skate like that but don't really want to be seen as that tomboy skater chick. Yeah there are plenty of girls who are tomboy skater chicks (I'm one of them), but the fact that we are tomboys has nothing to do with the fact that we're skaters... Okay, maybe a bit because we do fit the whole stereotype, but we still don't skate like guys, because (shock, horror) we aren't guys. There's a whole lot of macho bullshit culture in skating, which I think comes from big companies trying to sell a life style to teenage boys, and saying someone skates like a girl is often used as a putdown (also calling things gay, but that's another issue). We need to stop this, skating like a girl is a good thing, especially when the skating is defined by the girls doing it. And you know what, once we've accepted that we'll actually be moving towards a place where skaters really are just skaters. 

And here's the video because it is amazing and everyone should watch it and be inspired, because Alicia Fillback is badass.


Blood Orange: Introducing Alicia Fillback from Blood Orange on Vimeo.