As Skate Kitchen shows, women are shaping the future of skateboarding

All-female skate collectives, like the one featured in Crystal Moselle's new film, are helping to turn the sport into a more creative and more welcoming place than ever, says Clarisse Loughrey

Rachelle Vinberg, Ajani Russell, Nina Moran, Dede Lovelace, and Alexander Cooper in Skate Kitchen (Magnolia Pictures)

Skateboarding is not for girls at all. As recently as 2013, this statement was uttered by one of the biggest names in the sport, Nyjah Huston, and then printed, unchallenged, in Thrasher magazine, a major skate-focused publication.

Huston’s subsequent apology for his comments only reinforced the stereotype. He wrote on Twitter: “What I meant was that skateboarding is a gnarly sport, in general, and as someone who knows the wrath of the concrete all too well, I don't like the thought of girls (like my little sister) getting hurt.”

Boys could be boys – could bruise their knees, learn and grow stronger – but girls must be locked away, like delicate pieces of porcelain.

Simply to exist as a female skateboarder has meant growing up with this image, then rebelling against it. However, seismic changes within the industry have started to challenge these stereotypes, and a new generation of skaters have opened up the sport to a promising, and inclusive, future.

Among them is New York’s Skate Kitchen, an all-female collective who now form the subject of – and star in – Crystal Moselle’s film of the same name. Having made her debut with 2015’s acclaimed documentary The Wolfpack, about six brothers who grew up confined to their home, learning of the outside world only through the movies they watched, Moselle has taken a semi-fictionalised route here.

In Skate Kitchen, the girls may have been given characters to play and a story to dramatise, but there’s no less truth to the experience: from the overprotective mother who confiscates her daughter’s skateboard after one injury too many, to the underhand comments of the skate park’s male population.

A woman on a skateboard can still feel like an act of defiance but, as Skate Kitchen demonstrates, there’s safety in numbers. And it’s partially thanks to social media.

Dede Lovelace in Skate Kitchen (2018) (Magnolia Pictures)

Look back through the history of female skaters, and you’ll find it’s a landscape largely populated by outliers and pioneers. There was Patti McGee who, in 1965, became the first female national skateboard champion, and was featured doing a handstand on the cover of Life magazine. She was followed in the 1970s by the likes of Peggy Oki, Cindy Whitehead, and Kim Cespedes, but it wasn’t until 1998 that the sport got its first female professional skateboarder, when Elissa Steamer was signed to Toy Machine.

The burden, in the past, was largely on individual skaters to push for recognition and inclusion. In 2002, Cara-Beth Burnside and Jen O’Brien convinced X Games, which hosts the largest televised skateboarding competition in the world, to finally stage a women’s demonstration. In 2006, Burnside then personally threatened to drop out of the competition unless they awarded equal prize money to both men and women – and it worked.

Yet, thankfully, that sense of isolation may finally be near its end, as social media has allowed women to connect, encourage, and support each other in ways that were never possible before. Skate Kitchen’s Nina Moran told an interviewer that, after getting an icy reception from the boys at her local skate park, she went straight to YouTube to look up other girl skaters in NYC.

That’s when she came across Rachelle Vinberg. A comment on her video later turned into a promise to meet up, and eventually Skate Kitchen was formed, with the help of its five other members: Dede Lovelace, Ajani Russell, Kabrina Adams, and twins Brenn and Jules Lorenzo.

It’s a common story, with all-female collectives starting to spring up across the globe, many with an emphasis on welcoming newcomers into their numbers. Girls Skate UK hosts regular events across the country, while London’s own Nefarious Skate Crew’s meet-ups often involve skating and eating lots of pizza. Tel Aviv hosts the Jerusalem Skater Girls, founded in 2015, while the Babes Brigade meet regularly in Toronto.

The growth in all-female collectives finally frees newcomers of the old trial by fire: turning up to the local skate park, only to discover they’re the only girl there. Or of having to learn their craft in an environment that is inherently intimidating, if not openly hostile to their presence.

The same battles remain. In 2017, the Bowl-A-Rama competition paid out a $15,000 (£11,400) prize for men, but only a $2,000 (£1,500) prize for women. It’s hardly alone in this disparity. Yet, in a world where visibility is the key to any skater’s success, since sponsorship deals realistically remain the only path to professional status, social media has allowed female skaters to disrupt some of the industry’s traditional hierarchy, expanding how we view skater culture in the process.

The members of Skate Kitchen are also artists, filmmakers, and fashion students; their distinct, adventurous approach to style made them perfect for Moselle’s short film contribution to Miu Miu’s 2016 fashion campaign. They’ve also appeared in ads for Nike and G-Star RAW.

Social media has pushed female skaters further into the cultural mainstream than ever before, and, combined with continued efforts on the competitive circuit, major brands are finally starting to pay attention and offer women those coveted sponsorship deals.

In 2017, Nike introduced their first skate shoe designed explicitly for women, saving female skaters from having to tape or even microwave their shoes to achieve a comfortable fit. The same year, Adidas introduced Nora Vasconcellos as their first female pro skater. In 2018, she released her own lavender coloured skate shoe.

The last few years have witnessed a dramatic transformation within skateboarding. Not only have women become more visible, they’ve helped to shape what it represents in the future: a world more expansive, more creative, and more welcoming than ever.

As collectives like the Skate Kitchen continue to inspire the next generation, female skaters now face their most exciting challenge yet: competing in the Tokyo Olympic Games in 2020, where the sport will be represented for the very first time.

Skate Kitchen is released in UK cinemas 28 September