Emily and Janey

Skaters

How many times a month do you skate?

E: If it’s summer, then every day of the month. If I’m in Uni I try and go once a week so 4/5 times.

J: Yeah I’m the exact same, it’s weather dependent as well.

How long we’ve been skating for?

E: About a year and a half now. 

J: Yeah I’m the same.

What made you get into skating now then?

E: It was something to do in summer, we were both so lost,  we had just finished our first years of Uni and had nothing to do and we thought let’s give it a go. 

J: We had a board and we would say to people, girls typically, do you want to skate? and they would alway say yeah sure, but it never followed through, so it was just me and Emily who started up.

Would you say then that you know more boys than girls from skating? 

E: One hundred percent yeah, but then I think you know more girls from further out, so there’s a few people like Connie who runs Girls Night, and rolling with the girls and girls date Nottingham, that we are aware of. I feel like you know of women because they skate and it’s like a community. We know the lads from the local but we are the only two girls really that skate there most of the time. There was probably about seven of us skating and then just gradually everyone kind of copped out of it.

Why do you think that is?

J: I don’t know, I felt like we were going ham at it and just throwing ourselves about and then I think other people couldn’t be asked.

E: I think it depends why you came to the skate park in the first place really as well. The culture around girls and skate parks has always been weird. There’s a whole lot ‘Oh yeah, she comes to the skate park and she’s after a skateboarding boy. A lot of the times we go to a park and it feels like all eyes are on us it’s like ‘oh my god, a girls on the skate park’,  they must be here for that.’

Was it intimidating when you first started then, as a girl? 

E: Yeah my knees would shake, my legs would feel like jelly,  my stomach would be turning!

J: You kinda have to brace yourself when you first walk in the park, I mean it’s not even just for girls,  I’m sure anyone starting out, regardless their gender, is scared. 

E: Especially with lads and skating, it can be a very ‘take the piss culture’, when you go skating, I remember the first time that we went onto our skatepark, one of our friends brought us, I remember the first thing that someone said to him when he walked on with us was, ‘Which one are you shagging?’. I feel like we’ve worked really, really hard to show that this is not why we’re here. We’re here making our own little stamp on skateboarding, we want to be here for skating. 

J: With skating I personally feel like it’s such a respect based thing. Like, you know, you might have the piss taken out of you because you can’t land a trick, but if you keep trying at something people will have that respect for you.

How has your experience been as a woman surrounded by so many ‘lads’ at the skatepark? 

E: Someone said to us the other day, you and Janey are the only girls that actually shred in Bolton.

J: For me though, I feel like an asshole for feeling at one point in my life that boy skaters are dicks. Because they’re not. It’s like if you’re sexist you’re sexist, you’re not sexist because you’re a skater. I’ve only ever had sexist comments made to me by non skaters like ‘you’re pretty good for a girl’.

So do you think that there is a bit of a misconception about male skaters and Skate Culture as a whole?

J: One hundred percent, that’s why I wanted to do this today. I understand why girls or even other people, not in the sport, can feel that way. But It’s not like that at all, or at least it hasn’t been like that for me.  

E: Yeah, they soon realise you’re just one of them.

Why is it important to you, being a female and a Skater? 

E: Inspiring young people to do something that they were told ‘nah that’s not your sport, that’s not ladylike’. We’ve never been ladylike and I feel like that’s never stopped us from being successful and from having fun 

J: I think skateboarding is heavily male dominated but the girls are getting into their own recently.

Do you feel like there is a particularly big female skate scene in Manchester?

E: Yeah. If you look on Instagram there’s Manchester Girl Skaters which used to be call ‘Wait Hold my Hand’ and was run by Connie who runs the girls night at Projekts Skatepark. So I’d say that I’m aware of her and her friends and what they’re getting up to. I think there’s a lot of Northern girls, not necessarily from Manchester but I feel like there’s a big female Northern skate scene.  

E: There’s a silent respect as well. When we go on to a skate park, lads are so weird when they congratulate each other, rather than being like yeah man that was sick. They just hit their boards on the floor make noise. I don’t know if you’ve seen it yet today but say with girl skaters, a girl will just come up to me like yo that was sick. I feel like girl skaters are so much more about going up to each other and having a chat.

Is there anything, as a woman, you’d change about the skate scene in North England? 

E: I’d change the few people who might need to change their perspective on girls skating. But in my experience, I can complain about a couple of the lads who have said horrible things or whatever, but the other 99% of lads have been sound and have welcomed us into their culture and the community that is skating. On the whole, I wouldn’t change the skate scene, but I feel like it’s taken us a long time to get here.

Does Skate Culture and fashion go hand in hand for you, does your personal style derive from skate culture? 

J: I mean influenced yeah, definitely. I really like wearing baggy stuff. I wanna be baggy and comfy when I skate. I feel like what I wear skating is what I’d wear any other day. So it’s nice that I have a hobby that means that I can wear the shit I want to wear and do my sport in it. As well, in a  fashion sense, If you’re part of a skate community that has a skate shop, you want to support your local so you’ll buy your stuff from there and end up wearing and promoting it. It’s all about community.

E: The guy who runs the local skate park by us is a skater from down south and he decided to come up here and start his park, and it’s made a really big community and everyone always talks about for example, the latest shoes coming out and we’ll go to shoe drops together or launches.

E: Your park becomes your home, that feeling when you skate on your own park compared to any other one, you feel most confident there because of the people and the memories that you have.

E: I’d say that I’m a bit different, I have more clothes that I would never wear skating, but I’d wear most my skate clothes on a regular day. I wear skirts and skate. I try and push that I can be a girly girl and still skate. Girls should be able to wear whatever they want when they skate.  

J: Shoes as well. When I’m on the train or when I’m passing someone and I see them wearing a polar T or whatever, or if they just look like a skater. I’ll always look at the shoes.

E: Messed up shoes is a part of the skater identity.

J: I will not buy a pair of shoes I cannot skate in now because like, I know if I want a pair of mad trainers, I’m I’m just not going to wear them.

How do you feel about Girls Nights at skateparks across the North? Do you think they’re a good way to get girls more interested in male dominated sports? 

J: Yeah definitely, Girls Night is fucking sick if you don’t feel that comfortable getting on a board, but don’t just leave it at that, go to your local park because people are nice. It’s such a controversial topic. I’d say the incentive is good, it’s good to try and get girls into a male dominated sport but at the same time, I feel like it’s feeding into the segregation. It shouldn’t just be girls, it should be beginners.

E: Yeah I think it’s how comfortable you feel about it, because for us going to a Girls Night really helped us when we were starting out. But then I feel like a part of skateboarding is going to a skate park and mixing with everyone else and if you’ve only ever skated at a girls night, you have no idea what it’s like to walk into that skate park and skate normally.

J: Yeah, you’re going to go and be the only girl there.

E: We appreciate having both sides. We appreciate growing up in skateboarding and having Girls Nights to go to, but then also going to our local with the lads. It’s introduced us to that life, we’re not scared how to go to a skatepark now on our own.

What would you say to any girls out there thinking of getting into skateboarding but never have?

E: All you need is your board and your legs 

J: Yeah, and I think one of the most important things for girls is don’t segregate yourself from the boys, they don’t bite, if you’re up for the crack they won’t notice your gender. I’ve never felt from one of the lads on my park, that my gender has ever negatively affected me. 

E: I feel like we’ve been the first set of long term girls at our skatepark, so it’s nice for us because when young girls come to skate or come with their parents, they see us and they want to be like us. At least now kids will grow up with girls that they respect and idolise in their own sport and can think yeah girls shred too, they’re powerful women! That’s great for young people that are growing up in our community.