“@dedwooddesigns , he’s a friend of the local skate shop ‘Tuesdays’. Tuesdays as a shop, does a deal where you trade in your old board and you get a new board for like 30 quid instead of like £50. Then he passes the boards onto a fella who makes all the cool stuff! He makes new skateboards and different household equipment like cutlery handles, bowls, vases, tables stuff like that. If I get his instagram up, he’s sick. Look there’s beer mats and all weird and wonderful things like that.”

Yeah I remember you talking about him last time we met!

[Emily shows me a photo on instagram]

“So yeah that’s all made out of the sides of skate boards, he gets loads of them and glues them all together and sands them down to create things. It’s super cool though because that’s like the sustainable side of skate boarding we don’t often see. It’s something we all really appreciate today.”

So what does femininity mean to you?

“Ummm, that’s so hard!”

Well, do you think it has it changed since you started skating? 

“I’d say definitely, I feel like at first it was kind of obvious femininity, a lot of the classics, like being a really girly girl and getting your hair and nails done.”

I feel like you don’t have to be feminine to do those things though, I’ve always been quite feminine but I’ve never done those typical things..

“I don’t know it’s kinda, it’s a softness isn’t it I guess which doesn’t really fit in with skateboarding and what skateboarding is. Skateboarding is seen at source like a Gnarly hardcore ‘yeah dude’ sport isn’t it. So, I think for a girl to go in to skating and kind of bring femininity into it as well is really cool, I feel like we do bring that to the sport.”

Do you feel like you lost any femininity when you started skating?

“Yeah, I think so. Sometimes I think it’s the little things, like having legs covered in bruises and cuts and stuff like that. I’d say my femininity, or view on femininity has changed. It’s made me realise that typical perceptions of femininity aren’t that important, the male view of femininity, and that it doesn’t necessarily equal power. I guess because of how we’re brought up, with all these women that we are meant to look up too; all these women that are described as ‘Oh she’s beautiful and look how gorgeous she is’, but it was never about them as people, it was always superficial. These were the male perceptions of femininity we thought we had to live up to. Now though, when we get this idea of femininity, and this is worldwide not just in skating, it’s a lot more about being that Boss Lady, and being strong, being good at something you love and having skills. I feel like that’s something that women were never seen to have, we were judged on how hospitable we were and how we looked and carried ourselves, remember [she says sarcastically], so for women to be seen as skilled in something today and even more, to be respected in a skill like skating, that some men can’t even do, I think that’s pretty cool, that gives us some power back!”

Last time we met, you mentioned that you try to push the narrative that you can be a ‘girly girl’ and still skate and that women should be able to wear whatever they want when they skate. So what does the word femininity mean to you, in terms of skate fashion?

“What I like to do is braid my hair, I like to do expressive things with my hair rather than makeup, so thats how I express some of my femininity. Clothes wise, it can go either way. I can be like, ‘Oh, I’m just gonna wear trousers and a T-shirt’, because that’s the most comfy thing, or I can be like, I feel quite feminine today and I’m not gonna let that stop, or affect my skating.”

“Whatever I wear I still feel feminine, I still feel like me, it’s how you feel inside and it reflects on the outside and you can express how you feel through fashion. If I want to wear a skirt then I’ll still wear a skirt, just chuck a pair of shorts on underneath to skate!”

“I always have my skate shoes though, whatever I wear. Messed up shoes is a part of the skater identity.”

Do you feel like you’ve been judged maybe more so, being a woman and skating?

“Yeah massively, I feel like it’s like this on every park. But I feel like most girls will agree that the scariest part of going to a skate park for the first time isn’t skating, it’s facing the people there. And that is traditionally a lot of men. So if there is another girl there, you’re absolutely buzzing because you’re like, ‘yes I’ve got someone here’, some common ground at least [laughs], but definitely first coming into it, the male response was kind of like ‘Oh, is this a girl that we’re gonna be able to get with, rather than is she a good skater’ [laughs].

I find that so odd, skater girls are almost fetishised but their skill is initially overlooked or not taken seriously when they actually come to skate..

“Yeah, I think that’s so weird that a lot of boys like you said, they love, love the idea of having a skater girl that can actually skate, but then as soon as there are girls in the park, they’re not interested in her skating it’s just like, oh can I bang. [laughs]”

“I don’t know it’s just different for boys and girls, sadly it always has been and hasn’t seemed to change much. I feel like boys skating is so normal, it’s seen as such a boy sport and it’s so common that every lad growing up had a skateboard.”

“I had to use my brothers growing up, my mum wouldn’t buy me a skateboard she was not about me doing any kind of dangerous, scary sports. Even now every time I go out to skate she’s like ‘Just be careful, don’t hurt yourself!” [laughs]

Do you think you’ll try and do that if you ever have children, make sure you treat the girl and the boy the same when it comes to sports?

“I can’t wait to take my kids skateboarding and I think it’s so cool me doing things like this as a woman. I can’t wait to show my kids these photos and be like I did this, this is what I was doing when I was growing up. We were some of the first girls our age in Bolton to start skating, well in our area anyway. We were the first to take it seriously and go for it properly - learning tricks and not just sitting about the side and only being there because my friends were. We were there because we really wanted to skate and I feel like that’s how we were able to enjoy skating and get past the lad culture because we weren’t there under false pretences at all. We went there to skate. When you make that clear all those stereotypes go away. I think it was only an issue really at the start, I’d say now the lads are all solid and treat us how they’d treat the other male skaters.” 

Most of the women I have spoken to have all said you try not to let those initial feelings effect you, but you cant help feeling scared and intimidated when you start!

“I even get it with the lads that I skate with. Even when they go to a new park, they all say ’I’m dead nervous, I’ve got to do six tricks and I have to land all of them and they have to be good’, so when they go onto that park they’re established. So obviously for a girl it’s really hard to get that respect initially. It’s only really now that we’re starting to see the standards of ‘that is a good skater’ not just ‘oh she’s got on a board and given it a go, she’s pretty good for a girl’”. 

I agree, before there was a lot more of ‘oh she’s good...for a girl’ and now it’s more she’s a good skater, full stop. The gender comparisons are hopefully becoming less common.

“Yeah exactly, I was having a really big conversation with my friend about how the X Games and Street League (which was a skateboarding Olympics basically before the new limits on skateboarding), have always had a men’s section and they’ve just started getting a women’s competition going over the last few years. There’s been a lot of chat about whether or not women should be put in the men’s games and if it should all be one category.”

At first I was like yeah I fully agree, women shouldn’t be looked at differently than men, we should be equal in our sport. And then when I really thought about it, I thought actually women’s skateboarding isn’t big enough yet. I don’t want to be put in the same category as men just yet. I want women’s skateboarding to become as big as men’s skateboarding. I want us to have our own rights. I think for us to have our own X Games, our own section in the Olympics, it is sick, because they finally acknowledge that we’re here. I say give it 10 years women’s skateboarding is going to be unbelievable, man, some of the girls that you see coming out of it, like Sky Brown and amazing people from the UK and America to name a few, growing up in proper skating communities from when they’re young is so so great to see and gives us a lot of hope for the future.”

Do you have a lot of hope then, for the younger generation of girls in skating?

“Yeah, totally. I find it so exciting seeing so many little girls that come to Girls Night at the skate park, giving it a go and then you get women coming over going ‘oh do you want me to help’, its so nice to see, women of all ages coming together. We have this girl on our park in Bolton, who’s like 12, and she scooters, I mean as much as we hate scooters [laughs], I’m so happy to see a girl on the park. She religiously comes and I can’t wait to see her properly blossom and be a sick skater. And I feel like lads want to see girls in skateboarding now, I think our friends do anyway, I found that they value having girls on the park.”

What would you say then, to any young girls or women out there who want to get into skating but haven’t?

“You can do it, you will have good fun, it’s amazing, you just have to take that step. Just go onto the park and go up to the biggest, scariest man or woman and say ‘Hi my name is ____, will you teach me how to skate?’ [laughs] If they say no, then go to the next biggest person! Keep asking until you find someone who will help you. We want to help people, we love having new people, it’s so great. When you see the young ones coming in we take them under our arm and we give them, well I call it ‘skate school’, [laughs] we have a laugh where they will all come over to me asking me to teach them things and for an hour I’ll do that. Which is great because we’ve just got another girl into skateboarding! And then even all the little lads who do it with me as well, will now grow up respecting and idolising women in skateboarding.”

Yeah that’s great, I think for example the men you skateboard with, when they were growing up skateboarding, they obviously had no female skateboarders to look up to, whereas now you’re actually one of those people, it’s really cool!

“It really is. I even get parents coming up to me saying ‘that’s so cool’ or you get the odd person going ‘Go on girl!’, even mum’s coming up saying ‘oh it’s so good seeing you girls, because I want to take my little one here but I was never sure’. Initially I feel like it would have been a lot harder if I was going by myself, so I’d say my main thing is getting friends to start with you. I feel like female skaters also give a skatepark a friendlier feel for all the people who don’t skate, we almost make it more approachable because we’re so excited to have new faces and girls getting involved [laughs].” 

“Come on, get your bum in gear! It’s nice to be part of a little community!”

Photography, Creative Direction, Styling and Interview by Ella Kenneally

Fashion Designers: Sarah Robinson and Amy Louise Morgan

Hair and Makeup: Summer Lomas