Two 8-year old rippers, Sky and Quinnie, stoked on their issue.
I still can’t believe it. Pro skateboarder Lizzie Armanto is on the cover of Transworld Skateboarding Magazine. The pages inside are filled with interviews, photos and ads just like any other issue, only this time the magazine is 90% women and girls. That is unheard of in a male dominated industry like skateboarding. The girls are shredding. The pictures are seriously rad and the words are inspiring. Barnes & Noble, as well as skate shops everywhere, are selling out of the magazines left and right. Girls are posting about it on every social media outlet and are stoked. Putting a woman on the cover of this publication and focusing the pages inside on the women in this community is the talk of the skateboard world.
I gave 8-year old rippers Sky and Quinne copies of the magazine this morning over breakfast. As they thumbed through the pages they yelled girls names out as they came across their pictures “Oh my gosh look there’s Leticia! Lacey! Allysha! Here’s Alana, Wow! Look at that shot…” They thumbed through the pages again and again, looking closely at each girl’s photo with huge smiles on their faces. As we left the restaurant they each clutched the magazine to their chest as if it was the most important possession they had. And perhaps it really was. It was full of girls just like them who were absolutely killing it and it made them realize that one day they could actually be that girl in the magazine. When they can see girls even just a little older than them, like 12 year old Brighton Zeuner, in a decades old, male dominated skateboard magazine, it gives them fuel and inspiration. It ignites their passion for skateboarding even more than ever. And that is huge.
For me it was something else entirely. It was a sigh of genuine relief. It was knowing that this day had finally come. Thirty-eight years have passed since I became a professional skateboarder and helped pave the way, along with a small group of other girls in the 70’s. Now it was all coming full circle. It’s been 3 years since I started a website featuring girls skateboarding every single day, just so younger girls would have somewhere to find inspiration by seeing other girls doing what they love. Should it have taken this long for one of the top skateboard magazines to do this? Hell no. But it’s happening now, which is something worth celebrating. We are seeing the change we have always wanted, hoped for and fought hard for. I went to bed last night with the magazine in my hands as I thumbed through the pages and read those interviews again and again. I fell asleep holding it to my chest and woke up in the morning with a huge smile on my face, knowing that women in skateboarding had finally created a significant wave of change.
Skateboarding is not a “boys club” anymore, it’s just skateboarding. This day means more to me than when I was inducted into the Skateboarding Hall of Fame. That is how huge this milestone really is. It shows every young girl and young woman out there that we are finally being seen and recognized as skateboarders.
Interestingly enough, it flashed me back to just more than three years ago when I wrote this for my blog “It’s Not About Pretty,” about a image I found in Glamour Magazine Spain:
Image via Glamour Magazine Spain
Back in the day you had to hunt and hunt to find girls profiled in skateboarding magazines. I craved those photos, I studied them and cut them out and thumb-tacked them to my wall for inspiration. I don’t think I could have filled all the walls in my teenage bedroom with female skate photos even if I had tried – there just weren’t enough of them. But there were always photos of girls in cute outfits watching the boys skate…
Which brings me to this editorial spread. Don’t get me wrong, I love that skateboarding is featured here in a very 70′s California way, BUT I’d really be digging it if the girl was the one skating and maybe the boys were the ones watching. I’m waiting for the year that happens, and in the meantime, I am still tacking up photos of rad girls, with the hope that one day my walls will be filled.
I believe it’s time for a new ending to the same old story. What about you?
Flash forward to today. I have been smiling for the past two days knowing that I could tear out all those photos, put them up on my office walls and have plenty of images to do it with. That is amazing to me. That is what I have hoped and dreamed of all these years.
Thank you to Transworld Skateboarding Magazine, the photographers, writers, editors, advertisers and the women featured who just changed our world. I believe we also changed yours as well.
Thank you to every girl who has ever skateboarded – from the OG’s in my day, to the little ones ripping today – for always charging hard no matter what. Every single girl out there helped make this happen, and you should all be stoked as hell. I know I am.
