CHICKS IN BOWLS: Roller Skaters’ Gender Maneuvering in the Skatepark

Gender is a primary frame used in social interaction. Using this primary frame guides our relations with another person or a group of people because it is a basic cultural tool that allows for the basic framing of who one is. Our gender ideologies, or our notions of gender, are shaped by varying other aspects of our identities and material realities. Gender strategies draw upon this to solve a specific problem (Hochschild 1989, Wade and Ferree 2019). The skatepark is a masculinist space, overrun with men and boys who consider themselves the “kings of the park” (Pomerantz et al 2004). In the case of women who roller skate at the skatepark, they are subordinated, harassed both physically and sexually, as well as outright ignored by men inhabiting the park, which poses an additional safety hazard. To understand how women who roller skate solve these problems, I explore the following questions: How do women construct their identities in the skatepark and how does gender structure behavior in this space? What strategies do women employ in order to successfully navigate the masculinist skatepark as a feminized, and thus marginalized, roller skater?
Women roller skaters’ gender strategies operate at three levels: individual, interactional, and group. I focus on three themes: First pariah femininity to claim space as women, which contrasts with emphatic sameness of skateboarder women. Second, defensive othering of “Ramp Tramps,” the girlfriends or onlookers whose passivity embodies emphasized femininity and who are rejected by the women roller skaters. Third, the creation of community as an alternative subculture in order to navigate their subordinate status within the park.