Pro Skater Lacey Baker On Community, Tokyo 2020 & Skate Exchange

Girls have lengthy existed on the fringes of the skateboarding trade. There have been exceptions — Patty McGee graced the quilt of Life journal in 1965, Cara-Beth Burnside was the primary ladies to have her personal signature skate shoe, and Elissa Steamer was the primary official skilled feminine skateboarder and the primary to characteristic on Tony Hawk’s Professional Skater online game — however total, ladies have been considerably underrepresented in an trade dominated by males. Girls have fewer sponsorship offers, solely a handful of devoted skate merchandise, much less media protection, and smaller prize purses.

However now issues are altering. For a begin, extra main manufacturers are beginning to add ladies to their professional groups. Nike SB signed Leticia Bufoni and Lacey Baker, Nora Vasconcellos joined adidas, and Converse Cons brought on Alexis Sablone earlier this yr. Since 2009, the X Video games has awarded equal prize cash to women and men, and Van Park Collection, one among skateboarding’s most revered competitions, equalized males’s and ladies’s prize purses three years in the past. The media can be lastly giving airtime to works that painting ladies as critical skate boarders. Crystal Moselle’s movie, Skate Kitchen, which captures the coming-of-age angst via a bunch of girls skaters, gained awards globally and its success is rumored to have impressed a forthcoming Netflix comedy series centered around women skateboarders.

As feminine skaters obtain extra help and protection than ever earlier than, there’s a strengthened sense of group and a need to maintain this sisterly help on the forefront as competitors will increase and extra is at stake. “The spirit of any sport can change if you throw more cash at it,” explains ex-pro and founding father of the Action Sports Alliance Mimi Knoop.” However, there’ll at all times be part of the skateboarding group that retains skateboarding sacred and pure — elevated monetary alternatives or not.”

Knoop lately organized the Skate Exchange, a four-day-long occasion that introduced a number of the greatest names in ladies’s skateboarding collectively in Tokyo, the placement the place they’re going to all meet once more in 2020 for the Olympics. She tells us, “By way of creating and internet hosting occasions just like the Skate Trade, we hope to set a optimistic instance and present the world that skateboarding will be about growing skilled alternatives, in addition to palpable camaraderie, enjoyable, and friendship.”

Among the many professional skaters attending the occasion was X-Video games gold medalist Lacey Baker. We caught up along with her after the occasion to speak in regards to the state of girls’s skateboarding, what it was like signing to Nike, and why she took half within the Skate Trade.

What was it about skateboarding that resonated with you?

The factor about skateboarding that I’ll love ceaselessly is the liberty to be a person, the flexibility to go wherever that’s concrete and skate round, and doing it nevertheless you need to. There aren’t any guidelines.

What have been the most important challenges you confronted rising up as a skater?

Accidents are powerful to work via, particularly as you grow old. Overcoming frustration and worry and studying to be affected person with myself and be type to myself are a few of my greatest expansions via skateboarding.

Do you are feeling that there’s nonetheless a robust sense of group in skateboarding? And is it any completely different amongst ladies skaters than males?

I didn’t really feel a way of group in any respect till I met different ladies and queer skate boarders. I had man associates that I skated with which was effective however I didn’t really feel a way of security and love in most of these relationships. In my expertise, I really feel a way of group not simply from skating with individuals, however having the ability to relate to them via life experiences and challenges. I don’t relate to males. I relate to ladies who skate, and I wasn’t conscious of that disconnect till I had the chance to expertise being surrounded by different ladies.

What do you suppose has prevented skateboarding from turning into extra inclusive?

The patriarchy.

You latterly signed for Nike. Did that change your notion of the trade in any respect? Or of your self as a skater?

Signing with Nike gave me the chance to deal with skateboarding and solely skateboarding for the primary time in my complete life. I’m very grateful and humbled by this; it’s given me a brand new drive to progress and be current for members of my group. It’s given me the platform to take a stand for the individuals and issues I care about.

You meet a whole lot of these ladies on the comp circuit — how does the environment differ if you’re not having to compete?

The environment is generally the identical; the most important purpose I look ahead to contests is as a result of I get to spend time with different ladies who skate. I feels good to be in that area with individuals like me, and people alternatives have been few and much between till lately.

How do you are feeling about skateboarding being part of the Olympics? Do you suppose it should have an effect on males’s and ladies’s skateboarding in the identical approach?

The Olympics is giving a worldwide platform to ladies and queer skate boarders. That degree of visibility is essential and essential to the expansion of equality and inclusivity in skateboarding and the world.

Why did you participate within the Skate Trade?

Neighborhood, inclusivity, empowerment, friendship, love.