Monday 16 May 2016

8 Female Skaters That Changed History

8 Female Skaters That Changed History


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Patti McGee

Patti was doing a handstand on a skateboard on the cover of LIFE magazine in May 1965 long before bra burning and protests outside the Washington Monument.
Patti was the first woman to become a pro skateboarder, after winning the Women’s National Skateboard Championship. She was sponsored by HOBIE skateboards and demonstrated her 360s on them around the world.
By the time Tony Alva and Stacy Peralta were ripping around SoCal, Patti had quit skateboarding altogether to become a turquoise miner in Nevada and later a leathersmith. But her early exposure and talent paved the way for future generation of female riders. Photo: Skateboarder Magazine via Mpora



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Peggy Oki

Remember the Z-Boys crew of the 1970s… They were all boys, right? Wrong. Peggy Oki was the only female on the original Zephyr skateboard team – and she still skates today, well into her fifties!
But it wasn’t smooth riding, even among her own sex. “Some of the girls didn’t like the fact that I skated like a guy, so they protested me to the judges and one of the judges said I skated better than some of the guys.” Photo via Peggy Oki



Cara-Beth-Burnside


Cara-Beth Burnside

Cara-Beth burst onto the skate scene in 1989, when she was featured on the cover of Thrasher magazine, dressed in pink and rocking a ponytail, while busting out of a vert ramp.
After a career as a pro snowboarder (she was part of the first ever US Olympic snowboard team back in 1998), Burnside went on to convince ESPN to host a girls demo stand at the 2002 X-Games.
This was a huge step forward for women’s skating, as the year after saw the first X-Games women’s vert event. By 2005, the prize money for men and women was equal.
To top it all off, she was the first women to have a signature skate shoe. How rad is that!Photo: Transworld Business via Mpora



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Elissa Steamer

I remember playing Tony Hawk Pro Skater and there only being one female character to choose from. She was Elissa Steamer.
Back in the early 90s, Elissa smashed through a predominantly male-dominated scene with her part in Toy Machine’s 1996 video, Welcome To Hell. There were other female riders around, but Elissa was the first female skater to be shown as equal to her male counterparts.
However it wasn’t until 1998 when she won the Slam City Jam women’s division – and finally went pro – that she began to make a name for herself worldwide with her individual, dope style.
Need proof? Just check out her part in Jump Off A Building! Photo: Mpora



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Lyn-Z Adams Hawkins

Lyn-Z was never the best girl in grom skate comps, she explains in an interview with Cooler, but she worked hard and went on to become the first female to land a McTwist 540 in a skate comp.
Growing up San Diego meant she was skating alongside Tony Hawk from a young age. Aged 15, she became the first female to skate the DC Mega Ramp and the second youngest to ever win an X-Games gold medal.
What’s rad is she doesn’t limit herself to one discipline. She skates verts, bowl, street and mega ramp – and used to compete in snowboard comps on the side. With eight X-Games medals under her belt, she’s without a doubt one of the best female skaters of all time.Photo: Jaesen Kanter via Mpora



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Vanessa Torres

Just 21, [Torres] is known as the bad girl of skateboarding. The table-flipping, golf-cart-stealing, cigarette-smoking, trash-talking, school-quitting, home-leaving, contest-winning kind of outlaw who can board-slide a knob-welded rail,” said her local newspaper The Orange County Register in 2007.
Vanessa was super talented from a young age. Balancing school and skating got to be too much, so she quit when she was 17 and moved to Southern California.
Before long she had won the very first Skate Street event at the X-Games and joined Lyn-Z and Elissa as skate video game characters! Photo: ASA Entertainment via Mpora



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Lucy Adams

For British female skaters, it’s Lucy Adams that instantly comes to mind when you think of influential women in skating.
She’s been at the top of the British skate scene since 2009, winning the UK Skateboard Champs and Girls UK Skate Jam numerous times.
Now she runs running skate coach sessions for girls as well as older women to get involved and not be intimidated by skate parks! Photo: Lex Kembery via Mpora



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Hillary Thompson

Hillary is one of the world’s most predominant transsexual skateboarders.
Assigned male at birth, at 19, Hillary began taking hormones as part of her physical transition. Hilary was skating long before she began the transition, and the increase of oestrogen in her hormones has meant a decline in muscle mass. So Hillary said she had to relearn tricks, such as kickflips and really high ollies, to adapt to that.

Even in a community as rad as skateboarding, transphobia still exists. Which is why it’s great that Hillary is out there, unafraid to be herself. Photo: Jenkem via Mpora


http://www.womenyoushouldknow.net/8-female-skaters-changed-history/


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