Surfer Alana Blanchard and snowboarder Gretchen Bleiler are among the growing number of action sports-stars who have infiltrated broader popular culture. Although no longer competing on the World Surfing Tour, American professional surfer and model Alana Blanchard remains the highest-paid female surfer, earning more than US$1.8 million in 2014 (The Stab List, 2014) from her various sponsorships, including Rip Curl, Sony, and T-Mobile. Blanchard exemplifies the blonde, tanned, toned âsurfer-girlâ persona, and she uses online and social media platforms to self-promote her bikini-clad physique and surfing lifestyle to international audiences. With over 1.4 million Instagram followers, almost 2 million Facebook âlikesâ, and 180,000 Twitter followers, she is featured regularly on the worldâs âhottest athletesâ lists. American snowboarder Gretchen Bleiler also became a hot commodity in contemporary popular culture and after winning a silver medal in the 2006 Winter Olympic half-pipe event, featured for the second time in FHM and Maxim magazines. As these examples illustrate, media representations of women in action sports tend to celebrate a young, white, heterosexual, athletic femininity, with âotherâ women remaining largely invisible. In other words, the media tends to focus on those women who demonstrate physical prowess and a risk-taking attitude, while simultaneously maintaining a heterosexual femininity, and thus can be positioned as a âsexyâ commodity for male consumption (Chen, 2013; Cole & Hribar, 1995; Gill, 2007, 2008; McRobbie, 2009; Thorpe, in press). This book creates space for the lived experiences of the many other ways that women participate in action sport cultures around the world. Arguably, the women who are charging down steep mountain faces in Alaska, climbing the most challenging routes in the Yosemites, dropping into concrete bowls with their male peers, and surfing everyday in their local communities are all contributing to redefining what it means to be a sportswoman today. This book challenges stereotypical representations of women in action sport cultures by prioritizing the everyday lived experiences of a diverse range of participantsâincluding mothers, lesbians, âbrownâ participants, older women, and non-Western girls and womenâacross a wide array of nontraditional sports, and in so doing, explores the shifting terrain of girls and women in sport and physical culture in the twenty-first century.
Contextualizing Women in Action Sport Cultures
In previous research, the term âaction sportsâ has been used to refer to a wide range of mostly individualized activities such as BMX, kite-surfing, skateboarding, surfing, and snowboarding (Thorpe, 2014; Thorpe & Wheaton, 2013). While many of these sports have come to be integrated into mainstream competitions and culture, in the early phases of their development at least, these activities differed from traditional rule-bound, competitive, regulated western âachievementâ sport cultures. Various other categorizations have been used to describe these activities, including extreme, lifestyle, and alternative sports (Booth & Thorpe, 2007; Rinehart, 2000; Wheaton, 2004); however, the term âaction sportsâ is increasingly the preferred term used by sporting industries and governing bodies, as well as many sporting participants themselves (many of whom resent the label âextreme sportsâ which they feel was imposed upon them by transnational corporations and media conglomerates during the mid and late 1990s). While the term action sports as used by the industry typically refers to the boardsports (i.e., skateboarding, surfing, snowboarding, wakeboarding, and kiteboarding) and a select few other activities (i.e., BMX, motocross, mountain biking) that have been incorporated into action sports mega-events such as the X-Games, in this book we refer to action sports more broadly to include activities that developed as an alternative to more traditional, rule-bound competitive sports. Particular examples of such sports in this collection include roller derby, mixed martial arts (MMA), climbing, and ultimate frisbee. While many of the action sports considered in this book have undergone rapid growth and are at various stages of commodification and institutionalization, core members within these sporting cultures continue to celebrate a different ethos that values self-expression, creativity, physical and social play, and often do-it-yourself philosophies (Olive, 2015; Pavlidis, 2012; Pavlidis & Fullagar 2012; Thorpe, 2011; Wheaton, 2013).
As will be illustrated in this book, each action sport has its own unique history, identity, and development patterns. However, many of the activities under the industry-defined umbrella of âaction sportsâ came into existence during the 1960s and 1970s at a critical juncture when increasing female participation challenged organized sports (as well as many other social institutions, such as education and the workforce) as an exclusive male bastion. Unlike in modern sports, women actively participated in the early forms of many action sports (i.e., snowboarding, climbing, skateboarding, surfing), and although fewer in number, women often participated alongside men, and thus action sports did not necessarily face the burden of years of historical and institutionalized sexism that plagues most other sports. Following this, it has been argued that action sports offered the potential for alternative gender relations because the activities developed in a different context to traditional sports and thus were not so entrenched in traditional gender rules and norms (Beal, 1996; Thorpe, 2007; Wheaton & Tomlinson, 1998). Other sporting cultures included in this book (i.e., MMA, roller derby, ultimate frisbee), however, have emerged as separate from the âaction sportsâ cultural industry and overlap with other sporting cultures and traditions. For example, roller derby was developed by women for women, with histories of development linked to pre- and postwar social conditions (Pavlidis & Fullagar, 2014a, 2014b). With such different development patterns, it is inevitable that gender identities, politics, and experiences vary considerably across the different action sports featured in this book, offering a productive comparative opportunity.
Despite the potential for more equitable spaces for womenâs participation, young white males have long constituted the dominant force at the core of most action sport cultures (Beal, 1996; Kusz, 2004; Wheaton, 2000), and there remains a widespread celebration of youthful, hedonistic fratriarchal masculinities, and the marginalizing of women and âotherâ men in most action sports cultures (Kusz, 2004; Thorpe, 2010; Wheaton, 2000). Yet not all women accept their marginalization, with some adopting proactive roles in the action sports culture and industry as instructors, athletes, journalists, photographers, CEOs and manufactures, and committed recreational participants (Pomerantz, Currie, & Kelly, 2004; Thorpe, 2005, 2007; Young & Dallaire, 2008). While still fewer in number than men, women are successfully negotiating space in these male-dominated sporting cultures and industries via active participation and demonstrations of physical prowess and commitment (Beal, 1996; Thorpe, 2009; Wheaton & Tomlinson, 1998). In so doing, some have developed an array of unique strategies to negotiate spaces for women within male-dominated sporting cultures and industries. Other women set about creating their own sporting spaces (i.e., roller derby). Whereas, some of these strategies are politically inspired with or without the feminist labeling, others are more informed by neoliberal discourses of individual entrepreneurialism (PrĂŒgl, 2015; Rich, 2005; Ringrose, 2007; Rottenberg, 2014).
The increasingly visible roles of committed women in local action sport communities and highly competent action sportswomen in broader society have further contributed to the popularity of these sports among girls and women. The inclusion of women in globally televised events including the X-Games and Olympics (skiing, mountain biking, kayaking, snowboarding, BMX, freestyle skiing), blockbuster movies focusing on female surfers and inline-skaters such as Blue Crush (2002) and Brink (1998), and the representation of female action sport athletes in the mass media (e.g., Vogue, Seventeen, Glamour, Sports Illustrated for Women) have all added to the visibility and legitimization of women in action sport. Yet, womenâs participation in some action sports is more visible in popular culture than others. For example, female snowboarders have been included in the X-Games since its inception in 1997, whereas female skateboarders and freestyle skiers were excluded until 2002 and 2005, respectively; women continue to be barred from all motorbike and snowmobile events. Thus, while the number of female participants has exploded in some action sports, others remain the exclusive domain of males.
As a result of the increasing visibility of (some) women in (some) action sports, expanding female niche markets, and opportunities for female-only lessons, camps, and competitions, the female action sport demographic has grown over the past three decades. Snowboarding, kayaking, and skateboarding, for example, were among the fastest-growing sports for American women in the early 2000s (NSGA, 2003). In 2004 female skateboarders constituted approximately 25.3 percent (or 2.6 million) of the 10.3 million skateboarders in the USA, up from just 7.5 percent in 2001 (Darrow, 2006; McLaughlin, 2004), and the number of American women who surf every day grew 280 percent between 1999 and 2003 (Darrow, 2006; Women a Focus at ASR, 2003). While the reliability of such industry-produced statistics is questionable, the athleticism of committed female participants is now highly visible on the mountains, in the waves, rivers, and lakes, and in particular forms of media. As a result of which, there is some evidence to suggest that boys and men are adjusting and, in some cases, radically altering, their perception...