Skirtboarder net-a-narratives: Young women creating their own skateboarding (re)presentations

Abstract

By creating and posting their own stories on the Internet, sportswomen are able to challenge the persistent, sexist, mainstream and alternative (skateboarding) media (re)presentations of female athletes. A Foucauldian discourse analysis of 262 posts of the Skirtboarders' blog -a Montreal-based, Canadian female skateboarding crew's Internet project -explores the ways in which a group of sportswomen circulate alternative discourses of femininity. In these (re) presentations, the Skirtboarders embrace various femininities and, at the same time, reject binaries (male/female) without explicitly claiming a feminist agenda or attaching themselves to other oppositional discourses. This indicates a third-wave feminist sensibility. The Skirtboarders reproduce some normative discursive fragments commonly found in media (re)presentations. Furthermore, they post links to mainstream and alternative media coverage of their crew, which at times reflects the 'problems' of historical media coverage (sexualization, marginalization and trivialization). However, most of their online productions portray them as polygendered skaters (action shots, skating activities and lifestyle) and are thus radically different. The Skirtboarders' discursive portrayals of female skateboarders are therefore uniquely alternative to other media (re)presentations but at the same time, paradoxical.

Communication Practices and Social Tie Formation: A Case Study of Recreational Lifestyle Sports Cultures

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“…Reviewed studies on lifestyle sports strongly agree that the use of social media has been integrated into sports practice. Physical experiences and social media shape each other as practitioners increasingly and continuously share and consume media products (Dumont, 2014;Hutchins, 2011;Jones, 2011;MacKay & Dallaire, 2012;Olive, 2015;Woermann, 2012). In this process, the line separating producer and consumer is fading.…”

Women, Sport and New Media Technologies: Derby Grrrls Online

“…There has been a plethora of research into the everyday cultural meanings, practices and deployment of digital technologies that have accompanied the growth of the Internet. Since the early 1990s researchers working in the areas of sport (MacKay & Dallaire, 2012;Ruddock, Hutchins, & Rowe, 2010;Wilson, 2008), feminism (Driscoll, 1999;Luckman, 1999), media, and subcultures (Gibson, 1999;Hodkinson, 2003;Kahn & Kellner, 2003Williams, 2003) have brought 'virtual' spaces and representations to the fore of their work. Initially a site for 'consumption', the Internet now enables users to produce as well as consume text, ideas, images, sounds, and narratives (Castells, 2003;Manovich, 2009).…”

“…Leonard writes, 'sports studies continues to lag behind in terms of analysis and critical interrogation of new media ' (2009, p. 2). This 'lag' is being addressed on several fronts, including examinations of 'traditional' masculine sports (Dart, 2009;Oates, 2009), 'lifestyle'/'subcultural' sports (Wilson, 2008) and, more recently, (re)presentations of gender and sport online (MacKay & Dallaire, 2012). Women in sport are given dramatically less coverage within mainstream media as compared to men (7% compared to 86%) (Lumby, et al, 2009).…”

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