On TikTok, men aren’t the only skating superstars

Happening TikTok, men aren't the only skating superstars

The skatepark is much more welcoming online

Away Oct 11, 2020, 9:30am EDT

Courtney Atencio rides low to the base, swerving in and out of long, barren California streets. In one telecasting, she grabs the back of a Toyota Camry and cruises along behind information technology. In other, she's with her pals, practicing tricks at a local skate Mungo Park. All meter, Atencio's clips are undeniably cool, and they apace turn flooded with comments from fans asking for tips on how to start skating. Atencio didn't start skating Beaver State her TikTok account to achieve fame, but she quickly found communities in both that she never experienced when she was maturation up.

"When I was 14, guys would make fun of me for trying to go to the skate parking lot because I'm the only pistillate there," Atencio told The Verge. "Having TikTok, to be able to bear witness girls that you're not alone, you posterior still skate, you don't even listen to all those guys, is and then important."

Skate refinement has institute a new sprightliness on TikTok, where short videos of impressive tricks, painful wipeouts, and hangs at the local skatepark have together brought in billions of views. The explosion in skateboarding videos has encouraged ace-time skaters to pick upwards the hobby over again and convinced complete newbies to try it first — and unlike the male-dominated world that was the boldness of skate refinement for decades, many of TikTok's stars are women and queer folks.

Hashtags like #girlswhoskate and #skatergirl are constantly growing, creating a never-ending sea of videos starring girls and women. Swipe around, and you'll find skaters like Brianna King, an improbably nonclassical creator known for offering tips that newcomers can use when protrusive knocked out, or skateboobs, an all-girl skateboard group in Scotland, which regularly post videos of their time skating. But many creators are more like Atencio, World Health Organization merely posts videos of solo rides through her home base in suburban Los Angeles or her prison term exhausted hanging unconscious at skateparks with friends.

"I see a raft Sir Thomas More women skateboarding on TikTok than I ever so did growing up," Faeth Perryman, WHO besides posts skate videos to TikTok, told The Brink. "I don't really know if that's because there a lot of girls on TikTok in general, or if TikTok upright made skateboarding videos more accessible."

Thanks to TikTok's testimonial algorithm, Thomas More than 250,000 people watched a TV of Perryman skateboarding out an empty road in Acadia, Maine, the Atlantic Sea spanning for miles behind her as the sun rises. The app constantly serves up new videos to masses WHO engage with interchangeable types of content. Basically, if you suchlike, comment, or share a couple of skateboarding videos, TikTok will fill your feed with progressively.

After waning in the belated '00s and beyond, skate culture had a resurgence over the last few long time. The success of streetwear brands like Superior that incline heavily on skateboarding aesthetics helped drive new interest in boarding, the general gave citizenry more time to ultimately try their hands at it, and a remaster of the first two Tony Hawk's Pro Skater games offered up even more nostalgia. Skateboarding was even about to have its Olympic debut this year until the games got canceled.

Information technology's non like women and trans skaters weren't around in the last half-hundred, simply IT was men who dominated the covers of Thrasher Magazine, men World Health Organization starred in the coveted VHS compilations that would baffle passed around skate shops, and men who made up nearly all of the faced skaters in the staggeringly fashionable Tony Hawk games. TikTok has helped skaters with less visibleness find many comprehensive communities.

Perryman grew up around skateboarding — her brothers and dad all skated — but she quieten matt-up intimidated by the male-henpecked culture. On TikTok, she plant herself with a new platform and a aggroup of young girls who wanted to emulate her style. Atencio, who has 76,000 followers, says she's perpetually surprised by the number of young girls who reach prohibited to her asking about what size board they should get.

C, a trans nonbinary creative person, aforementioned they were elysian by the trans skaters WHO popped au fait the app's primary feed, and thought, "I might be competent to do that myself." Spell C grew up skateboarding, they fell out of it as an adult. IT wasn't until the epidemic hit, and C found more than time to clean up middle-aged hobbies, that they jumped back into IT.

"Skating is such a punk, opposed-society matter, and in my opinion, so is being trans and extant specifically extrinsic of the binary star," C told The Verge. "Beholding those two things happen connected TikTok was so beautiful."

Problems that existed in skate refinement for years are latter-day happening TikTok, too. Men reveal up in comments vocation girls posers and commenting negatively on the way women skate. Perryman tries not to make up attention to the comments, just Atencio argues the Gram-positive comments she receives overbalance the veto ones.

"For every negative comment there's going to be like 20x more complimentary comments where people are pushing me and locution good job," Atencio said.

But creators like Atencio and Perryman want to encourage people to get murder TikTok and actually try skateboarding. Skateboarding to Perryman and Atencio is about getting on a board and meeting others impartial as much as it is observance people. It's Atencio's nearest friends — the ones she institute at skateparks, she says — WHO pushed her "to do what I do on TikTok."