As women’s athletics gain ground

Girl Gangs, Zines, and Powerslides
by Natalie Porter

Toronto: ECW Press, 2025
$26.95  /  9781770417922

Reviewed by Myshara McMyn

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The recent spotlight of women in sports is growing, with leagues like the Professional Women’s Hockey League (PWHL) gaining a place in the media and with young women the world over. This has led to a positive future for women in sports, as fans gather around the new teams and young girls gain a new dream career.

Skateboarding is a form of athletics that is an example of men’s history. Women are often left out completely, especially to the average person. I had no idea that female skateboarders had such a rich and dynamic story, since I have only ever heard names like Tony Hawk. What about all the girls? Are you telling me not one girl looked at her brother’s skateboard and said, ‘I want to try’?

Girl Gangs, Zines, and Powerslides is history told by those who lived it. Natalie Porter took on a monumental task when she began searching for the stories to build this compendium and I am impressed with the results. The women and non-binary folks that have spoken with Porter and added their experiences, struggles, and triumphs to her research are brave. They understand the importance of a book like this. Girl Gangs has the potential to inspire, comfort, and validate so many people across the world of skateboarding. As Porter described of KZ Zapata in the chapter ‘On Barriers’ “KZ was willing to risk it all, to appear foolish and be fodder for condemnation, if it meant even one other girl was inspired.” KZ understood how important it would be for young girls to see what they could become.

Skateboarding has been a male-dominated sport from the beginning. So many of the women interviewed in this book talk about parents who didn’t think girls should skate, usually because they would get hurt. So many brothers wanted to keep their skateboards to themselves, though many of them found their sisters stealing their boards anyway. Skate parks full of boys objectifying and sexualizing every girl that walked or skated in, making sure they felt that they couldn’t rise to the level of the boys simply because their bodies made them different. Though this did not deter every girl, most were so uncomfortable that they found other, less optimal places to ride.

It was also a sport for outcasts. The culture surrounding skateboarding is one full of smoking weed, grungy music, and sexual imagery. Even though many of the girls felt like outcasts, they were not the “right” kind of outcasts. Outcast from the outcasts. Kathy Sierra, a skateboarder and computer programmer, “believed that while skateboarding and computer programming were purported to be places of refuge for society’s outcasts, blind privilege and misogyny had been allowed to proliferate.” There was never any movement to stop the boys from shouting sexist remarks at skateparks or shaming girls for wanting to try skateboarding. Few people took the girls themselves seriously. So, of course, it continued.

Though these negative experiences ran rampant, the overall atmosphere of this book is one of joy, both in community and connection. There are so many stories of young women finding each other across countries and continents, traveling from one side of the world to the other just to skate with someone new. The triumph of making those connections and coming away with lifelong friends is unmatched.

The reason this atmosphere is so strong is because Porter herself has experienced it through her research. With every new connection, a new piece of the story falls into place or reveals a new path.

What gets me excited about researching and writing skateboarding history is finding threads that connect skateboarders across the decades, especially when I realize that a certain skateboarder inspired someone else to take it up, who motivated someone else to compete. I love seeing the domino effect of influence unfold.

First-hand accounts are a wonderful way to experience history. These women were able to answer all sorts of questions that many of the interviewers and magazines from back in the day would never have thought to ask them, allowing Porter the privilege of discovering their stories. Though their stories always were valid, having them recorded as part of the larger narrative is an even more validating experience.

History is a genre that makes a lot of people wary. A lot of the time, history texts are slow and dense, making them less accessible to people who don’t have the time and curiosity to pursue the answers of the past. Girl Gangs, Zines, and Powerslides avoids the slowness by covering a large number of stories, keeping a faster pace overall. The density is still high, but with every new young woman that steals her brother’s skateboard or builds one out of roller skate wheels and a wood plank, Porter brings another level of curiosity to her book. Will this story be the same, another girl shunned by the boys at the skatepark, or forced to compete against them since the girls did not have their own divisions? Or will she be different, writing zines with loud words or forcing change in competitions to clear a space for herself and her friends?

One other quote stuck out to me, and even though it was in one of the first chapters, my mind drifted back to it often as I made my way through the book. Even when I think about the PWHL, this quote now comes to mind: “If our participation and representation had been accepted and promoted decades ago, it wouldn’t appear to be such a sudden onslaught today.”

What an incredibly true statement. Women and non-binary folks in sports are making waves now because they were not included in the past. It isn’t because suddenly women are interested in sports – they always have been. It makes me so sad for the women and non-binary people in this book that they didn’t get to compete and grow their side of the sport in the same way as the men. I hope many of them are proud of where the sport is now, seeing young girls compete in skateboarding as Olympians.

Porter has written a history of bad-ass women skateboarders, but more than that she has told a story of perseverance and love. Most of these women never stopped skateboarding, and others came back to it as adults because of their love for it. What an inspiring phenomenon.

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Myshara McMyn is a marketing coordinator, social media manager, and aspiring writer in the Shuswap. She runs the blog Lit&Leta. She spends her time teaching Dungeons and Dragons, reading as much as she can, and helping out on her family’s farm. She holds a BA in English and Creative Writing. [Editor’s note: Myshara has reviewed recent books by Jae Waller, Sebastien de Castell, Judith Lepore, Courtney Shepard, Kate Gateley, and Elle Tesch for The British Columbia Review.]

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The British Columbia Review

Interim Editors, 2023-26: Trevor Marc Hughes (non-fiction), Brett Josef Grubisic (fiction)
Publisher: Richard Mackie

Formerly The Ormsby Review, The British Columbia Review is an on-line book review and journal service for BC writers and readers. The Advisory Board now consists of Jean Barman, Wade Davis, Robin Fisher, Barry Gough, Hugh Johnston, Kathy Mezei, Patricia Roy, and Graeme Wynn. Provincial Government Patron (since September 2018): Creative BC. Honorary Patron: Yosef Wosk. Scholarly Patron: SFU Graduate Liberal Studies. The British Columbia Review was founded in 2016 by Richard Mackie and Alan Twigg.

“Only connect.” – E.M. Forster