Skateboarding and Femininity: Gender, Space-making and Expressive Movement (Routledge Advances in Theatre & Performance Studies)

__Skateboarding and Femininity__ explores and highlights the value of femininity both within skateboarding and wider culture. This book examines skateboarding’s relationship to gender politics through a consideration of the personal politics connected to individual skateboarders, the social-spatial arenas in which skateboarding takes place, and by understanding the performance of tricks and symbolic movements as part of gender-based power dynamics. Dani Abulhawa anaylses the discursive frameworks connected to skateboarding philanthropic projects and how these operate through gendered tropes. Through the author’s work with skateboarding charity SkatePal, this book offers an alternative way of recognising the value of skateboarding philanthropy projects, proposing a move toward a more open and explorative somatic practice perspective. Cover Half Title Series Page Title Page Copyright Page Table of Contents List of figures Acknowledgements Introduction: Getting connected to who you are Methodology Feminal Girl as a radical state Holden Caulfield Roots and routes Notes Chapter 1 Girls and women holding and creating space in skateboarding Insiders Owning sexualisation Critical awareness Girl-made communities Conclusion Notes Chapter 2 Skateboarding and feminism Separatism Gaze Gender regulation Conclusion Notes Chapter 3 Skateboarding physical culture Liquid physical culture Struggle at the limits Technique and bodily-kinaesthetic intelligence Skateboarding and the social-spatial realm Conclusion Notes Chapter 4 ‘Skateboard philanthropy’: A somatic practice perspective Skateboarding philanthropy Rosa Skatepark, Asira Al-Shamalyia Somatic qualities of skateboarding Self-knowledge Symbolic movement Creative self-expression Generosity – of deed and thought Conclusion Notes Conclusion: Skateboarding’s participation in the world beyond itself Notes Index Skateboarding and Femininity explores the complex and varied nature of skateboarder identities and the ways in which girls and women have held and created space for themselves within skateboarder identity narratives and practices.