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So I was reading SnowboardCanada Women’s Annual from back in November, when I stumbled upon their trick-tip section. Guess what the ladies trick was? 50-50, oh yes…50-50 onto a rail. Now I’m not saying that can’t be a hard trick or anything, I just felt that it was a bit of a disappointment after I read the guy’s trick tip and it was “floating back 900’s.”

Rome Snowboard’s Marie France Roy

Okay so yes I realize that there’s a pretty huge gap between the riding levels of men and women, it’s obvious when you look at contest results or shots. To be honest I wasn’t shocked when I heard what tricks were winning some of the bigger women’s slopestyles this season. 360’s and 540’s are taking first place? Yet the guy’s first place is 900’s and 1080’s? I’d say there’s a HUGE gap there. I have to mention I’m looking mostly at the Canadian results and not the global results. I didn’t really keep up with the american TTR Tour dates this winter so I can’t comment on those events…so I know I’m missing a bigger piece of the puzzle but anyways back to the point. Is the problem that no one is doing the tricks, or is the problem in the judging? 

Locally at our contests we had some problems with the judging. Basically, you get more points for a clean trick over trying something crazy and not landing it cleanly, and doing the same trick twice  means you lose points. I agree with that style of judging to a point…but there’s some cases that you wonder if they can’t bend the rules a bit. For example: say girl #1 does a clean 180, while girl #2 tries a 540 and lands with a hand down, guess who wins? Girl #1…not exactly fair for girl #2 who is killing it. Another problem is the lack of female judges involved. This past winter I know of a contest where the girl who won, only placed 1st because she was sleeping with two of the judges… laaame. After that I ended up judging our next contest to try and even the gender ratio out. Some guys have admitted that they will score a girl higher because they’re hoping to hook up after, or cause she’s ’super hot.’

Okay but before I get totally off track and start ranting about judging…it’s back to the guys vs. girls. The sport is clearly dominated by men and it’s pretty rare that a girl ever reaches the kind of ’superstardom’ that a guy can sometimes get. Take a look at Shaun White..he’s the face of snowboarding to everyone outside of the industry. He’s a little goofy looking to me personally, but yet how many 16 year old girls out there would just die to spend a day with him?  The kid got a Rolling Stone cover! But then try to think of a girl who matches that kind of fame? Kelly Clarkson? Tara Dakides? Let’s be honest, they don’t even compare at all. They’re amazing riders but they won’t ever have the same kind of following that a guy will get within the sport.

Now you have to look at the difference in tricks and riding style for both men and women too. A friend once told me, “you ride like a guy”  at first I was like “wtf you jerk…?” then he explained that it’s actually a good thing because it’s one of the things that sets strong female riders apart from other girls. It’s a stronger, smoother, more confident style of riding and I think it comes from growing up riding with mostly guys. Having a good group of girls to ride with is fantastic, but I find that I don’t push myself as much when I ride with all girls. Everyone is usually waiting for someone else to try something and then no one ends up stepping up to hit it. But riding with guys, they’ll heckle and harrass you until you do hit the feature and even if you fell they’ll tell you to go to do it again. Girl’s are not usually like that with eachother. I think it’s partly because no one wants to come off as being pushy or something.

Molly Milligan

As far as sponsoring girls goes, its like, oh did that girl just 180 on to a rail? Here’s 10 sponsorships! Okay I’m exaggerating, but it seems like girl’s have it way easier as far as finding sponsorships and getting noticed when compared to guys. Part of that comes back to the idea that people just expect less of girls. I think that’s the root of almost all of our problems in the industry. Everyone expects less of female riders so we take advantage of that and don’t bother to push ourselves that far. I hate that when a girl does something decent, everyone is like WOW! I mean sure we like the attention but when it all comes down to it we want to be better than  just “good for a girl.”

Eventually I think with more young riders like Marie France Roy, Molly Milligan, and Desiree Melancon (just to mention a couple) stepping up there’s going to be a shift in the sterotype of the typical female snowboarder. Not all of us want our boards to be pink with flowers, not all of us spend 2 hours perfecting our steez before we ride, and not all of us are snowboarding to impress our boyfriend. There’s some girls out there who are really progressing the sport and giving women a chance to step up! We may never ride at the same level guys do for so many reasons but I think we’re slowly getting closer to closing the gap and getting rid of the ‘good for a girl’ idea.

the runway/mischief films were a huge help to opening up the scene for female snowboarders! (RoShamBo is still one of my top five favourite snowboard movies ever)

I definitely have more to say on this.. tomorrow or monday maybe.