Eight Percent: Gender and Race in Snowboard Media

Stance Teaser Up

eightpercent — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 16:20:23 +0000

The “Stance” teaser is now up. It looks super epic and good. Since the last three women-only vids had the fun-vibe, maybe its time for an epic women’s movie. The rider lineup, Gretchen Bleiler, Hana Beaman, Jamie Anderson, Kimmy Fasani, Lisa Filzmoser, Jenny Jones, Torah Bright, Raewyn Reid, Molly Aguirre, and Gabi Viteri, is more than promising. Plus, it is photographer Stan Evans’ project and he’s legit. Jeremy Miller is the man behind the lense. Didn’t he do last years Technine release, “La Familia”? Which was kinda boring, but very epic. All of the women’s vid, up until now, have had women riders running the show. I wonder what the results are going to be with Mr. Evans behind the scenes. His years of field experience and expertise should help. It does raise the sticky moral dilemma of a man heading up a women’s project. As much as it hurts to see a man produce the big women’s vid this year, after three successful years of two female different, Leanne Pelosi of Runway Films and the other name is escaping me, riders producing the movies, I think Evans influence is good. Plus, if an A-list photog is overseeing an all women’s video project than maybe its a sign women’s riding is beginning to be taken to the next level. At the very least, we are guaranteed a large amount of high-quality photos from all of these riders in next season’s mags. On another note, their sponsor list is very interesting. No, Burton or Roxy. I guess, Burton really is financially concentrating on their own movie projects, since bringing on Brad Kremer last fall. But, no Roxy? Did DC call dibs? See the teaser at www.stancemovie.com.

Marissa Dal Santo Gets at It

eightpercent — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 04:33:49 +0000

Thrasher and company went back to Wallenberg last week for some unfinished business. Dudes slayed and the crowd of dudes got pumped. However, the big story is Marissa Dal Santo almost landed the stair set. Check out 0:55 in the video and you’ll see just how close she was. The real sign of Marissa’s drive is the fact that she tried it 11 times. 11 times!! Thats insane. There aren’t any mellow falls at Wallenberg. Every single bail makes you cringe. I’m sure we’ll see more of her and, hopefully, that will include rolling away at Wallenberg before the demolition crew shows up.

ps. doesn’t it look like Lizard King at 1:56 is wearing a thong?

Telluride Women to Ski Denarli

eightpercent — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 03:06:16 +0000

Here’s a chat on the espn ski blog with Kim Havell of the crew planning on skiing Denali in the next few weeks. The other shredders are Kim Grant, Karen Kingsley and Sonja Nelson. Sounds crazy. I wish them well and hope they go slay that shit!

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Burton Love Debacle Ad Nausem and Other Burton Sexisms

eightpercent — Sat, 30 May 2009 17:28:42 +0000

Yes, I know the Burton Love episode was beaten to a pulp last fall by everyone. It even made national news. But, somethings were never mentioned by the endless blogging, forums and information superhighway chatter. I was reminded of this flipping through Snowboard Mag‘s online magazine reader, which if you haven’t checked it out yet, you should. The December issue of Snowboard, intentionally or not, summed up the ridiculousness of the Burton/Playboy collab: “I ride this board for the articles.”

At the risk of beating the pile of guts and bones that was a dead horse, I have two comments that no one else mentioned. First, name of the board is the ‘Love’. Last time I checked, there is no connection between porn and love. Porn is about lust. If porn is your definition of love you have problems. Furthermore, it sends the message that love and degradation of women go hand and hand. Which, is of course the farthest from the truth. The whole thing would have been a lot less offensive if they had gone with the obvious/smarter name of the Burton ‘Lust’. Plus, the ad campaign would have been better, cuz one could have lusted after the board. And second, if you search “Burton Protest” in your preferred search browser, one of the first results is a women’s shirt by Burton called, the Burton Protest. Read that tagline and tell me that isn’t a nice ball of offensive irony rolled into one.

"the pretty protest"- Really?

The third and final complaint is Nico Muller’s Burton ad in “Snowboard” and “Transworld” featuring his chairlift tap to late back 3 in Niseko, Japan. Its too bad Burton went with such a played route, flirty girl pretending to take her top off, because it really takes away from the sequence. It has got to be one of the bigger Chuck Norrises to date and now you just see the girl instead of the dope trick. So sad.

Nico showing off the Chuck Norris roundhouse

Basically, Burton can say whatever they want, but they’re full’o'shit like everyone else. Too bad the only evidence I could find of their “We don’t need sex to sell snowboarding” ad on the internet is this little nugget from “Snowboarder”. That ad, in response to Sims’ Fader series featuring Jenna Jameson and other Vivid stars as board graphics, has got to be somewhere.

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Comp Wrap-Up

eightpercent — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 03:32:01 +0000

Since, I haven’t been posting, every comp ever has gone down. So, here is a brief wrap-up in no particular order:

Last Stop of the Dew Tour- Torah Bright takes Pipe and Jamie Anderson takes Slopestyle. Kelly Clark won the points race. On another note, the women’s freeski events were exhibition only. They seemed to all go pretty well. Hopefully, there will be enough sponsor money to include them as comp events next year. And Kaya Turski is a badass. She dislocated her shoulder during warm ups and still won slope. Reminds me of Andreas Wiig at last years X-games. Too bad Turski didn’t take home any cash.

Nikita Chickita- It sounded like this event went pretty well, even though they had wack conditions. Not too much crazy action, but any chance for ams to show-off is cool. Joanna Dzierzawski took this one. Check out Brooke Geery’s write up on yobeat.

US Open- One of the biggest comps of the year looked like a good time. Kjersti Buaas won the Overall QP and Highest Air and the Slopestyle and a Volvo. Not a bad weekend for her. Torah Bright slayed the pipe as usual. Jamie Anderson collected the most points in the Global Open and won the 100 grand or whatever. There’s video on the US Open site but it has the Dingo in it and hes annoying. so enjoy the links to snowrev.com vids instead.

Roxy Chicken Jam- Shit went off. Everyone ripped and even Tara Dakides showed up. However, the usual comp rulers won. Janna Meyen-Weathersby (apparently married?) won slope and best trick. Kelly Clark won pipe and got 21st in slopestyle. Say what?! Clark in slope? Her killer 21st place finish secured the TTR title and 50,000 cool ones. Now do you understand why she competed in a slopestyle comp? And there was a mascot pipe comp. I think the hot dog took top honors.

Snow Angels Invitational- Gretchen Bleiler’s signature event was a success. The formula was simple enough, pipe jam at Snowmass+invited riders=progressive event. Maddy Schaffrick won the progressive rider award after throwing sw back 7 to back 9 combos. Kelly Clark won the whole thing and check out video here. if you are wondering why there is no crowd, it was a pow day and the closing day at some other Aspen mtn. Apparently, closing day is a big deal there.

So there’s a pretty boring comp wrap-up. I think I hit all the big ones.

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Japan!

eightpercent — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 03:22:42 +0000

I know I haven’t been very consistent about making posts, but I was in Japan for a couple weeks last month and have been sidetracked since. I was over there with Sweetgrass Productions. They have been there all winter working on their fall release. In February, they worked with female athletes for the first time (I think). Anyways, check out their February teaser and their blog at http://sweetgrassproductions.wordpress.com. You can see action from and purchase Sweetgrass’s first flick, Hand Cut, at sweetgrass-productions.com. Oh, and Japan is awesome, everyone should go.

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Queens Cup Open Registration

eightpercent — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 01:11:21 +0000

The Queens Cup Open in Park City is still open for registration. It sounds like a neat idea. A team format where shredders are joined by invited pros to compete against other teams. Its sounds somewhat like the Orage Masters of years past, but its an open. It is a slopestyle course format. The winner gets invited to join the My Super Sweet Park (yeah, its a dumb name) event starting April 3rd, which is a women’s super park for both skiers and boarders. It is also at Park City. Register and find out more here and keep working on that dream comp run you’ve got in the back of your mind.

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Laura Hadar’s Latest and Greatest and Nike is Still Lame

eightpercent — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 07:49:54 +0000

Laura Hadar has an impressive sequence in the Snowboard Mag‘s photo issue this month. Its from her Nike ad. Its a gap to 50-50 on the double set at the Rail Garden. Mighty large and precise. I was never that impressed by that famous gap rail (most notably slayed by Jeremy Jones, BS 270, and JP Walker, hardway cab 270, in Picture This and Double Decade) until I stood on the top step of it recently. Mighty large, indeed. I believe Ms. Hadar is the first woman to step to that rail and it must be the biggest urban gap by a woman to date. Kudos to Ms. Hadar for steppin up her game.

Throwing down at the Rail Garden.

Now, this segue presents itself nicely to discussing Nike boots and its role in snowboarding. I’m not sure what Nike has to do with snowboarding other than that they make skate shoes and a lot of shredders skate. Taking cues from their success in skating, Nike has actually put together a solid team of riders, designers and managers (Bobby Meeks) who are all legit and snowboarders. It is nice to see good riders get proper support and designers push R+D in a snowboard friendly way. However, its too bad they didn’t put anyone their team who wasn’t getting support elsewhere. Seriously, how bad could Vans have been for Danny Kass? Or Annie Boulanger? Its gotta be real hard for one of the best women in the world (check out Absinthe’s Ready for the proof) to get some sponsor support. Nike has enough money and resources that they could have taken some risks. In my mind, that strikes down the ‘But, Nike is supporting real snowboarders’ logic some have taken (see Yobeat’s lame article. Isn’t Yobeat supposed to be making fun of large corporations?).

But, what I don’t understand about Nike is why they are still cool. This isn’t the ’90s and Jordan retired, again, awhile ago. Why should snowboarders (or anyone for that matter) care about Nike? Skateboarding has really lost its edge by giving into Nike. Snowboarding will, too. The Rome guys seem to be the only sane ones left by releasing their Consolidated collab boot. The Consolidated Drunks were brilliant and hilarious.

The Romes aren’t as clever, since they aren’t Dunk knock-offs, but they do ask the question, “Why Do It?” Which is a great question. Am I holding a ball? Am I wearing numbers? Am I running on a track? Am I on a golf course? No. So, why should I be wearing the symbol that represents all of organized sport-dom?

The swoosh represents everything snowboarding isn’t: rules, teams, uniforms, structure, jocks, excerise, working out. If the swoosh is let into snowboarding, then snowboarding is no different than every major sport Nike supports: football, basketball, baseball, hockey, etc. The swoosh represents the hyper-masculine, violent, misogynistic, patriarchal, hegemony that is male-dominated sport culture. Snowboarding should be trying it darnest to move away from that, especially since board and snow sports are already male-domains and don’t need any help from organized sports to foster women-hating environments. So, please, let’s keep supporting women in snowboarding, espcially, in freestyle domains, and Just Don’t Do It.

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Afghani Shredding

eightpercent — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 06:30:40 +0000

An Aussie man has rounded up some grants in order to build the first indoor skate park in Afghanistan. A pretty awesome idea. California taxpayers should be excited to see their example spread (as you could’ve guessed, a lot of tax dollars go to skateparks in Cali). Most interesting, however, is girls skating in a country where girls and women being in public is frowned upon. Maybe Skateistan is one step forward for women and children in the heavily Taliban-influenced society.

Read the whole NY Times article here.

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Kingvale: Ladies Ride Free Fridays!

eightpercent — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 06:20:35 +0000

Ladies night now begins early every week at Kingvale. Ladies ride free on Fridays. That is pretty hard to beat. Especially, since Kingvale is supposed to be so much fun. Regardless of the intent behind these free days, everyone should be pumped for free riding in a killer park. Hopefully, this will bring out both noobs and shredders and encourage ladies to discover the joys of sliding metal and plastic. Lastly, it should encourage women who already rip elsewhere on the mountain to give the boys a run for their money in the park.

check out their site: Kingvale Terrain Project

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