The Trailblazers In 1965 a Gidget-like young woman from San Diego named Patti McGee was pictured on the cover of Life magazine on a skateboard. She’s shown riding along, la-dee-da, in a handstand. The headline: “The craze and menace of SKATEBOARDS .” Patti was the national skateboard champion of 1964, back when girls were just as likely to be on a skateboard as boys were. That all changed in the 1970s, as the sport moved from goofy exhibition to serious, testosterone-fueled competition. It stayed that way for a long, long time. But in the background, there were still girls riding skateboards. One was Cara-Beth “CB” Burnside, born in Orange County in 1968. As a girl she was a regular at her local skate park, where she earned some sponsorships and won some competitions. But by the late 1980s, the girls’ division was eliminated and she didn’t have many options. She turned her attention to more-mainstream sports during college—a soccer scholarship at the University of California at Davis—but she never stopped loving her board. After college CB started snowboarding and she excelled. By 1995 she was ranked second in the world and later earned a spot on the inaugural Olympic snowboarding team, placing fourth in the women’s halfpipe in Nagano. She kept at it for a few more years, but her attention was turning back to skateboarding. By 2000 there still wasn’t exactly a welcome mat rolled out for women who wanted to skateboard competitively, so CB and other notable female skaters, including Mimi Knoop and Jen O’Brien, pushed open the doors. As with snowboarding, CB dominated in halfpipe events and took gold in both the summer and winter X Games events. And she worked hard to get women equal footing in the sport, starting the Action Sports Alliance with Mimi Knoop to seek better prize money at contests and more-equitable media exposure. “We didn’t ask for a lot,” says CB. “We just wanted something that was acceptable.” And the $2,000 in prize money for the top female X Games skater was simply not acceptable, especially because the X Games is arguably the biggest event in the sport. There’d be no way for a woman to make a living as a professional skateboarder at those rates. The group leveraged its power at the 2005 summer X Games with a threat to boycott the event, a move that resulted in more prize money for the women’s field and the broadcast of their event on television. In 2007 ESPN, which puts on the X Games, increased the top women’s skateboarding prizes to $20,000 (the top men got $50,000). CB and the Alliance are still working with ESPN, pushing for more parity in prize money and media exposure. “CB has used her established name in skateboarding to try to make a difference for the next generation. She shows real compassion for making a positive change for the girls. Skateboarding is in her blood; it’s just what she loves to do, and in turn she has made great strides so the rest of us can enjoy careers from skateboarding, too,” says Mimi, who hails from Virginia. “She definitely paved the way for us by continuing to skate at a time when there were very few professional opportunities for female skaters. She carried the torch through those times so that we have a contest circuit in place today.” Indeed, CB says the skating scene has changed remarkably in recent years. “There are a lot more girls in professional contests, and I like contests where there are more girls because it pushes me. I still want to skate good with the guys, but when girls skate together they push themselves more. Look at guys: they are pushing each other all the time.” |
