Shredding Skateboarding’s Glass Ceiling

Sidedoor

Smithsonian Institution

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4.6 • 2.3K Ratings

🗓️ 24 June 2020

⏱️ 32 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

When Mimi Knoop entered her first skateboarding competition at 24 years old, she never anticipated leaving her mark on the sport forever. But in the early 2000s, she formed an alliance with pioneering skateboarder Cara-Beth Burnside to make a simple request: that the X Games – and the rest of the skateboarding industry – treat female skateboarders the same way they treat their male peers.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is Side Door, a podcast from the Smithsonian with support from PRX.
0:13.3	I'm Lizzy Peabody.
0:14.3	Mimi Noupe moved a lot as a kid and wherever she landed she found a group of friends who all shared at least one thing.
0:30.0	They loved skateboarding. And in the 1980s, that meant Mimi hung out with a lot of boys.
0:39.0	I didn't have any other girlfriends that skated.
0:42.0	So yeah, I just had my friends. I didn't have any other girlfriends that skated.
0:43.2	So yeah, I just had my friends that were boys
0:45.6	were who I skated with.
0:46.8	From that time all the way until my early 20s, I would say.
0:50.3	After college, Mimi moved to the Virgin Islands to work as a bartender, as one does.
0:55.3	And one day, as she cleaned glasses and wiped down the bar top, something on TV caught her eye.
1:00.0	I glanced up and saw a women skateboarding contest on the TV, which you didn't really
1:06.1	see skateboarding in general on TV back then, so it was a big deal to begin with.
1:10.1	And then I realized they were women and I'm like, wait a second.
1:13.0	And I'm like, shoot, I'm like, like, wait a second. And I'm like, shoot, I missed the boat.
1:15.0	Like I should have tried that.
1:17.0	I didn't know you could do that.
1:19.0	I never saw really any other girls or women either
1:22.0	in any of the magazines or videos so I it never clicked for me that that was an option.
1:26.7	Oh you felt like you'd already missed your opportunity. Yeah I mean I was like 22 years old so so I was like, well, oh well, you know, I blew it over the hill.
1:35.0	Over the hill.
1:36.0	Yeah, over the hill to it and get into that, you know, 10 years ago.
	...

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