Category: 1980s
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Lori Rigsbee
Lori Rigsbee* from Del Mar, California skated purely for the love of it and in the late 1980s and early 1990s she was one of the few female skaters in the mainstream skateboard industry limelight. Photo: Robert Beck Lori is recognized today for her iconic ads for Independent trucks (Thrasher June 1989) and Airwalk (1990),…
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Jodie Cooper
In the May 1979 issue of Skateboarder there’s an article about a skate contest in Albany, Australia, located on the southwest coast which had a surprise competitor being the now-legendary surfer Jodie Cooper! If you don’t know Jodie, she was the surfing stunt double in the 1991 cult-classic film Point Break and was a fearless…
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Bonnie Blouin
Bonnie Blouin (RIP) and her younger brother Blaize (RIP) were powerhouse siblings in the east coast skateboarding community during the 1980s. While this entry does end tragically [*Warning*], the goal is to celebrate the life and contributions of Bonnie, whose presence in Thrasher was often the only positive portrayal of women, in contrast to ads…
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Cindy Whitehead
Cindy Whitehead was inducted into the Skateboarding Hall of Fame in 2016 for both her accomplishments as a professional skater and her relentless advocacy for women in skateboarding that continues today. She spearheads the skateboarding movement “Girl is NOT a 4 Letter Word,” which includes a website, archive, interviews, social media, and publications It’s Not…
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Kathy Zatko
Kathy Zatko appears in the January 1989 issue of Thrasher, celebrating her accomplishment of being the first girl to enter an Eastern Skateboard Association (ESA) contest, which was held at the Brooklyn Banks in New York City. She placed fourth overall in the freestyle contest, and the photo of her holding her trophy is taken…
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Thrasher Betty Hunt
Thrasher magazine in the early 1980s was hit and mostly miss when it came to the representation of women skateboarders in their pages. The problem was that there was this fear around being labeled a poseur or a fraud that likely stemmed from the punk scene, which was always intent on rooting out folks who…
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Wendy Zaks (Rector)
Wendy Zaks appears skateboarding in the bottom right corner of an ad within Thrasher March 1989 and Transworld June 1989 as a member of the Powell Peralta Factory Team, just a few years after the legendary all-female ad that stated “Some Girls Play with Dolls. Real Women Skate” with Anita Tessensohn and Leaf Treinen, although…
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Judi Oyama
Judi Oyama’s history as both a pioneer for women skateboarders in the 1970s and for her current accomplishments in her sixties, as she continues to compete in slalom and downhill to this day, demands respect! You can listen to her story here on YouTube, launched on International Women’s Day 2023 for Santa Cruz: It all…
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Gigi Gits
Gigi Gits was a punk skateboarder in the 1980s from Richmond, Virginia who made her way to Atlanta, Georgia. In Bonnie Blouin’s game-changing article for Thrasher in April 1986 called “Sugar and Spice..?” she writes, “I’m supposed to be writing an article about girl skaters. Only problem is, in 3 years I’ve only met three……
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Peggy Turner
In The Florida Times (May 9, 1980), Peggy Turner shared that she had begun skateboarding at age 14 for fun. “It was a fad everybody seemed to be doing… Then I really started enjoying it and then I got good. Now I want to skate for a long time.” Peggy’s home skatepark was the legendary…
Womxn Skateboard History 