AYO: A SKATE ZINE

I always wanted to learn how to skateboard growing up, but I was too scared to try. I assumed that skateboarding was for boys, more specifically white boys and I as a black girl had no business on a skateboard; an idea that followed me all the way till college. Around the age of 19, I started hanging out with skaters and absorbing their culture, but merely as an observer, because that was my role as a woman. All aesthetics, no action. I was just another girl on the sideline, letting the guys skate. Typically left to watch their stuff. Eventually I got fed up with being a guest, and when a neighbor gave me her son’s old board I decided that I would try to learn to skate, and find other girls to skate with me.

“Self-determination - the decision to define ourselves, name ourselves, and speak for ourselves, in stead of being defined and spoken for by others.”
Audrey Lorde, Sister Outsider. 

 AYO is a monthly zine dedicated to encouraging women of color to skate as a mean of liberation. Not only is skateboarding a fun pastime, it's a symbolic gesture of overcoming oppression. When you skate you feel free, the physical act of it is liberating. It gives women agency, allowing them to conquer something they are told they can not do. And skateboarding is accessible, you can take a skateboard anywhere and use it anywhere. Using DIY tactics from the riot grrrl movement, AYO is reclaiming skate culture and creating a space for females with in it. It not only introduces girls to the basics of skating, it also introduces them to the basics of feminism.

Mission Statement: Your skateboard is a weapon.  

Sources:

Hooks, Bell. The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love. New York: Atria, 2004. Print.

Lorde, Audre. Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches. Berkeley, CA: Crossing, 2007. Print.