Louisa Menke

"I went on a lot of skate trips being the only girl and it's pretty lonely."

Skating's no longer just a man's world

As skateboarding has grown through the years, many notable attributes have bubbled their way to the surface, such things as mainstream acceptance, accessible skate parks and fatter pay cheques for the riders that deserve it. However, one facet that’s rarely addressed is the amount of females who have picked up skateboards to ride along the way.

When I was growing up, female skateboarders just flat out didn’t exist, and to see a girl skateboarder was more a spectacle than an actual matriculated part of culture. But these days, that’s all changed for the better, and seeing a girl skate down the street has become just as commonplace as a decent slice of pizza in Brooklyn.

Louisa Menke is without a doubt a product of this change. The 24-year-old Dutch skater was born in Algeria and moved to The Netherlands when she was just a year old. But it wasn’t until she turned 14 that she fell in love with skateboarding. “My friend from the neighbourhood came by my house one day and was like, ‘Come on, let's go to the mini ramp’. We were both on roller skates and when we got there I loved it straight away. I roller-skated for a little while and then the locals got me a skateboard,” explains Menke. “The rest went from there.”

A couple years before Louisa stepped atop a board, names like Elissa Steamer and Jaime Reyes surfaced in the masculinist realm of street skating. Their arrival on the scene was an informal, unintended and subsconscious invitation for other girls around the world to follow in their footsteps. “I really looked up to Elissa and Jaime,” says Menke. “They were the only female skaters that were in the magazines back then, so they inspired me a lot.”

"You're travelling around for skateboarding – and I don’t really think you can ever beat that."

Today there are plenty of girl skaters in the industry, but though the two genders are seemingly skating in harmony, Louisa still sees a partition of sorts. “It's funny, we're both doing the same thing, but it's different again too. I went on a lot of skate trips being the only girl, and it's pretty lonely. I realised when I went on tour with other girls that I liked it way better,” she says.

Currently Louisa, who now resides in the sunny skate paradise of Barcelona, is skating harder than ever – as can be witnessed in her video parts in such skate films as Etnies’ 12 Pack and Colorblind. She is coming up fast amongst boys and girls alike, along the way nabbing sponsors like Etnies, Rockstar Bearings, Carhartt and Nomad Skateboards. Though skating has become her profession, Louisa still feels weird about mixing profit with passion: “It’s more serious now. Before you just did it for fun but when you get a sponsorship, you have to sign a contract so it gets kind of like a job. On the other hand, you're travelling around for skateboarding – and I don’t really think you can ever beat that.”