From urban masculinity to urban potentiality: Skateboarding as a queer(ing) practice

This article investigates the subversive potential of skateboarding, examining how a practice long associated with urban masculinity can be reinterpreted through a queer theoretical lens. While mainstream skate culture – exemplified by outlets such as Thrasher Magazine – has historically reinforced heteronormative and male-dominated representations, the article reads the activity of skateboarding itself as destabilizing conventional notions of gender, embodiment and spatial engagement. Drawing on Jack Halberstam’s theories of queer failure and queer temporalities, alongside Hannah Freed-Thall’s concept of queer ecology, the analysis highlights the symbolic and material importance of empty swimming pools in skateboarding history. These repurposed spaces become sites of alternative movement and meaning. A close reading of Tara Jepsen’s novel Like a Dog further illuminates skateboarding’s queer dimensions: through its protagonist, Paloma, a dedicated pool-skater, the novel shows how practices of falling, failing and appropriating space foster moments of resistance and alternative ways of relating to the world. Ultimately, the article argues that skateboarding has always transcended its masculinized origins, offering distinctly queer possibilities for inhabiting urban environments.