Later in the interview, however, when asked if she had ever ‘stood up’ for herself ‘asa girl’, Madeline recounted a triumphant moment at the skate park:This one guy came up to me. He’s like, ‘Oh, girls can’t skate’. I’m like, ‘What?!’ And like yeah, so I showed him like all my tricks, and he’s like, ‘Oh, wow, that’s pretty cool’.Other skater girls reported that they were more watched or scrutinized and morequickly ‘judged’ than boys. ‘The image is that guys, they screw up or whatever, itdoesn’t matter’, according to Kate (aged 15). ‘If girls do something really stupid andthey fall or whatever, it’s like oh, my God, looked down upon’.The most serious skaters in our study also took obvious pride in knowing how toassemble their own skateboard as well as maintain it. Several questioned the motivesof girls who did not display technical competence or technical knowledge of skateboarding. ‘I actually go around and look for other skater chicks’, said Tori, ‘and it’s like really hard. I’ve found quite a few chicks who carry the boards [and] quite a few chicks who can’t use them’. In a similar vein, Madeline said, ‘I’ve seen a couple ofgirls that have skateboards that go to skater parks to look at guys. It kind of bugs me’. In short, skater girls drew on the technical competence symbolized by skateboardingto challenge the socially constructed feminine stereotypes of physical, mechanical andtechnical helplessness.