I found myself back in Malaysia for Eid Mubarak. Here the celebration of Eid (known here as Hari Raya in Bahasa Melayu) can end up lasting for weeks on end, with people hosting open houses where we socialize and re-connect over traditional snacks and drinks. I went to one such open house, but with a twist: it was filled with female Malaysian skaters.This was the Raya Open House Skate Session 2019, hosted by Girls Jom Skate, a group dedicated to empowering Malaysian womxn through skateboarding. I met the two organizers, Yeng and Dianne, to talk about their organization, which was born from Yeng’s experience as a dad to his young daughter and Dianne’s experience as a female skater.
Interview by Farah Dianputri
How did Girls Jom Skate get started? I understand there is a very personal story behind it?
Y: My name is Yeng. I co-own Wheel Love skate shop, we have been in operation since 2009.
I had my daughter, Jade, she was born in 2013 and when I wanted to get her skating at the age of four, I found that it was a bit too young…or at least she found herself a bit too young to try. She felt like she wasn’t strong enough to do it so I guess I had to put that on a hold. Then, I tried again at the age of five. It was a lot better, she had a lot more strength to run, walk and climb, so that was when I thought, OK, this was a good time to get her skating. But when I tried to get her on it, I realized that she was very conscious of how people looked at her, or when she fell, she felt like she was very ashamed. It was even to the point, I would bring her to the skate shop and I would sometimes have to attend the customers, and I’d tell her, “Hey start strapping up your gear and start skating around” and she would just sit out there and wait for me.
So she always wanted me to be there to try and guide her, and that was when I realized it was a little challenging. I wanted to create this space for her to just have girls skating and not have this worry that there are boys looking at her, or other kids around that are trying to tease her or make fun of her when she falls. You know how people are a bit more conscious about it.
Then, I brought this idea to Dianne because we work also with Snackfood (a gift and lifestyle store in Kuala Lumpur), which is co-owned by my wife.
So I brought this problem to her, “Hey do girls of a different age have this problem, as well, does it start as early as five, right up to like thirty-five or forty years old?” And she agreed, she gets really worried trying to go out and skate as well, especially when you’re skating alone and the whole skate park is full of boys. So yeah, so that’s how Girls Jom Skate really started for me. And for Diane it would be…
D: Oh! My story. I’m Diane. I work in Snackfood, that’s how I met Yeng. I help him run Girls Jom Skate. So I’ve been skating since 2015 and I’ve been skating with a small group of friends and I actually really loved it, because once I know how to control the movement on riding a skateboard, I feel very body confident. I feel good.
But what I was battling through was the uneasiness of when I go to a skate park alone. I usually skate in hiding, like in parking lots, in quiet places where nobody can see, which can be a little dangerous, for girls to be doing that. So I had a small group of girl friends and they kinda feel the same way, they feel this intimidation to go to the skate park, but they love skating. But it’s just kinda hard to just face confrontation when you’re around other people, so I have less and less girl friends skating. We had dropouts in the group.
So I talked about this to Yeng and we kinda want to address the problem by just having a space for girls to skate and for them to actually feel a bit more body confident and confident to just skate among other people and we kinda wanna build that.
Do think there’s sort of an integration problem in the skateboarding community in Malaysia? Is it easy or difficult to assimilate, feel included and continue skating? How do you see it changing in the near future?
Y: I don’t think it will be difficult because the world is more flat today. Everyone’s exposed to social media, you know, you have access to skate videos. If it’s released yesterday you could probably download it today or the next day and it could be whoever, womxn pro-skaters or so on…
My point is you have access to media. Therefore I think it’s a lot more ripe today that the challenge of assimilation between male and female or different sports for example, like how roller skates, BMX, inline-skates had problems back in the nineties. But I guess in today’s time, we all share the same park, we all share the same commonality, which is skating in a park, the sense of freedom of skating.
So I guess it really shouldn’t come up in today’s age where you know like, I’m a skateboarder, I’m an inline skater, or I’m a BMX guy, and I cannot go to this other park because it is a skateboarder’s park. I think that the common enemy shouldn’t be that anymore, the common enemy should always be the guy that kicks you out, the guard that doesn’t allow you to skate. That’s your common enemy, not the guys you share the same park.
D: But if you go to a skate park in Malaysia, there are not many girls who skate. That’s the current situation.
Y: It’s very easy for the younger generation to just fall off something that they just picked up yesterday because of distraction. You know, you can get on skating and the next day you want to go online and become a YouTuber, or a podcaster because it’s cool now. So the amount of distraction today is way higher. At least, the highest I feel now.
Kids get distracted a lot easier. So I guess that’s why we really started Girls Jom Skate, to get girls confident in skating and also to create this environment where they can always come back to. OK, we have a workshop every six weeks, and this is the time you have to come back. We skate together; we support each other, if you have a challenge in a certain point of skating or in life as well, you know, if you’re going through some challenges with your family. That’s what we’re here for.
And that’s what’s skating’s about: the community you build around it.
I’m going to spring off a few more points, so Diane you said taking up skateboarding made you feel more body confident. What are the advantages to getting more girls to skate? Why is it so important to get more girls to skate?
D: Why is it so important? I feel it’s a great sport to get involved in. You move all parts of your body. You recognize different parts of your body. You recognize how far you can go, how high you can jump. I think recognizing those little bits about your body makes you feel a bit more stronger and a bit more confident in that sense. That was what I experienced, because I just started with something as simple as cruising, and when I recognized different muscles and how I could control them and maneuvering yourself on the board, it just teaches you so many things and mostly about yourself.
Yeah, it’s about knowing your limits, when to push yourself and finding out things you never thought you could do.
So the turn out today has been incredible, despite the rain and it being Raya season. So have you noticed a growth in the community, are there a lot of people returning, are there more girls showing up the events?
D: Yes, we do! We started out small and it just took off. I would say there is always a big group. When we do warm-ups there is always a nice big circle. I think in can grow bigger but I guess even five or ten people, we still think that its worth it because it just has to go on.
Y: When we started in December 2018, we made out a calling on social media to just ask whoever wanted to skate this random Sunday to just come, no commitment. We would just provide as much as we can: the skateboards, kneepads, and helmets just to get girls to skate safely and that day we had forty girls, turning up on a random Sunday.
We didn’t plan it really well on the first day, we just wanted to get all these girls to come in and see what kind of numbers we can get, and we got that number to our surprise and moving forward from then every other workshop has exceeded the previous turn out.
We have the regulars, the newcomers as well, obviously, due to timing I’m sure some can and cannot come, but it’s s been very encouraging to us as well, and that’s why we decided we wanted to put this into a bit more of a framework, where it’s every four to six weeks.
We’re setting some goals as well, towards the end of the year; we’re setting some process goals as well. So the first two workshops will be more about learning the basics, third and fourth would be more about continuous process of strengthening, exercises, tricks and also technicality, the fifth and the sixth will just be about over coming fear, the obstacles of doing the tricks and also just being a girl skater.
Girl skaters should always look at how skateboarding was a rebellious sport. If it was a rebellious sport back then for boys, and against mainstream sports, girls going skateboarding should also be seen as a rebellious thing to do.
On that final note, I’d like to thank Yeng, Dianne and everyone who came out for Girls Jom Skate for a fantastic sesh!
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Follow Girls Jom Skate on Instagram: @girls.jomskate
Follow Yeng (@wheel_love) and Diane (@kucingmiso) too!
