"Sports are unfeminine," and "if you do sports you're weird" is TOTALLY antiquated (and HORRIBLE!!). This simply does not exist in today's culture. In modern society if you don't play sports growing up, as a male OR female, you are the outlier.
Sports are still very divided based on gender, you'd have to be blindfolded not to notice that some sports are more welcoming to women (yoga, ballet, gymnastics, cheerleading) and some sports are distinctly labeled as masculine (football, basketball, baseball). Not to say that you don't see both genders participating in defined masculine or defined feminine sports, but there is a definite bias. This bias gets even worse when you get into "extreme sports" like skiing. If you are a woman that skis you are in automatically in the minority.
I don't think the point that was trying to be made is that people are actively suppressing women from participating in extreme sports, more it's the opposite. Women aren't as encouraged as guys to engage in these sort of things. As a little girl growing up you are likely to be inundated with barbies and tea sets and dresses. As a little boy you are more likely to be given things like a skateboard or a bmx bike. You see where I'm heading with this? It's not active oppression, more like gentle nudging towards a certain direction. And for women that is far away from extreme sports.
It's always funny to me when someone on NS says something like "yeah all the chicks dig me when they see me throw down in the park." It's hilarious because I'm thinking "really? where are these chicks you speak of? Cause I ride in the park as a woman, and there are no fucking girls in that place."
Everyone that I have ever ridden with is wayyy more stoked on the girls in the group who rip! Point in case is how every dude dreams of finding a skier girl to sail off into the sunset with. Whenever a girl hits something, every single male head is on swivel mode.
You put an important caveat in there "girls in the group who rip". What about all those girls who don't rip? Oh right those are the ones guys actively brag about ditching, instead helping them to get to the point where they can rip. Tons of guys are out there shredding and having fun while their wives are at home taking care of the children. If that isn't a societal bias I don't know what is.
Being a skilled female skier is not as positive an experience as you might think. Anytime I set foot in the park and I'm not incognito as a boy I get people going out of their way to snake me on features, whether it's to show off to the one girl in the park, or because they automatically think I must suck and am not actually going to hit the feature, either way it's really fucking annoying. And there are the comments and the catcalls. I'd rather just be mistaken for a teenage boy.
While women may not have equal representation in the media business of the ski world, this is is not due to society shunning girls into not participating, it is because of a difference in the very highest level of abilities between men and women, which appears to be decreasing.
Women are not represented in the media because there are
no women skiing, plain and simple. Which incidentally is the same reason you don't see women skiing anywhere near the same level as men.
