Interview With Skateboarding Legend Cindy Whitehead

Find out all about her newest endeavor, It's Not About Pretty: A Book About Radical Skater Girls.

March 3, 2017

Cindy Whitehead is a skateboarding legend. In 1978, at the age of age of 17, she turned pro, becoming a top-ranked female skater for pool riding and half-pipe in the United States. She also is the only female to have a two-page feature and centerfold in a skateboarding magazine.

When she retired at 22, she became a sports stylist, working on styling athletes and sports campaigns, and has worked on Nike, Adidas, and Gatorade campaigns, as well as styling professional athletes like Kobe Bryant and Tiger Woods.

Then, in 2013, Cindy merged her passion for style with skateboarding, and created the brand “Girl is NOT a 4 Letter Word” in collaboration with professional skateboarding company Dwindle Inc., and designed a skateboard aimed toward the female market. With her collaboration with Dwindle, GN4LW donates a portion of proceeds to go toward nonprofits that help young women whose dream is to make a living in action sports. This led to Cindy being honored by the Smithsonian Museum for her contributions as a woman in the world of skateboarding.

In Cindy’s latest endeavor to help motivate girls to pursue action sports, she wrote and released in February, It's Not About Pretty: A Book About Radical Skater Girls, which features 65 different female skaters (and is available on Amazon). The source of her inspiration stems from the young women she has personally met and helped throughout the years, and those who she hopes to embolden to chase their dreams.

Teen Vogue talked with Cindy about the inspiration about behind GN4LW and why she chose to publish a book that focused on capturing the essence of female skateboarders.

Photo: Ian Logan
1/11
__TV: What is the meaning of “Girl is NOT a 4 Letter Word? Are you trying to break the stereotype that “playing like a girl” is a bad thing?
Cindy Whitehead: Exactly. The easiest way that I explain it to young girls, is that nasty words you’re not supposed to say usually come in four letters. And one should never say, “You throw like a girl” or “skate like a girl,” because in that context it’s usually used as a put-down. Too often people use “girl” as a negative.
Photo: Ian Logan
2/11
TV: Do the young girls and women you have contact with resonate with your mission?
CW: They do. A lot of girls already get it before I explain it to them. Most of them know exactly what it means, and it’s unfortunate that they do. I would like to get in a day and age where people don’t look at girls as inferior. The ones I get the most questions and comments from, are men and boys. It doesn’t make sense to them because many of them still use it as a slur, not understanding how degrading it is to girls.

Photo: Ian Logan
3/11
TV: Have girls told you personal experiences about them being called a girl in a negative context?
CW: Unfortunately, yes. It still goes on so much, that young women get the impression that when they go skateboarding, they don’t belong. Skateboarding is becoming more accepted for girls, but there are still instances where the girls will get hassled, but once they prove themselves, the boys tend to shut up. However, you need to be able to be a beginner and not have to prove yourself in order to be respected.
Photo: Ian Logan
4/11
__TV: How does GN4LW help fund girls to pursue their passion in action sports?
CW: We do it in various ways. We help fund non-profits, we also look at Kickstarters and GoFundMes, and sometimes girls also approach us. For instance there was a group of young women who said, “Hey, we’re in a longboarding group, and there’s 10 of us who are going to pile into a van and travel from Colorado to California, and we’re shooting images and film along the way. If we’re not covered by the mainstream media that covers men, we’re going to create our own media. We’re looking for $1,500 to fund this trip.”
With things like that, we help them get connected to people who can give them funding, we blast them on our social media, and we also sometimes provide part of the monies.

Photo: Ian Logan
5/11
TV: How do you receive your funding?
CW: We have collaborations, such as with Dwindle Distribution, which is the largest company in skateboarding. We have a line of skateboards with them, and a portion of the money from skateboards sold goes back to a non-profit. We also have a helmet line and an in-house apparel line.
Photo: Ian Logan
6/11
TV: What was the inspiration behind the book It's Not About Pretty: A Book About Radical Skater Girls?
CW: There was a need for it, because no one has focused solely on women in skateboarding. Women have been included here and there in a page or two in men’s skateboarding books. My book features girls from the age of 5 to women who are 54, who skate in all different disciplines: downhill, pool, parks, street, soul skating. Basically everything.
My husband, Ian, is an advertising photographer and he took every single photo in the book. These are photos that have been documented over the last six years from events we attended. He started shooting girls at competitions so we could put them up on our website, www.girlisnota4letterword.com, so that the girls would have photos and have a platform when they were at these contests because all the media coverage was being given to the guys' competition.
One day it came us that we had all these photos, many that hadn’t seen the light of day, and we thought that we should do something with them.

Photo: Ian Logan
7/11
TV: How long did it take you to put together this book?
CW: It took about a year to put this together and publish it. It’s been a huge labor of love. We didn’t do a Kickstarter or any type of fundraiser for the book because our job is to help girls fund themselves. Ian and I decided to put our own money up for this book because we believed it in enough, and we started our own publishing company so that we could get this book into libraries. We also want to be in the Library of Congress as well, which was really important to me.
We plan to donate books to the Los Angeles City Library, and a mobile library, so kids who don’t have access to libraries will have access to the book. We want girls to see the diversity that’s in skateboarding, and so that they can feel encouraged to try it for themselves.
Photo: Ian Logan
8/11
TV: With this book, what is the main thing you hope to accomplish?
CW: I believe it’s important for the girls in this book to be out there and be seen. We also want girls to see the diversity that’s in skateboarding, and so that they can feel encouraged to try it for themselves. Every time you see a picture of a girl skateboarding, you are encouraging another girl who says, “If she can do that, I can do that.”
I think that’s the most important thing: encouraging the next generation.