Many of the sports that are popular right now have their own culture and most people are aware of these cultures. However, snowboarding is different. Snowboarding is a popular sport, but many people that don’t participate in it don’t know that it also has its own culture. Some of the people that are aware of it as a culture have many misconceptions and stereotypes of snowboarders. One of these stereotypes is that they are rebellious teenagers that are disrespectful to society. This was partially true many years ago when snowboarding split from skiing and became its own culture. There was a feud between skiers and snowboarders because of the conflict of culture and the differences between sports. Skateboarders and surfers brought many parts of their cultures to snowboarding because they were some of the first people to try it. As a sport, snowboarding has changed and evolved over the years, which also means that the culture has also changed over the years, and I recently conducted an analysis and physical observations that confirmed this.
When I was younger I skied until I was about nine years old, and then I switched to snowboarding. I have been snowboarding since then and I believe that this culture has affected my life. My mom and my grandparents both ski, so I was aware of the stereotypes about snowboarding since I first started. When I was younger, it seemed to me that my grandparents thought that snowboarders were annoying kids. They gave me the image that they were just punks. At the time I didn’t give much thought to what they said because I was so young and it didn’t really bother me at the time, snowboarding was fun and I liked it and that was all that mattered to me. I have been lucky to be exposed to the culture and be a part of it over the years that I have been snowboarding.
One online article, “Snowboarding Sub-Cultures and the Barriers For Success”, is about snowboard culture and some of its stereotypes. Some of the most common stereotypes of snowboarders are lazy, punk, grungy, stoners, and troublemakers. When snowboarding first started to become popular, many skateboarders and surfers were the first ones to try it. They brought many aspects of their cultures to snowboarding including some of the stereotypes. These include the punk stereotype from snowboarding and the laid back, or lazy, stereotype from surfing. The style of clothing was similar to skateboarding. Snowboarders tended to wear lose, baggy clothes in darker colors while skiers at the time were wearing bright, tighter clothes. Many of these stereotypes are starting to fade because of the evolution of the sport. (Sallador) It has changed so much that when it was created some people referred to snowboarding as “snurfing”, which comes from snow surfing.
I recently conducted a physical analysis of the snowboard culture when I was on vacation up north at Boyne Mountain and Boyne Highlands. I spent one day at Boyne Mountain and two days at Boyne Highlands. I spent time observing people in the main lodge at the Highlands, and while I was snowboarding and riding the chair lifts. I also conducted an analysis of how this culture is viewed in the media, online, and in a disciplinary space. I analyzed a newspaper article, an article from a scholarly journal, a YouTube video, and an online article.
For the media, I discussed and article about a Japanese snowboarder, Kazuhiro Kokubo, that was dressed in a style that is common in snowboarding while getting off a plane for the Vancouver Olympics. He was wearing the country’s uniform, but he wasn’t wearing it right. His shirt was untucked, his pants were worn loose below his hips, and his tie was loosened with his shirt unbuttoned at the top. He also had dreadlocks and a nose piercing. Many people from Japan were offended and thought that his dress was unacceptable. The Japan Ski Association punished him and his snowboard team manager and two coaches by keeping them from attending the Olympic opening ceremony as a show of regret. (Lah)
The article made it seem like Kokubo was rebelling against the customs of Japan. It hinted that he didn’t really care that he offended people from his country, but nothing that he did actually showed how he felt towards the issue. The article focused on Kokubo being disrespectful. It is interesting to see how the style of snowboarding is viewed in Japan. This style is nothing unusual for a snowboarder here to wear, however it is considered disrespectful in the Japanese culture. While doing research for the analysis, I found that the media tends to use the common stereotypes such as these to portray snowboarders.
This article contradicts what I found when I did my analysis in a physical space. The article makes the stereotype of snowboarders being disrespectful very clear. When I was at the ski resorts, many of the snowboarders showed no sign of being disrespectful. I noticed snowboarders being courteous and letting others go in front of them in the lift lines, and holding the door open for other people at the main lodge. There were a lot of small things that I noticed snowboarders doing similar to this. I also saw a snowboarder stop to help a skier get his poles after he fell when his poles were a little ways uphill. One of the things that I noticed was that adults or young adults made most of these gestures. I think that since more adults and mature people are starting to snowboard, the stereotype of snowboarders being disrespectful is fading.
However, there were a few people that I observed that confirmed the reckless and punk stereotypes. The people that I saw that confirmed the stereotypes were teenagers that were in the terrain park at Boyne Highlands. A terrain park is a run that has jumps, rails, and other obstacles. It is the snowboarding equivalent of a skatepark. This group of snowboarders was taking the lose and baggy clothing style to the extreme. They were wearing shirts that looked like they were four sizes too big and had wore their snowpants way below the waist. They honestly looked like punks and they were acting like it too. At the top of the run I saw two of them chugging beer and then throwing the cans into the trees before going down the hill. Not only were they not old enough to drink, it is dangerous to snowboard in the terrain park while under the influence. It is annoying that there are people like this that snowboard, but they are the only people that I saw in three days of snowboarding that I saw that completely fit the stereotypes.
I also analyzed this culture in the online. I used a YouTube video titled “My Thoughts on Snowboarding Culture.” This is a short video of a snowboarder talking about what he has read about the culture and how he feels about it. He talks about conflicts between skiers and snowboarders, which is where most of the stereotypes about snowboarding come from. He points out that the only conflicts he has had with skiers have been with people from an older generation. He has never had a conflict with a skier from his generation. He says that this new generation of skiers and snowboarders understand each other, and they don’t have the traditional roots that older skiers have. The younger skiers are now wearing the same clothes as snowboarders, and the cultures are becoming more similar. The fact that there isn’t a conflict between younger snowboarders and skiers may be part of the reason that the older stereotypes of snowboarders are being forgotten. He says that snowboard culture is partially shaped by the media, and the media markets it as a rebellious youth.
His thoughts are very similar to what I actually observed at the resorts. Over the years that I have been snowboarding and while I was observing this culture, I also noticed that when there is an argument or conflict, it involves a skier from an older generation. While I was up north I also noticed that the younger skiers in the terrain parks were wearing pretty much the same style of clothing as the snowboarders there. The younger generation of snowboarders and skiers are becoming more similar, which is one of the reasons that some of the snowboarding stereotypes are fading.
Even though some skiers and snowboarders are becoming more similar, there is still the older generation of skiers that believe in the stereotypes. While I was up north, I was on the chair lift with my sister, who was also snowboarding, with two other skiers. One of the skiers was around sixty years old, and the other was in his mid twenties. When we were almost to the top, someone didn’t get off the chair lift and it was stopped and people had to help the person get off. When the older skier saw this, he muttered “stupid snowboarders,” when I was sitting within two feet of him. After the person got off the lift, you could tell that it was a skier and the man said in a surprised voice, “Oh, it’s a skier.” It seemed like when he thought it was a snowboarder it was annoying that the lift had to stop, but when he realized that it was a skier, everything was fine. This confirms what the snowboarder in the video said about the views that the older generation of skiers have towards snowboarders.
For the last part of my analysis, I analyzed an article from a scholarly journal. It is titled “What Is So Punk About Snowboarding?” and is about the many misconceptions of snowboarding. This article describes how the sport began and how its culture was very different from the ski culture at the time. The author explains that the rise of snowboarding offered resistance to the dominant ski culture. These two cultures were separated by age, fashion, etiquette, and lingo. Many snowboarders expressed the “I don’t care” attitude. The author also states that the media has a significant impact on how the sport is viewed. The media still markets snowboarding as a culture of rebellious youth. However, the demographics of people that snowboard are those who have enough money to continue in an expensive, middle to upper class sport. More and more adults are starting to snowboard, and these adults don’t have the same rebellious attitude of the youth culture from when snowboarding started. The sport is becoming more mainstream and is more accepted. There are much less conflicts between skiers and snowboarders, and the old stereotypes of snowboarding are fading. (Heino 176 – 191)
The results from my observation confirmed what I found while analyzing this article. One of the main arguments in the article is that the number of adults that snowboard is increasing. I found that there is a lot more adults that are snowboarding now than when I first started snowboarding. At both Boyne resorts, about half of the snowboarders that I saw were adults in their mid twenties or older. I noticed that one of the reasons more older people are starting to snowboard is because of their kids. I saw many parents that were trying to learn how to snowboard with their younger children. I also didn’t see any conflicts between skiers and snowboarders, but I can’t confirm that there are much less conflicts because I have only seen a few in person over the years I have been snowboarding.
Since the sport has changed, I feel that it is unfair for some snowboarders today to be judged based on the stereotypes that were established a long time ago. There are still a few people that fit parts of these stereotypes, but they do not represent the vast majority. The older generation of skiers is the group that has the strongest views on these stereotypes. This may be because they were growing up and started skiing during the time when snowboarding was a young sport and many of the stereotypes were true. I believe that one of the reasons that the stereotypes are still around is because of the way that the older generation skiers view them. I knew about the stereotypes that my grandparents had of snowboarders being punks when I was younger, and if I didn’t start snowboarding, I may have never been exposed to the culture and made assumptions based on my grandparents’ views. Some of these stereotypes are starting to fade. One of the reasons for this is that more adults are joining the sport that are mature and they don’t share the young and reckless attitude that was there when the sport was created. Over half of all snowboarders are 24 or older. The culture is always changing as the sport changes and it is unfair for snowboarders to be judged based on stereotypes from a long time ago.
Throughout the analyses I was able to observe this culture from an outsiders point of view. It was interesting to me because I have been a part of this culture for almost ten years. I found that my observations both confirmed and contradicted what I found in my cultural analysis. The YouTube video and the scholarly journal both confirmed what I observed when I went snowboarding at Boyne. The newspaper article, however, both confirmed and contradicted what I observed. The article showed some of the common stereotypes that mostly contradicted my observation, but there were still a few exceptions of people that fit perfectly with these stereotypes.
Citations
Heino, Rebecca. “What Is So Punk About Snowboarding?” Journal of Sport & Social Issues. (2000): 176-191. Print.
Lah, Kyung. “Olympic snowboarder’s ‘street’ style offends Japanese.” CNN (2010): Web. 3 Mar 2011. <http://www.cnn.com/2010/SPORT/02/18/japan.kokubo. olympics/index.html>
“My Thoughts on Snowboarding Culture.” YouTube. Web. 3 Mar 2011. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mvqi3NcnkE>
Sallador, Victoria. “Snowboarding Sub-Cultures and the Barriers For Success.” Ezine Articles. Web. 3 Mar 2011. <http://ezinearticles.com/?Snowboarding-Sub-Cultures-and-the-Barriers-For-Success&id=3902941>
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