54-year Old Woman Using her Hobbies; to Change the Image Of Women

A 54-year-old “Skater chick”, Marlene Hielema, who adopted the hobby of Skateboarding at a very early age, quit the activity for decades only to start all over again.

“I skated as a kid for a couple of years, way before skate parks,” Hielema told The Homestretch. “I quit Skateboarding and then when I turned 50, the neighbor’s kid got a long-board. Another neighbor said, ‘I think Marlene Skateboards. Why don’t you ask her to teach you how to ride it?”

“So I took out my 35-year old skateboard and I started riding it and I am like, ‘whoa, this feels great. I think I’d like to get back into Skateboarding.’

She said she then bought herself a long-board and started skating again along bike paths. She is also a photographer and enjoys doing what she loves and even joined a skate club for women.

“I am a 54-year skater chick. That is probably the coolest thing about me.” “There were eight of us and it was snowing. I had so much fun. You got the energy of hanging out with a bunch of women skateboarders. Some people were better than others but it doesn’t really matter.”

“As women, we need to create the images of women and girls that we want to see,” she said. “We don’t want to see what is in more typical skateboarding magazines- which is 200 pages of men skateboarding and the pictures of women posing in clothing or women, seriously, with bananas in their mouth.”

“This is what the young men of our world are seeing as skateboard photos. We need to create the media of women and girls that we want to see. We need to be able to identify with the women in the photos. They need to be real, come in all shapes and sizes and they need to be showing women of the community.” Said Hielema.