Lucy’s Open Letter to Marie Claire

Last month saw a controversial article by Marie Claires Nellie Eden on the opening night of the HTC skatepark on the very fashionable Oxford Street. The article caused an uproar from guys & gals alike and within 20 minutes of posting our ‘Sort it Out, Marie Claire’ article, the original text was taken down from their website.

In an open letter, Lucy Adams addresses Nellie Eden directly, and questions the type of role model that Marie Claire are proposing to their readers.
The letter is quite long, and you should go read the full text over on the crossfire site, but you can read a couple of snippets below…

“During a week’s break abroad, I tapped into the world wide web one day and was bombarded with SM notifications, texts and emails about an article that Nellie Eden had posted on the Marie Claire website. Being late to the party, I was unable to read Nellie’s instructions on how to dress and behave in order to pick up ones hot, single skater date, as it had already been removed from the MC site, but I got the general gist that the feature had caused a bit of a stir. Having read the article on my return, Crossfire asked me to put across my point of view

If I was one of the young and impressionable girls that make up MC’s readership I might have read this nonsense and missed out on the opportunity to try an activity that has led me to travel the world, meet lifelong friends and improve my fitness, health and well being! Explicitly telling young females not to try skateboarding?!
  It is the perfect time to be celebrating and encouraging women’s participation in sport what with the success stories from 2012 and more recently with a British female snowboarder making the front pages of the daily newspapers! 

So Nellie, you’re welcome to our ankle swingers and sportswear brand skate shoes. You can have our bucket hats and £80 hoodies. You can even have our plaid shirts and weed leaf socks, but don’t, whatever you do, try to dissuade young female girls to try something positive. It’s something that will help them experience rad times like never before. If you’re a girl skater, or you are a girl who is interested in becoming a skateboarder, or even if you just know a girl who wants to skate, then encourage them to try new things, especially skateboarding – Lucy Adams.”