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Entertainment

Skateboarding Sells Clothes

Apparently, babes who 'skate' don't get kicked by horses for pulling their tails.
Jamie Clifton
London, GB

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I know it's a little late, but I've decided that my new year's resolution for 2012 is to not buy anything unless its advertising campaign has explicitly involved either skateboarding or dubstep, preferably both, because, otherwise, how the hell am I going to be certain that it's hip? Last year was a clusterfuck of totally misguided purchases, something I realized could have been easily remedied by just bloody knuckling down, paying attention to the TV, and noting that more or less any cool product featured skateboarders prominently in its advert.

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Skating wasn't only used effectively to sell stuff, but also in music videos by the trendiest, most innovative artists on the planet, and in a shit-ton of mega-relevant, on point fashion shoots. The great thing about using skateboards in shoots is that any notion of stress concerning styling, or whatever, goes straight out of the window, because once you chuck a board in there, every element of skateboarding's rich, romantic history gets thrown in there too and that shoot instantly becomes an authentic part of the cultural zeitgeist, no questions asked.

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By now, I think we all know that you don't really need poncey things like wheels, trucks, and bearings if you want to be a credible skateboarder. As long as the board is facing the camera graphics side up, so everyone can see how rad your GCSE Photoshop art project is, you're golden.

It really upsets me when nasty critics hate on models in skate-themed shoots for not physically touching the skateboard. People forget that some models are just far too important to risk getting grazed, which is a pretty common side-effect of falling off a skateboard. Anyway, what's so wrong with simply using the board as a prop? That way you can borrow all the cool parts of skate culture without anyone beautiful getting hurt.

Attitude is a big part of skateboarding. As we've established, none of the details matter too much as long as there's a board visible somewhere in the frame, but feel free to play around with expressions and the overall tone of the photo. Without wanting to generalize too much, every single living skateboarder known to man is notoriously apathetic, so it sometimes helps to intentionally look like you have no fucking clue what you're doing. But you're a skateboarder so, like, who gives a shit, right?

If you get that irrepressible urge to go out and shoot some photos of your friends asleep with handbags, but can't find a skateboard or someone with a skateboard for the life of you, never fear, for there is usually a skate park near. Bonus points if you find one with graffiti, because graff is basically dubstep in a tangible form and, if you were paying attention earlier, you'll know that the only thing that comes to close to skating on the 'en vogue scale' is a dirty, wobbly bit of dub. Am I right, people? I am.

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One more word of advice before you rush off and clear out your local skate shop—remember, skateboards are ideal for those edgy juxtaposition shoots. You know, the ones where you get the model all dressed up in high-end couture and fancy, sparkly earrings, then get them to roll around in black paint to represent the desolate emptiness of fashion. Blow off the trip to the hardware store you've got penciled into your diary and use a skateboard instead. They represent angst, youth, joy, and anger so much more than black paint ever could. Especially if they're bright yellow and have a funny, cute little face on them.