Go Play in Traffic: Skating, Gender, and Urban Context

In this article the author uses rollerblading through an urban environment as a lens to examine issues surrounding the movement of the body in public space. She uses the autobiographical vis-à-vis political cultural studies to explore gender politics, the regulation of bodies, and the reinscription of public spaces. Using the narrative of a single form traveling through a single day, she addresses notions of exclusionary gender roles and practices, play versus sport, recreation versus transportation, space versus place, and the ways in which consumption and pleasure are played out in the organic flow of time and space. The author argues for the continuing need to raise questions about the exclusionary effects of regulation of the urban body and to explore possibilities for resistance.