Indecent Exposure: The Aesthetic of Rollerblading

Everyone can be blown away by Pele. Tarzan would get bug-eyed at Michael Jackson’s dance moves. Michael Jordan could bring tears to the eyes of a young Tibetan girl. Across almost all sports, the greatest athletes have universal appeal and appreciation. Even the best curler in the world could make a teenage boy giddy. However, generally speaking, some sports and activities have less visual appeal than others. A viral, extreme unicycling video may not lure the masses to the local unicycle store, and potato sack racing isn’t necessarily the most enticing of activities in which to participate. The best human in potato sack racing may be impressive but the action itself of hopping very fast in a sack is quite difficult to make look appealing to the masses.

Style in sport and performance is what separates the appealing from the appalling. Whether one activity or performance is more difficult, more fun, or more creative than another is totally subjective. But having style is as easy to recognize as beauty in the human face. You can’t exactly describe why someone’s face is stunning, it just is. There’s nothing specific you can point to that describes why most rollerbladers look goofy and unstylish. They just are.

Almost everyone can look a little more stylish wearing sunglasses. It might take a second look at Carrot Top in sunglasses to recognize what’s really happening beneath those tinted shades. A skateboard under the feet of a skateboarder with bad style is like sunglasses on the face of an ugly person. The ugly is obscured by the restricted view. Conversely, many striking people on the planet have beautiful eyes. Put sunglasses on beautiful eyes and they look less appealing because the sunglasses restrict the view of the beauty.

In extreme sports, the reason skateboarding, BMX, scootering and snowboarding looks more stylish or more appealing than rollerblading to most is because the participants of these sports are not as exposed as rollerbladers. A squirly snowboarder is like a close-up cleavage shot of a woman that may otherwise be a butter-face. The snowboarder may look good up close, but zoom out and you’ll take a pass. Likewise, the restrictions of the body’s placement on the skateboard, scooter, bicycle or snowboard limit the body’s ability to show something beautiful. These sports are full of unstylish participants wearing sunglasses as cover. When I watch any of these sports, it’s like watching a beauty pageant in Iran — interesting but rather limited. In blading, the unrestricted movement of the arms and legs both in the air and on the ground allow for total freedom of expression of body form — a blessing if skilled but a curse if not.

It seems that every rollerblader I’ve ever seen skating down a bike path looks terribly awkward, with arms and legs stiff as if balancing on stilts while simultaneously being crucified. Very few people can make rollerblading look good because of how naked rollerbladers’ style is. If they are not stylish and in control it is blatantly obvious. You can easily look cool simply bouncing a basketball even if you can never sink a 3-pointer. You don’t need to be a pro to look chill if you lean a little while coasting on a skateboard. There’s no need to learn to ollie. But it takes a decade on rollerblades to look comfortable simply striding down a sidewalk with cracks on it. Add the elements of a crooked run-up to a fastslide grind on a hand rail and you quickly have the hardest sport in the world to make look impressive and easiest sport to make laughable, thanks to an out-of-control landing that results in a feature on Tosh.0.

This is precisely why rollerblading is incredible and unique from the rest of the extreme sports. There is no other sport that is so exposed and so difficult to make look impressive.

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