Parkour? I Barely Know Her!: More Women Becoming Involved In Parkour

More and more women are getting involved with Parkour - a mainly urban sport combining elements of gymnastics, climbing, and martial arts that began in France around 18 years ago. One enthusiast, 23-year-old Nikkie Zanevsky, has climbed all over Columbia University and a clown college. Lateral move. She says:

“There are certain disadvantages to doing parkour as a woman. The most annoying is if you’re training alone, as I do in my neighborhood in Brooklyn, the unwelcome attention from guys. You get catcalls, because you’re doing these weird movements.”

“Another, different sort of impediment is that women don’t have the same upper-body strength as men. So pulling yourself up a wall is harder. But it’s not like any of that stuff is going to stop me.”

The reason you haven’t seen more women climbing up the side of your office building, though, is because we’re afraid you’re going to think we’re fat. Says Mark Toorock (No relation to air guitarist and Nous Non Plus member Bjorn Turoque.), of American Parkour:

“At my gym, we have everyone from housewives to the agents who guard the president learning parkour,” Toorock said by telephone from Washington. “Women coming to the gym make up 30 percent of the total population. But on the street, it’s something like 3 percent.

“Much of it has to do with women’s fears of how they’ll be perceived. They’re afraid they’re going to look unattractive when they’re doing parkour in public. Here, in the gym, it feels safer for them.”

Thank you for giving us a voice, Mark.

Check out these ladies parkoureando in London:

And this is a close approximation of what we’d look like attempting this:

Climbing Walls Because They’re There [NY Times]