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The Future is Female: Michelle Parker on Women in Action Sports and Media

Michelle Parker taking it all in at Red Bull Formation. Izzy Lidsky photo.

Michelle Parker has long been a household name when it comes to action sports. I can remember watching Superheroes of Stoke in high school and seeing Parker and Ingrid Backstrom be the first examples of women skiing big lines I’d ever seen. Parker ended up winning Best Female performance for that film. A Lake Tahoe native, her career dates back to her teens when she began competing in freeskiing before switching to big mountain. After that, she became a staple in Matchstick Productions films and in the ski industry at large. More recently, Parker has become deeply involved in the freeride mountain bike scene. She’s also broadened her horizon in the action sports media space to step behind the camera and into other production roles.

This year at Red Bull Formation, I had the chance to meet up with Parker on a down day at the athlete house outside La Verkin, Utah. We took advantage of the Utah sunshine and seated ourselves on the expansive back patio. Though I had never met her before, we quickly realized that we had we shared a few mutual friends and that we’re both avid users of the cookbook Beyond Skid before catching up on how she got involved in the bike scene, her passion for shooting photos, and how the action sports industry is changing and growing for women in sports and media.

First and foremost, Parker is known in the industry as a professional skier, but in recent years she’s been pushing the envelope on a mountain bike. She’s made the trek to Virgin, Utah to watch the iconic freeride event Red Bull Rampage for the last ten or so years. So, five years ago, when bike industry visionaries Katie Holden and Rebecca Rusch approached her about doing something on the women’s side of the sport, she knew it would be big. Formation started off as Katie Holden’s brainchild and when she brought it to Parker and Rusch they began ideating on how to bring an event like this to women’s freeride. At that point, Rampage had been happening for 20 years and there’d never been a single female rider in the event. They knew they wanted the level of the event and riding to be much higher than anything that had happened thus far in competition for women. Parker used her connections as an athlete to help bring the event to Red Bull and convince them it was something the action sports world needed to see. She and the rest of the team were met with initial skepticism about whether or not the women in the space could actually ride that terrain. But they’d brought several athletes like Veronique Sandler with them to the meeting, and the riders were confident they could ride it. That was enough to convince Red Bull. “If you give women the opportunity, they will show up, and they will succeed,” Parker said as the very capable Formation athletes milled around us.

In the first year of Formation, Parker ended up being in charge of media and focused an episode of her own video series Originate around it. Once the riders showed up and put tires on dirt, she was blown away by the riding she witnessed. During the first event, she formed close relationships with many of the riders and has been involved in some way since then. To Parker, Formation acted as a kick-off point to showcase women freeriding at such a high level. “As a female biker, what I want to see in videos wasn’t quite there yet. I just want to see more women represented behind the film or in the film. I guess I view all these action sports together, like we’re all in this together on the women’s side of things. I want to see them succeed,” she said. So Parker made it her goal to support the event however she can, whether it be by digging, carrying bikes, taking photos, or sharing her knowledge of the industry so the riders can grow their careers.

Parker digging for Vaea Verbeck. Izzy Lidsky photo.

Formation is just one example of how Parker’s seen action sports change for women in her long career. Growing up, she didn’t have many female skiers to look up to because they weren’t being featured in sports media. Now, women come into the sport and have examples such as Parker to look up to and see what’s possible in a way she didn’t when she was competing in slopestyle. As an athlete, she’s now able to have a front row seat to what’s possible in the sport. “It’s like being shot out of a rocket –these women are coming out and doing stuff that I never thought was possible when I was doing it,” she says. Not only has the athleticism of the riders grown considerably, but a younger and younger field of athletes are stepping up to perform and showcase their talent. There’s a whole generation of incredible female athletes who are too young to be riding at events like Formation because of liability rules, but their skills are certainly good enough for these lines.

In many ways, biking is growing faster than skiing for women right now and the stoke for it from the community is clear. “Biking is the hottest thing right now, everyone wants a piece of it. Every media outlet is here, which is really awesome to see, and now we just need to catch up on the support side,” Parker said. She told me that many of the riders are working second jobs to fund their riding, which doesn’t bode well from a progression standpoint. The riders need to be supported by sponsors so that they can actually go ride their bikes and not get burnt out and not want to ride. The way Parker sees it, it would do everyone a favor if companies offered monetary support to back progression in these athletes so they can fully express what they’re capable of.

As an athlete herself, Parker’s also had new experiences this winter when it comes to being in women centered spaces in the mountains and watching the women’s field in action sports grow. She’s been working on a film called Nexus that boasts an all-female production crew and roster of athletes. Filming with that crew this winter is the first time in her 20-year career that Parker has worked with an all female crew and she saw many benefits to it as an athlete. “I think that women communicate differently and we support each other differently and having those roles also filled by women behind the camera is equally as important as having another female on the trip that’s riding with me,” said Parker. But Parker’s view isn’t everyone's and she believes that women have been held back in the industry by opportunity, pay, and things as simple as companies believing that women aren’t physically capable enough to carry a camera pack or execute the physical aspects of their jobs.

Similar to the creators of Formation, the women behind Nexus weren’t seeing what they wanted to in the outdoor space so they took it upon themselves to create it. Parker sees this as the first step for so many women in sports and media. “If we want something, if we want change, if we want to see more women get hired, we’ve got to take the initiative ourselves and own that space and know we’re worth it, and know what we’re worth too,” said Parker. She sees projects like Nexus as a huge undertaking and hopes that process doesn’t burn the women out so that they can continue to pave a path for women in media and action sports.

Parker was one of the riders in TGR's 2019 film 'Fire on the Mountain.' Peter Morning photo.

Parker is also in a unique position as an athlete with such a long career to be a mentor to other women in the space. For example, Parker’s friendship with Brooklyn Bell is also featured in Nexus as she’s able to mentor her while skiing in Alaska. Bell’s background is more in mountain biking but she’s flown onto the ski scene with the help of people like Parker. On the flip-side, Bell has mentored Parker on a bike and they share a special relationship as a result of their skills. “I’ve learned so much from Brooklyn and the way that she perceives our industry and the way that she’s structuring her business. She’s not necessarily following this formulaic way that I’ve done for the last twenty years. She’s breaking in and doing her own thing which is really epic, and I’m totally learning from her,” Parker said of Bell’s path. Their friendship provides the perfect example of what Parker had mentioned previously in having women to look up to in the industry. She spent so many years comparing herself to the men she worked with but never found the same type of inspiration she did in riding and working with women. That comparison to men held her back from progression. For Parker, having an example in front of her of another woman doing the things she wants to do is what inspires her and gets her fired up. She holds the phrase ‘if you can see it, you can believe it,’ as an affirmation of one of the many benefits to supporting uplifting women in action sports and relationships like hers and Bell’s is the prime example.

After such a long career, the new ways Parker has found to engage in the action sports space are beyond just getting involved in mountain biking. While she was helping Vaea Verbeeck and some other riders dig at Formation, she swapped her shovel for her camera on her on ride days to document the action alongside the rest of the photo team. Parker has been a passionate photographer since taking it as her art elective in high school, but when she arrived at the first Formation, she wanted to give the riders the best assets possible, so she borrowed a camera from her boyfriend, professional action sports photographer Aaron Blatt. He had inspired her to use good camera equipment and she was excited about the shots she ended up getting with his camera. After that, she discovered a newfound energy working in media that skiing had never given her. As a result, her passion now not only lies in skiing and being an athlete, but in photography and being an advocate and support for women like the ones riding Formation.

Parker swapped her shovel for a camera on the ride days to capture some of the action and her shots were gorgeous. Izzy Lidsky photo.

For Parker, the future of action sports is female. Brands and consumers are hungry for the content that women are creating and featured in and she only hopes that the near future brings equal pay for women in the industry as well. She’s thankful to have helped break down barriers for women in skiing, but knows there are more ahead as well. “You can only watch dudes for so long. What the women are doing is so cool, and as a female, I’ve always said I’ll go watch a movie if there’s women in it. But if there’s only one, you’re not giving me what I want. I want 50/50 or I want an all women’s movie,” said Parker. For her, it’s beyond just representation. Brands that don’t work with women are missing out. She brought up the sheer demographic of how many mothers are the ones in charge of what clothes their kids are wearing, what they’re doing after school, what media they’re consuming, and so on.

It’s clear that Parker’s prolific 20-year career has given her time to think about what works and what doesn’t and how she believes the future of action sports should look. I spent the days following our conversation watching her and Brooklyn Bell spend hours in the Utah heat perfecting the landing of Vaea Verbeck’s massive cliff drop, seeing Parker shoot photos alongside every other media outlet there, and connecting in a really wonderful way with the athletes. To see her ski big lines when I was a teenager was something entirely new to me and to watch her many years later work as a mentor, friend, and advocate for so many women in the industry might have been even cooler. 

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