Snowboarding for girls

Extremely silly clothes are now available for women, too. Matthew Sweet reports

Women snowboarders rejoice! There are now Stiffy Jackets available for both sexes. Thanks to a new wave of American activewear designers, girls as well as boys can bore the elastic powder gators off each other with details of technical features like bi-lunar reservoir pockets, three- ply Ultrex and neoprene knee-pads.

Under banners like Cold as Ice and Kurvz, women designers are producing Tech Bib Pants with bathroom zippers in the right place and three-tone beanies to wow the female consumer. But while boys get to wear Tonka Jackets and Power Edge Pullovers, mountain womenswear is saddled with monikers like the Dianna Jacket: bland faux-Olympianism that's a long way from the sport's trip-hoppy street-smart image. And there's little equality in the advertising: when they want to sell gear to boys, suppliers wax frost-bitten techno-rhetorical: "A well-worn piece even before it leaves the factory". Conversely, women's wear lines boast that they "keep you warm and dry all day no matter what the conditions". You half-expect to see someone pouring blue ink on to an upturned snowboard.

But are women any more likely to get near an Alp than their notoriously streetbound male counterparts? For all their adrenaline-rush-oriented existensialisms about "the mountain", most boarder boys never rip their Cordura-reinforced butt panels any farther than the deep-freeze cabinet at Sainsbury's. And hardcore aficionados like Joe Tate, 24, take a dim view of the hangers-on at the fringe of boarding culture: "There are already a load of dippy lads trying to buy the attitude off the peg, but there's no reason why girls should be stopped from being just as sad."

Kurvz available from Boarded Up (01923 574909)