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Surfing’s Culture of Silence
“Platforms are judged by the value generated by their ecosystem, not by the value the platforms directly capture.” -Dalton Caldwell (Please be advised, this post contains explicit language from Twitter feeds.) The language of surfing has long been dominated by the motion and gestures of the body. The narratives we construct, the legends, the mythologies,…
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“Beyond Gidget” – Cooler Magazine: Issue #38
“Beyond Gidget” in the newest issue (Aug/Sept 2012) of Cooler Magazine Excerpts: “…women’s purchase intentions increase up to 300 percent when exposed to diverse body styles and types in advertising.” “The women in Ben Barry’s study commented that what inspires them most in representations of women is ‘glamour, artistry, and creativity.’ Rather than focusing on…
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Bearded Ladies of Surf
Sometimes, the utterly ridiculous offers the possibility of a profound clarity, despite the intentions of its origins and despite how it is initially read. As Surfer Magazine suggests: “Bearded Ladies Nick Rosza is all for equality. Women deserve beards too.” However, there is the opportunity here for a more subversive reading, one that Mr. Rosza…
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The Patriarchy?
“There is, it should be evident, no universal patriarchal framework that [global feminism] attempts to counter and resist – unless one posits an international male conspiracy or a monolithic, ahistorical power structure. There is, however, a particular world balance of power within which any analysis of culture, ideology, and socioeconomic conditions necessarily has to be…
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Quintessential Girl: Huck Magazine Issue #033
“My mother approached me when I was making a shift in my surfing career at the age of seventeen. She had come with a dire warning, one born of her many years as a competitive surfer. She had been discussing my future in professional surfing with the mother of a well-known local surf icon.” ……
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Br’er Rabbit, GO!
(Instead of blowing the above video off right away, because it is ‘pop’ and KP, ask yourself, why this works? Message? Symbolism? How it is co-opted? What is being assumed? What is left out? etc.) So we brush tangents off our t-shirts and look in each other’s direction, briefly; I beg, “If you must be…
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Manly Men: Fiji Pro, June 7th 2012
The amount of references that are made to how “manly” the men on the ASP World Tour are in video commentary and elsewhere, is utterly overwhelming at times. With comments like “These dudes are manly men”, “He better man-up”, descriptions of turns as “mannish hacks”, or even references to waves as women (“approach accordingly”), it…
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Surfing Mag and its Pathetic Fallacy
A lack of critical analysis of surf media, a loose understanding (or absence of concern), by editors, publishers, of the implications of continuing to showcase (ever greater) sexist content within surf culture has created an environment that begs for attention. For many in the surfing community, surfing is more than just a hobby, it is…
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The Necessity of Feminist Eyes, Voices
“Post-feminists ‘…explicitly define themselves [as] against… [while criticizing] feminists of the Second Wave‘ (women’s liberation movement). [In post-feminist thought], individual improvement replaces collective improvement, while the results of the collective action of the second wave movement are taken as a given. (Dworkin and Wachs, p. 139)” While taking for granted certain freedoms that were hard-won…
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Cause and Effect
“3 out of 4 girls feel ____?____ after leafing through a fashion magazine for 3 minutes.” “8 is the peak age for girls’ leadership ambition.” and other interesting facts PLUS what can be done. Another great short about the importance of media literacy from MissRepresentation.
Cori Schumacher
State of Flux
