Category: Deconstructing Surfing
-
Road to Roxy

Interspersed in this post are some amazing voices from those who are supporting a petition to ask Roxy to stop using “sexy” to sell their products, a request that I argue pertains to the entire surf industry. You can read about the video that started it all here. You can add your voice to…
-
Lesbian-Baiting, a la roxy surfing 2013

One of the most prevalent tools of sexism in the surf industry has been and continues to be lesbian-baiting. Lesbian baiting occurs most often when rumblings are felt within the sexist status quo, when women gain more power in a hierarchy, or when they are acting more self-assertive and less deferential than their male-counterparts…
-
Reconstructing Surfing
Environmental justice, as opposed to simple environmentalism that can be co-opted by corporate consumerism to drive sales in the mode of greenwashing, understands that all forms of oppression are interconnected. That is, oppressions of race, sexuality, gender, class; oppressions that privilege heterosexuality and certain body types over others; oppressions that encourage (often in complicity via…
-
Quiksilver and Monsanto: bedfellows

[4/1/2014 See also: Kelly Slater’s Ethical Choice to Leave Quiksilver] [5/29/2013 EDIT: The Reliance Group of industries Quiksilver has joined up with in India deserves its own post. For a taste, see page 6 of this document and this article.] Suicide has become the second leading cause of death in India among young adults. Of…
-
Gay Surf Narratives Matter

What does the swallow think of the pelican’s flight? Does Swallow wonder at Pelican’s lack of movement? Does Swallow gape at the protracted lengths of Pelican’s glide? Swallow’s agility and quickness allow it to escape hawkish predators Pelican does not fear. Swallow treats the updraft flurries of salted draughts that press against cliff sides like…
-
Bangladesh: Dying for Fashion

ONE YEAR LATER: 4/24/14. Parent company of REEF and VANS, VF Corp, continues to refuse to sign Bangladesh accord. Updated 5/30 : Along with VOLCOM and REEF, I found BILLABONG men’s shorts, Made in Bangladesh Updated 5/26 : Bangladesh factory banned by Wal-Mart is still used by the VF Corp (see note 2 below), the…
-
Endless Cannibalization of Authenticity, Cease

Bruce Brown’s 1966 The Endless Summer(TES) presented an alternative narrative to the shenanigans of the many beach/surfy lifestyle movies that erupted from Hollywood after Gidget emerged to much fanfare in 1958. In TES, there are no post-surf bonfire orgies, no frustrating hetero-love triangles that finally resolve in dramatic Hollywood fashion, and certainly no surfing ladies…
-
Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Surfing

ob but really look on… Los padres de la hacienda had fought the mud from the periphery of the building for years, mud that was laced in the building’s own genetic-code, mud that dressed the building in droplet skirts when La Virgen wept from heaven (so they said), mud that speckled the interior of the…
-
How Surfing is a Rhetoric of Pro-Globalization and Surfer Girls in the New World Order (video)

…and how the female surfer is an icon for western globalization’s vision for the means of women’s liberation… Krista Comer’s Surfer Girls in the New World Order, published 2010.

