Category: Surfing
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Tell Roxy That Female Surfers Deserve Better
Dear Roxy, Roxy is the world’s most visible and well known women’s surf brand. Recently, Roxy released a trailer for the 2013 Roxy Biarritz Pro contest that showcases a style of marketing women’s surfing that is not conducive to a healthy, empowered vision of women. Instead of women surfers being presented as an alternative to…
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Roxy, #whoamIjustguess: surf-sex w/o a face
The trend of sexualization of women in surfing has been steadily building. It has been building slowly enough that we have had plenty of time to argue back and forth about whether this is a trend that will or already has been, aggravated toward more sexualization of female surfers. Today, something has fundamentally shifted. The…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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First documentary on gay surfers (trailer)
The first documentary to tackle what it is like for gay surfers in the line-up and in the surf industry is being made as we speak. I am stoked to be a part of this project and am very much looking forward to listening to my fellow surfers talk about their experiences from around the…
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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.
