Tag: ASP
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And what of the current state of women’s pro surfing?
“It’s time to take women’s competitive surfing to the next level.” These words have been echoing through the halls of women’s surfing since pro surfing began in earnest in 1976. Then, only 20% of the total prize purse for competitions was allocated to female competitive surfers. With the exponential growth in participation and interest in…
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(Video) Roxy Petition Delivery Summary
Discussing content and outcome of the petition delivery meeting and the packet left with Danielle Beck and Cathey Curtis. Petition Update: The campaign asking Roxy to Stop their use of “all sex, no surf” ads continues to grow and has reached nearly 21,800 supporters. Shifts in the industry: Yesterday, the Association of Surfing Professionals announced…
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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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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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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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strange imperialism and neoliberal ethos of the Surf Industrial Complex
Image: Salvatore Vuono / FreeDigitalPhotos.net “Surfing is good for the world.” -Fernando Aguerre When I decided to boycott the women’s longboard championship in China last year, I received an email from the then ASP World Tour CEO, Brodie Carr, who suggested that I “proactively go there [China] as an ambassador of a sport that possesses…
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China and Big Surfing
“Sports themselves are not political, but they have important political functions. The close connection between sports and national identity takes different forms in different countries at various stages of development, and in China it has special significance. The phrase ‘a weak country has no sports’ has particularly painful associations for Chinese people [owing to China’s…
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“Standing Her Ground”: Curl Magazine #31
(This interview about women in surfing and my decision to boycott the ASP World Tour, was just published in the summer issue of Curl Magazine. There is no online access to this article so it is being reprinted here, with the images and captions provided in the article. I have also added links throughout the…
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“embracing their femininity”
Three of the top five ladies chosen in this year’s Surfer Poll Awards have bared glistening, bronzed bodies to the world in nearly naked poses that range from playful and flirty to sexual and seductive. The only reason Alana trumped Sally Fitzgibbons in the polls is because Fitzgibbons didn’t get her skin-show on before…
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surfing 2.0: fetishism and spectacle
One of the most compelling traits of consumerist culture is the constant message of “never enough.” You can never have too much… S/he with the most toys wins… You can never be too successful… You can never have too many trophies… too much money… too many friends on Facebook/Twitter… etc. This is the fall-out of…
