Tag: surfing
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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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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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How do we create a lineage of listening and respect amongst women?
I am a woman who has straddled a multi-generational gap in women’s surfing. I have watched, listened, and learned from 3 decades of shift in women’s surfing (from mother to daughter; from daughter to champion; from daughter/champion to student). The one decade I missed out on, those of our earliest modern predecessors (respectfully delaying…
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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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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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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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Come on, Undefined! Move your bloomin’ arse!*
Quandary: How to categorize this activity we do, this communion with, this union between, this time spent upon, beneath (or whichever requisite prepositional elbow word used to marry nouns and verbs you choose) the ocean? Sport? Lifestyle? Experience? Religion? Spirituality? The number of opinions skirting this question are as many and as varied as there…
