When I first saw Roxy's 'trailer' for the upcoming Roxy Pro Biarritz I felt outraged, and powerless in the face of the ongoing poor representation of women in surfing. But to my delight a real shitstorm has developed online, with several of the mainstream surf mags writing scathing pieces about the video which I hope will open up the debate about how women are represented and act as a wakeup call to the industry.. I find it hard to articulate how uncomfortable and sad I feel about the way women continue to be represented in the surfing media, I know it just feels plain wrong and sexist to me, but I struggle to express what exactly it is about it that offends me. However after stewing over it on a lunchtime surfcheck / dogwalk, I wrote the following piece in response to other comments on an article on Cooler. There's plenty I could add to it, most notably how all this affects the standard of women's surfing and why it's consistently lower than men's, but I'll save that for another time.
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Ah - sex sells / if you don’t like it you’re a prude, that old chestnut. But when there’s little other substance to a company’s advertising (or whole industry for that matter) we’ve got to ask ourselves what kind of message is this sending out? What does this say to all those young aspiring surfer girls that Roxy markets to – if you’re not hot you’re no good as a surfer, that surfing is about looking hot? This could have been a cute guess who concept, instead we’ve got yet another prosurfer whose only value in this trailer is decorative.
To the guys commenting on this thread, I’ve got to ask if that was your daughter / sister who totally ripped, would you happy about her being reduced to just a hot body in this way?
Personally I’d be less offended by this video if it was for lingerie, but it’s for a surf contest, like Stefani says at the top it’s all about context. Surf contests are all about the sponsors, who are just about profit. Contests above all should be about talent and ability in the water – a good heat is nail-biting to watch and gets you literally jumping and shouting, and excited about going surfing, this trailer captures none of that. You should be mindsurfing the waves not mindshagging the contestants!
Bottom line for me is that Roxy have some amazing team riders, and produce some inspiring images of strong, skilled surfers, but with every video like this they diminish all of that. Using sex to sell is a weak fallback in my eyes.
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More excellent discussion of the ad:
Surfer Magazine
The Inertia
Cori Schumaker (essential feminism in surfing reading)
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Ah - sex sells / if you don’t like it you’re a prude, that old chestnut. But when there’s little other substance to a company’s advertising (or whole industry for that matter) we’ve got to ask ourselves what kind of message is this sending out? What does this say to all those young aspiring surfer girls that Roxy markets to – if you’re not hot you’re no good as a surfer, that surfing is about looking hot? This could have been a cute guess who concept, instead we’ve got yet another prosurfer whose only value in this trailer is decorative.
To the guys commenting on this thread, I’ve got to ask if that was your daughter / sister who totally ripped, would you happy about her being reduced to just a hot body in this way?
Personally I’d be less offended by this video if it was for lingerie, but it’s for a surf contest, like Stefani says at the top it’s all about context. Surf contests are all about the sponsors, who are just about profit. Contests above all should be about talent and ability in the water – a good heat is nail-biting to watch and gets you literally jumping and shouting, and excited about going surfing, this trailer captures none of that. You should be mindsurfing the waves not mindshagging the contestants!
Bottom line for me is that Roxy have some amazing team riders, and produce some inspiring images of strong, skilled surfers, but with every video like this they diminish all of that. Using sex to sell is a weak fallback in my eyes.
--
More excellent discussion of the ad:
Surfer Magazine
The Inertia
Cori Schumaker (essential feminism in surfing reading)
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