Making Friends With The Neighbours

Although it happens less and less, there are still days when people will explain the continued absence of women in surf media as a reflection of a lack of interest in women’s surfing, or due to a lack of content created by women surfers themselves. These explanations are as frustrating as they are disappointing (and fury-inducing) because neither of these things are true. The high profile of women surfers like Stephanie Gilmore, Carissa Moore and Layne Beachley are simple evidence, but even more is the success of various media about women’s surfing. Films like Blue Crush  (2002) and Girls Can’t Surf  (2022) played to packed cinemas, Magazines like Sea.Together have endured and connected international surfing communities, reporting in Tracks by Kate Allman, Lucy Small and Selina Steele on sexism in women’s competitive sport was nominated for a Walkely award for Women’s Leadership in Media, and the 2020 all-women issue of Australian surf magazine, White Horses , went into rep...

This week was International Women’s Day. Much to the seeming surprise of many people, it happens on 8th March, every year.  There is growing critique about International Women’s Day (IWD) day; what it represents, who it represents, and how we should recognise it. Key critiques are of the corporate back-slapping and self-congratulations that it enables, as businesses and organisations host morning teas at which they point out the ways they’ve been less sexist that year, while serving cupcakes to women and taking photos to share in their promotional material. I absolutely agree with these critiques. The history of IWD is one based in the protest and anger of working women about the conditions of their lives in their workplaces, their communities, and their homes. If you want to research the specific origins of this day, then go ahead, but keep in mind that there were similar movements and protests like this around the world, which are also part of this story.  So what did I do t...

Surfing is one of the great joys of my life.* Being outside, at the beach, riding waves, spending time alone or with friends, encountering all kinds of animals, being away from my computer and phone - it's a feeling of freedom and joy that I find in precious few other activities. The very thought of being in the water and riding waves makes me feel good. But while the joy of surfing is the biggest part of it, darkness, discrimination and exclusion are a large part of going surfing too. These cultural aspects - human wrought - are by far the worst of surfing; worse than the fear of sharks, of wipeouts, of fin cuts. The violence and anger, the sense of entitlement, the commitment to exclusivity that some surfers layer over the pleasures they find in riding waves is the worst of surfing. We've all seen, experienced or practised this to varying degrees, and we've all likely turned our heads at times as well, hoping it will go away, hoping the victim will go away. It's n...

*The title of this essay is inspired by  Kylie Maslen's recent article about women's sport, 'Skin in the Game '. The essay itself is dedicated to my friends in the Institute of Women's Surfing (Europe), with my thanks for sharing your stories and friendship and resources. I. Oh hey, surf media! Surf media is such an interesting world. I used to consume it voraciously, reading everything I could find - every book, magazine, website, and blog. I was trying to understand it, to understand the world it was describing, to see the patterns and themes as well as the points of difference and resistance. I wasn't out to create a typology or anything like that, but to get my head around what it is that we say to ourselves as writers, editors, photographers and readers. I wanted to know who was talking and who might be reading and to know what was missing from these stories; to find the gaps. It didn't take long for me to turn away from mainstream print magazin...

I follow lots (and lots) of surfing accounts on Instagram. Lots. Many of these are focused on and run by women, but I also follow lots of other general surf sites and magazines. Most of the general sites follow the usual pattern of not including much content about women, which is annoying and always stands out to me. Of course. The other day, I saw an interesting post on the account @oldsurfermags . The post was a collection of ten of the most liked images that have been posted by the (I'm assuming) male administrator, Chris Allen. While I still had hopes, the most liked images, not surprisingly, were all of men. The images are amazing, but I felt a bit bummed. Instead of stewing in my bummed-ness though, I commented on the post: (Before I go on, let's take a moment to enjoy my excellent typo! Hahaha.) I don't comment a lot on posts link this way (although there was one occasion that I did and got into a discussion with Kelly Slater about trans bodies, but...

When people ask me what I think about Tim Winton's books, I always answer that he writes incredibly beautiful landscapes. He really, really does. But for me, like many women I know, Winton's books are difficult to read, because his portrayals of women tend to paint them as either prudish or damaged. The men and boys in his stories - always coming of age it seems - are much more complex and nuanced characters, but his women and girls are simple, borderlining on tropes. I'm not suggesting Winton doesn't like women though! He talks often about the women in his life, and how his sisters taught him to surf. Winton knows and loves women well, it's just that this doesn't seem to translate into his stories, which makes it difficult for me to read them, let alone like them. With the release of the film version of Breath , directed by Simon Baker, all of this was driven home even more strongly.  Here is a story about men, in which women are trouble or ...

I’ve been surfing again lately. Not as much as I’d like, but surfing. In fact, I managed to surf twice this week! Twice! Once down on the Gold Coast and on Sunday, up on the Sunshine Coast. To my shame, I still don’t know the coastlines of south east Queensland very well, so it’s always very hit and miss for me in terms of where I go and why. Since I surf so little at the moment, mostly I’m just happy to get in the water anyway. In the past, I use to avoid the Gold Coast, because it has a reputation for a localised, aggressive, male-dominated, shortboard culture. There have been many surf reports of violence there over the years, and the things I’ve often read in surf media and research spaces have deepened these assumptions. When it’s come up as an option, the idea of surfing there made me nervous in advance. But I’ve surfed there a bit over the years – at Currumbin and Burleigh and Rainbow and Snapper and Duranbah – and I’ve never had any experiences to back this up. I’m on a lo...