Surfing and Sex Appeal

Surfing has taught me about gravitational pull. It has taught me about barometric pressure and about fetch — the area of water the wind acts upon in the creation of waves.

Surfing has taught me about play, even as I near 50. Surfing has even taught me about the power of sex appeal.

When I first started surfing in the early 1980s, surf magazines offered up pictures of bikini-clad young women whose skin was the color of honey. All of the big surf companies had young women posing with their product, from surfboards, shoes, and sunglasses to wetsuits and flip flops.

As a teenager, I couldn’t wait to get the new issue of Surfer or Surfing to see pictures of dreamy waves — and scantily clad girls.

Today, there are fewer pictures of young women posing with merchandise in surf magazines. For this I am grateful — not because I’m prudish (because I’m not), but for another reason: I do not want my 15-year-old son to grow up viewing women as sex objects. Instead, I want him to view them as creations of  God’s love.

If we constantly see women (or men) depicted as sexy agents selling products, it’s easy to slip into a psychology of sexism. By sexism, I mean bikini-clad women are objects of the reader’s viewing pleasure—anything more substantive than this is secondary. If I were a young woman who saw little more than other girls or women dressed in bikinis, I might slip into a psychology of sexual determinism: I am only as worthy as the bikini I wear.

There is no way around sex and sexuality — in any aspect of life — but especially in surfing, a sport or even a lifestyle, where bodies drip with water and exertion. Quite frankly, there is no reason to try to find a way around the subject of sex and sexuality. Both are good in their proper context.

I will go so far as to say that the Puritans were wrong. The body is good. Films, TV, advertising, the mass media and social media also often are wrong. Men and women should not be used as sex objects to peddle merchandise—despite its effectiveness. Just because something is good for business does not mean it is intrinsically good. Economics is not the rubric for ethics or the sole catalyst for creating a better world.

Women, and men, are beings created in the image of God. We are beings who have been given sexuality as a gift—it is not a commodity—despite what advertisers would lead us to believe.

The surfing culture has come quite far since the1980s. Girls and women now surf alongside boys and men. Girls and women are some of the finest surfers in the world. Today, a woman’s place is on the waves — and I celebrate this.