Air/boat/barrel. Photo: Stu Gibson / Trent Mitchell
Earlier on in the year, my creative partner Fran Derham and I (Cos We Can) were approached by Rip Curl to produce athlete profiles for their female team riders as part of their upcoming My Bikini range launch. Although we wanted to show the Rip Curl riders as the beautiful woman that they are, we also wanted to highlight individually what surfing means to them and what they love about the life that they lead.
Around the same time we finished the clips, Roxy released their controversial Roxy Pro Biarritz trailer featuring Steph Gilmore. It was then that we realized how different our take on female surfing was compared to how Roxy was portraying their athletes.
Women’s surfing content doesn’t need to be so black and white. We don’t want women in sport to be sexualized, but it doesn’t mean you have to completely ignore the fact that surfing is a beautiful sport and women of the ocean are confident and happy with how they look.
For Bethany Hamilton, go to Page 2
For Alana Blanchard, go to Page 3
