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Women's recreational surfing: apatronising experienceRebecca Olivea, Louise McCuaiga & Murray G. Phillipsa

a The University of Queensland, AustraliaPublished online: 09 Jan 2013.

To cite this article: Rebecca Olive, Louise McCuaig & Murray G. Phillips (2015) Women'srecreational surfing: a patronising experience, Sport, Education and Society, 20:2, 258-276, DOI:10.1080/13573322.2012.754752

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Women’s recreational surfing:

a patronising experience

Rebecca Olive*, Louise McCuaig and Murray G. PhillipsThe University of Queensland, Australia

Research analysing the operation of power within sport and physical activity has exposed the

marginalisation and exclusion of women’s sport in explicit and institutionalised ways. However, for

women in recreational and alternative physical activities like surfing, sporting experiences lie

outside institutionalised structures, thus requiring alternative surfing of conceptualising the

processes of exclusionary power. In this paper, we focus on the voices of women recreational

surfers to explore the changes which may or may not be occurring at smaller, more localised levels

of women’s engagement with surfing culture. An ethnographic methodology was employed to ask

women how and why they engage in surfing and what it means for them, rather than asking

questions based on existing assumptions. In presenting the data we draw upon the double meaning

afforded by the term ‘to patronise’ as a means of framing the complex ways that women continue to

be differentiated in surfing culture, and the ways they respond to this. In the final section, we

employ a Foucauldian analytic lens to explore the subtle normalising practices in which women are

incited to recognise and undertake the practices of the valued masculine ideal of the ‘good surfer’

through caring acts and advice offered by male surfers. This post-structuralist perspective offers

space to think outside of simple resistance and reproduction, instead considering a complex space

where women and men negotiate power in a range of ways from contextual, subjective positions. In

conclusion, we argue that women recreational surfers are enacting alternative ways of operating

within the power relations that circulate in the waves, creating ever-changing spaces for new ways

of doing and knowing surfing to emerge.

Keywords: Women; Sport; Physical culture; Power; Normalisation; Foucault

Introduction

Historically, sport has been framed as a male domain, embedding and reproducing

established ideas about sex, gender and physical capabilities. Although no longer

necessarily a ‘male preserve’ (Dunning, 1986; Hargreaves, 1986), sport and physical

activity remain male-dominated in terms of values, conceptualisations, expectations,

participation, representation and organisation, which leaves women mediating

already-established systems of power and prestige in a range of ways (Hargreaves,

1994; Messner, 1992; Pfister, 2010; Theberge, 1994). The challenge for women

participating in sport and physical activity has been that of breaking down socio-

cultural assumptions and meanings of differences between men and women, which

*Corresponding author. Rebecca Olive, School of Human Movement Studies, The University of

Queensland, Brisbane, QLD 4072, Australia. Email: rolive@hms.uq.edu.au

Sport, Education and Society, 2015

Vol. 20, No. 2, 258�276, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13573322.2012.754752

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allows women to perform ‘female’ in a variety of ways, but also threatens the ways

men understand, value and know themselves. In this way, female resistance in sport

and physical activity cultures often comes from both directions*women against the

status quo and men trying to maintain it (Messner, 1994).

In the past, research that applies an analysis of how power operates on women in

sport and physical activity has helped expose the ways that structures and

organisations marginalise and exclude women from participating in sport in explicit

and institutionalised ways (Birrell & Theberge, 1994; Hargreaves, 1994; Lenskyj,

1995; Theberge, 1997). However, in recreational and alternative physical activities,

like surfing, experiences are cultural, relational, embodied and outside of institutio-

nalised structures, thus requiring alternative ways of conceptualising the processes of

exclusionary power (Rowe, 1998). Rather than emphasising the strong influences of

media, competition and unified historical narratives on surfing experiences, this

approach to surfing culture explores the diverse lived experiences that have impacted

the ways participants have come to understand surfing experiences and cultures

(Olive & Thorpe, 2011; Waitt, 2007). While many recreational surfers do participate

in the various clubs, organisations, media and industry surrounding surfing culture,

it is also possible to participate in multiple and individualised ways that do not

require these structures. As Clifton Evers argues, our (gendered) identities as surfers

are ‘never fixed because of the dynamic interactivity of the biological, psychological

and sociological’ (Evers, 2005, p. 113, cited in Waitt, 2007, p. 104). Maintaining a

focus on how women are excluded within recreational surfing through institutiona-

lised practices limits the ways we can begin to conceive of how to address the issues

of marginalisation of women in physical cultures more broadly. As a step towards

future work on how women are complicit, disruptive and/or resistant to restrictive

power relations in physical cultures, this paper seeks to consider how cultural power

relations operate to normalise particular kinds of surfing and surfers in recreational

surfing culture.

In this paper, we focus particular attention on the voices of women recreational

surfers to explore the manner in which change may or may not be occurring at the

smaller, more localised level of women’s engagement with surfing culture. In so

doing, we draw upon the double meaning afforded by the term ‘to patronise’ as a

means of framing the complex and multiple ways that women continue to be

differentiated in surfing culture, and the ways they respond to this. Following a

contextualisation of women’s experiences in surfing culture and a review of the

methodology employed in this research project, the data will be presented according

to two patronising effects of the operations of gendered power relations in the surf.

The first of these draws upon the definition of patronise that reflects the sense of ‘act

as a patron towards’ (Harper, 2001), or put in a more cultural way, to give support or

sponsorship to others. Here, we detail the complex world of meanings that are

mediated by various contextual, cultural, geographic, oceanic, local and personal

factors, which are always in play amongst individual women surfers, and which can

work to include them as ‘authentic’ cultural participants. In the second section, we

focus on the meaning to ‘treat in a condescending way’ (Harper, 2001), which not

Women’s recreational surfing 259

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surprisingly reveals itself in the voices of recreational women surfers as they describe

their relationships, experiences and engagement with their fellow male surfers, as

well as the subtle ways male ‘patronage’ can work to culturally exclude women.

In the final section, we draw on the work of Michel Foucault and Nikolas Rose, to

focus on the complex and subtle ways in which women are incited to recognise and

undertake the practices of the valued masculine ideal of the ‘good surfer’ through the

caring acts and advice extended by male surfers. In seeking to understand these

women’s experiences, Foucauldian conceptualisations of power and agency have

proved insightful for us to show how women reproduce and resist the often

competing discourses of femininity and sport (Chase, 2006; Markula, 1995; see

also Pringle, 2005). Recently, Foucault’s ethical framework has been used to help

articulate the ways that individuals can identify and make decisions about their

subjective behaviours, working towards ideals that they decide for themselves

(Markula, 2003; Thorpe, 2008). In a project that takes a clearly post-structural

and feminist position, this exclusion and marginalisation of women in recreational

surfing could be understood in terms of ‘hegemonic masculinity’, a gendered,

cultural operation that also works to limit multiple and complex ways of ‘being a

man’ (who surfs; Connell & Messerschmidt, 2005; Evers, 2004, 2005, 2009).

Similarly, non-white, non-Australian, non-heterosexual, less-able, less-experienced,

older surfers are also often marginalised in the water. Such exclusions can be and

have been explored by drawing on queer theoretical developments of Judith Butler’s

‘performativity’ to highlight the complex assemblages and performances of ‘male’

and ‘female’ in a myriad of gendered and sexualised ways (Butler, 1990, 1993; Evers,

2004, 2005; Sykes, 2006; Waitt, 2007). However, this paper is not about the

complexities of becoming and performing being male and female, but about how

insidious power relations operate to normalise who is ‘authentic’ in physical cultural

spaces. In particular, how do masculine, male surfers maintain the status quo in

surfing culture, even without meaning to?

While the cultural and contextual limitations are clear, Foucault’s ethical frame-

work provides a way of thinking beyond hegemonic masculinity (Pringle, 2005). This

post-structuralist perspective offers space to think outside of simple resistance and

reproduction, instead providing a complex space where women and men negotiate

power in a range of ways from contextual, subjective positions. In conclusion, we

argue that women recreational surfers are enacting alternative ways of operating

within the power relations that circulate in the waves, creating ever-changing spaces

for new ways of doing and knowing surfing to emerge.

Understanding women’s participation in surfing culture

Literature concerning alternative physical cultures such as surfing, windsurfing,

snowboarding and skateboarding has explored subcultural experiences of women in

sport (Atencio, Beal, & Wilson, 2009; Laurendeau & Shahara, 2008; Sisjord, 2009;

Thorpe, 2005, 2009; Wheaton, 2004). In everyday contexts, the exclusion or

260 R. Olive et al.

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marginalisation of women in these kinds of physical and cultural activities is not

articulated in terms of gender-differentiated teams or leagues. Unlike mainstream

team sports, sex/gender difference is not necessarily normalised through enforcement

of a-space-for-women and a-space-for-men, nor through any particular systems of

rules (Laurendeau & Shahara, 2008). Marginalisation occurs through cultural

understandings and expectations of the ways that activities should be performed,

or assumptions about male and female performances. For example, female

skateboarders and snowboarders find it difficult to accumulate cultural capital as

their skating is not seen to be critical or risky, so even if they have cultural-participant

status through their commitment to skating, they are still only ‘good for a girl’

(Atencio et al., 2009; Sisjord, 2009).

The experiences of recreational women who surf in Australia certainly fall within

this understanding. Not only does their cultural representation and participation

remain marginalised in the media and in the surf, but their experiences as surfers are

still understood in terms of the existing performative and cultural understandings of

male surfers, with little discussion of potentially alternative female understandings or

experiences (Ford & Brown, 2006). Socio-historical discussions of surfing have used

conceptualisations and processes of hegemonic masculinity to question why women

are still excluded from experiences of surfing, and consider the issue as a problem

relating to gendered power relations (Booth, 2001; Ford & Brown, 2006). They also

explicitly expose the compliance of female surfers within this ongoing project, noting,

for example, that although professional female surfers have created themselves a

space, they often do so in ways that emulate male styles and performances or through

sexualised representations (Comer, 2004; Ford & Brown, 2006). These emulations

reflect the choices that other sporting women have faced; whether to be granted

access into the participation, history and culture of surfing in any way possible,

whether to do it on their own terms, or whether they even see it as an issue.

However, Booth (2001), Evers (2004), Ford and Brown (2006) offer another

perspective, emphasising the role of men in how women are accepted as surfers, and

arguing that although women are working on defining surfing for themselves, this can

only be part of the story. As Booth (2001) highlights, until men accept that there can

be alternative ways of surfing, women will continue to struggle for recognition and

acceptance within the culture. For Henderson (2001), it is the resistance that male

surfers have to ‘outside’ influences shaping ‘their’ culture that limits women. As

Henderson explains, ‘surfing is a territorial form of pleasure, dreams, and nostalgia.

Postmodern surfing thus becomes a fantasized last frontier for sometimes anxious

men and youths’ (Henderson, 2001, p. 329). In trying to make meaning out of

surfing themselves, men who surf have established ways of surfing that help them

define and understand how surfing is performed and experienced, but which also

limit cultural possibilities of what surfing may be (Evers, 2004, 2009). The

maintenance and performance of existing systems of power are normalised through

acts of exclusion expressed through cultural hierarchies, localism and ‘surf rage’ that

regulate ways of being a surfer (Daskalos, 2007; Preston-Whyte, 2002). As Evers

(2004) explains, for many men such cultural performances are central to maintaining

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understandings of their own masculinity. In this way, recreational women’s surfing

experiences are about the relationships of power they share with the men who

surround them.

This is particularly prevalent in physical subcultures like surfing, where being seen

to belong as an authentic member can be important (Atkinson & Wilson, 2002; Beal

& Wilson, 2004). Discussing skateboarding, Beal and Wilson (2004) explain that as

a consequence of this drive for ‘authenticity’, understanding ‘who controls the

production and circulation of symbols is critical’ (emphasis original, p. 37).

Legitimating knowledges come from experiences and understandings that are

developed over time and which integrate themselves into our ways of being,

regulated and perpetuated not by explicit laws or rules, but by creating horizons

for what is and is not acceptable in terms of our behaviour. In ethnographic research

that engages with recreational surfing, it appears that it is not so much women’s

surfing performances that are problematic, but rather the male-dominated culture of

surfing that continues to limit women through representations, assumptions and

exclusions (Evers, 2004; Waitt, 2008).

Nonetheless, it is possible that change may be taking place at a smaller, more

localised level of surfing experience, a change not necessarily reflected in national,

mainstream, male-run media. In problematising the ways women are represented

and the opportunities they are afforded, research surrounding women and surfing

has largely remained textual, by analysing surfing media, including photographs,

film and magazines (Henderson, 2001; Scott, 2006; Stedman, 1997) or published

magazine interviews with professional surfers (Booth, 2001; Comer, 2004;

Heywood, 2008). Although the inclusion of voices from ‘Letters to the Editor’

pages (Henderson, 2001; Stedman, 1997) and from historical texts (Booth, 2004;

Ford & Brown, 2006) allows the consideration of non-competitive and non-high-

performance female surfers to be acknowledged, this is not done in any compre-

hensive way, nor is it considered beyond a connection to professional, commodified

surfing.

As illustrated by Waitt (2008), the experiences of being a surfer are complex and

multifaceted, and the problem with considering evidence from professional

competitive surfers is that it is not connected back to women who surf recreationally.

Focusing on competitive, high-performance surfers assumes and values a particular

kind of surfing and the absence of non-professional or local female influences

remains unaccounted for. The methodologies that have emerged from these

approaches have resulted in a focus on professional and commercialised experiences

of surfing, but have not reflected on whether these very particular experiences are

representative of what is happening more broadly in the surf. Although as Henderson

(2001) and Stedman (1997) both contend, cultural texts can be as productive of a

culture as they are reflective of it, these research approaches have provided few voices

from within non-professional communities to compare these cultural spaces.

Interviewing non-competitive participants and allowing women to speak for

themselves may (or may not) reveal different kinds of cultural experiences and

meanings within surfing than are present in surfing texts.

262 R. Olive et al.

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Methodology

A growing body of work about women in physical activities and cultures is adopting

ethnographic methodologies, asking women who participate how and why they

engage in physical activity and what it means for them (Beal & Wilson, 2004;

Markula, 1995; Sisjord, 2009; Theberge, 1997; Wheaton, 2002). Rather than

focusing on media representations, these studies evoke understandings and

experiences of women who participate in physical cultures, incorporating meanings,

messiness, emotions, relationships and connections by engaging with participants

and giving them a voice (Markula, 1995, 2006; Olive & Thorpe, 2011; Sisjord,

2009; Thorpe, 2005; Waitt, 2008; Wheaton, 2002). In the case of this project,

ethnographic methods included interviews, participation and blogging. For the

purposes of this article, the names of locations and participants have been changed.

Eleven local women from Wavetown were interviewed on multiple occasions. In

this sense, the findings of the project are specific to a small group of surfers from

Wavetown, but as other similar scale studies have shown, the conclusions do not

necessarily preclude broader commentary across other communities and spaces. The

focus in the interviews was on how women understand and experience the male-

dominated culture of surfing, with an aim to examine women’s understandings and

experiences on their own terms, rather than in relation to men’s. This approach takes

male and female difference as given and as complex, and not able to be defined as

binaries. Although men are an unavoidable and significant part of going surfing for

these women, and although many of men’s experiences of surfing are similar to

women’s, their understandings and experiences were explicitly left as a part of the

broader picture, included through conversations during fieldwork and blogging,

while the interviews were used to foreground female experiences and connections.

The interviewing process was helped by the lead author’s existing knowledge and

experience of surfing in Wavetown (Rebecca). Participatory fieldwork was an

important method in this project, providing a view from the surfbreak, as well as

creating cultural access. Indeed, research into surfing and surfing culture has

consistently spoken about the importance of participation as a surfer in order to gain

access to the culture (Evers, 2006; Leonard, 2007; Olive & Thorpe, 2011; Stranger,

1999). As Evers (2006) illustrates, getting wet and getting involved reveal a depth of

complexity and connection that cannot be gleaned from books, magazines and films

alone, and allows for the dynamic physical and sensual experience of going surfing.

Having a relationship to surfing and being accepted as a surfer helped Rebecca access

cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1986), which facilitated additional access to the signs,

symbols and norms of the surfing culture. In this case, Rebecca’s identity as a

proficient and capable but not high-performance or competitive longboard surfer

was consistent with the abilities of the majority of women involved in this project. Her

level of surfing ability is also common amongst female and male recreational

longboard surfers in Wavetown. Rebecca was already known and accepted as a

regular and dedicated surfer at the local breaks where she focused her research.

Women like Rebecca*of proficient but not high-performance abilities*are common

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in recreational physical cultures, and have been described as ‘invisible girls’ (Sisjord,

2009). That is, their abilities are enough that they are recognisable participants, but

not so developed that they stand out.

In this project, Rebecca was able to use her existing and recognisable identity and

ability as a surfer in Wavetown in order to continue to participate ‘naturally’ in local

surfbreaks, to create trust, access participants and to know surfing in a similar way as

other local surfers. To maintain a critical approach to the research within this clearly

subjective position, Rebecca drew on Probyn’s (1993) call to think the ‘social

through the self ’ (p. 3), by examining women’s understandings and experiences

through her subjectivity, without privileging it (Couldry, 1996, p. 317). This

approach to doing fieldwork captured shared cultural knowledges and experiences

about surfing by reflexively engaging with the dilemmas, highlighted during the

University ethics process, of representing the women participating in the project.

Finally, the production of a related blog about women and surfing connected this

research to a broader surfing cultural community, as well as collecting data and

feedback in relation to the research project itself (Olive, 2012). The published posts

and stories became supplementary to fieldnotes, developing an exchange between

the research project and the online surfing community (Wakeford & Cohen, 2008).

Most importantly, the sections for comments underneath each post were enabled to

encourage responses from readers. The various responses and comments further

established the context and cultural relevance of this project.

A patronising experience: giving support and sponsorship to others

In applying a post-structural, feminist analysis to the empirical information gathered

during this project, going surfing and interviewing women in Wavetown revealed a

complex cultural world of meanings mediated by various contextual, cultural,

geographic, oceanic, local and personal factors that are always in play amongst

surfers. Surfing takes place within multiple sets of relationships between people,

places and ways of knowing, as well as cutting across what are assumed to be shared

cultural understandings about surfing. In the interviews, women focused on positive

and affirming surfing experiences rather than issues of marginalisation or exclusion.

When discussing their experiences in the water, participants resisted explaining

whether and how women are marginalised in surfing culture, instead drawing focus

onto multiple ways that they feel encouraged and included through the patronage of

the local men they surf with. Similar to men, it is the experience of catching and

riding waves that is the pleasurable centre of women’s surfing lives. In and out of the

water, women are ‘stoked’ on waves and being in the ocean, and describe

connections between their experiences and a sense of being in the world, reflecting

a common claim amongst surfers (Ford & Brown, 2006; Stranger, 2011). Often they

avoided discussing negative experiences in order to push the focus back onto how

and why they love and enjoy surfing. For example, many women in Wavetown

considered ‘surfing like a girl’ to be important in terms of style and behaviour:

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Peta: I know I feel a lot better when I try and surf femininely (laughs) . . .But in thesame moment, I’ll, it’s nice feeling strong too. Like . . .Rebecca: You can be both though, can’t you?Peta: Most definitely! . . .When you come in from the surf and you feel like you’vepaddled your arse off and caught heaps of waves, and you feel really fit and strong,but you still feel, you still feel like a woman.

Yet, despite trying to focus on the pleasurable experiences of their surfing worlds,

contradictions emerged. For example, although Skye explained feeling marginalised

in the surf by ‘sexist’ men ‘looking at my butt’, she later suggested that she had not

had exclusionary experiences in the water:

Skye: But I just think as for negative experiences, I honestly, I, and I’ve heardwomen talk about them and I really, just haven’t had any!

Such contradictions were frequent throughout the interviews, but evidence of

differentiation was clear, nonetheless. The ways these women were differentiated as a

minority in the surf can take multiple forms and do not necessarily manifest in nasty,

negative or exclusionary ways. All the women interviewed gave examples of how

being a woman in the surf can often mean being treated with greater tolerance and

support. While they are not necessarily marginalised, women remain unusual in the

surf and so they stand out, meaning that as surfers, women are different.

Women are different to other surfers to the point where, for some men, being in

the surf with women or a woman is such an unusual experience that it deserves

comment. More than once, Rebecca has gone surfing with men who have told her

how excited they were because, ‘I’ve never been surfing with a girl before’. During

one surfing experience, Rebecca paddled out with a couple of female friends. The

men there avoided them at first but after a while started cheering their waves and

asking about their boards. While there was likely an element of heterosexual interest

in their swimsuit and t-shirt clad female bodies, the men were friendly and

welcoming. At one point, when one of the men pulled away from a wave that

Rebecca was trying to catch, another man called after him good-naturedly, ‘She can

get them on her own, mate! You don’t need to give them away to her’! These men

were paying more attention to the women’s presence than to the waves. If they had

been a group of men paddling out at a new break, this situation might have been

different and included responses of localism and aggression, or even violence

(Daskalos, 2007; Evers, 2004, 2009; Preston-Whyte, 2002; Stranger, 1999).

Somewhat dissimilar to Henderson’s ‘anxious men and youths’ (2001, p. 329), in

this study, many men enthusiastically engaged with women in the surf by

encouraging them and attempting to include them. All the women interviewed

explained that sometimes their female differences become highlighted by men

encouraging or forgiving women’s surfing performances and behaviour in ways they

would not for a man:

Sophie: There wouldn’t, and you know, I’m embarrassed to say it, but therewouldn’t be a week that would go by in my single life that I don’t have somethingincredibly nice said to me [about my surfing]. I never know what to say. I never

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know how to take it, ‘cause I just think ‘Oh is that ‘cause I’m a girl?’ . . . It’s nice, Isuppose, but I still don’t know how to take it . . .

These men reach out, connecting via assumptions of a shared surfing culture, to

assist and support women as they surf; behaviour that was often referred to during

the interviews. In this, relationships within the town and community of Wavetown

played a key role in how local women were able to participate in surfing, as well as

how they were able to understand and experience surfing culture:

Rebecca: . . .do you feel encouraged and supported in the water?Skye: Ah, I personally do, but it’s only because I’ve got a community, um, aroundwhere I surf . . .definitely in my community, where I know the most people, at ThePoint, I definitely feel supported . . .

Consequently, far from feeling marginalised, women in Wavetown described a sense

of community and belonging that was variously local, cultural and female-specific.

Despite Stedman’s (1997) argument that surfing has become hyper-individualised

and commodified, the women in this project described a strong sense of community,

perhaps reflecting a change in Australian surfing culture over time. Feeling at home

and at ease with a local surfbreak, as well as developing a familiar and localised

oceanic knowledge, contributed to feelings of belonging and connection that added

to their experiences and comfort as a minority in the surf.

A patronising experience: condescension and intervention

As much as female surfers at Wavetown felt part of the surfing community, they,

nevertheless, recognised themselves as a minority who are treated differently as surfers.

Although most women were hesitant to implicate the local men they surf with as sexist

or discriminatory, they also recognised that as a minority, women are differentiated in

the surf. Of course, such exclusions are not the sole preserve of women (Evers, 2004,

2008; McGloin, 2009; Walker, 2008). Yet, despite this sense of support, the ways that

men engage with women can feel patronising by treating them as different and

therefore not authentic as surfers. That is, behaviours that support or sponsor women’s

participation in the surf, also feel ‘condescending’ and marginalising:

Georgie: Just like, well it’s just that, um, just coming down to that it’s not just yoursurfing. Like, that a girl could surf better than them, but she won’t take that naturalplace in the lineup out there. That they’ll still try and, like, you know. I mean Is’pose, I don’t know, ‘cause I’m not a man, but I s’pose there’s guys that would saythat, that, that that happens to them out there as well. I’m sure it does. But, I don’tknow. I just think it would probably happen to a girl more.

During some of their experiences, women explained feeling frustrated or margin-

alised at being highlighted as different, by receiving advice and encouragement that

men in the surf would not. In these moments women continued to be differentiated

in ways that are ‘natural’ and ‘self-evident’, even as men attempted to include them

and to encourage them into waves:

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Skye: And I really don’t like it though when guys, I really don’t like it when guysgive me advice. In the water.

Rebecca: Why not? Why don’t you like it?

Skye: Well, it’s like they’re trying to, they feel like I’m, like a child, and they wanna,just ‘It’s ok’, you know, ‘If you just, paddle a little bit more like this, or go like that’.First, you guys, you don’t know me! If it’s someone who knows me and they said‘can I, give you advice?’, even that’s a bit borderline. But, um, yeah I find it quitecondescending and I’m sure that they would not say that to another guy. Theywould only say that to a girl.

Sentiments such as Skye’s are common, with women recalling similar stories as they

talked in the car park or over a drink. They explained how they felt humiliated,

irritated and frustrated by such comments and behaviour, while at the same time

recognising that this kind of advice was usually given as an attempt at including and

supporting women in a male-dominated lineup. The women in this study recognised

complexities in the ways that local men are engaging with women who surf, as well as

the different perspectives of these situations that men and women might have. But

this awareness is often one-sided, with men who surf finding it difficult to understand

women’s responses to their ‘helpful’ advances.

Once, after hearing Rebecca complain about a stranger giving her an unwelcome

push into a wave, her friend, Jake, asked why she was so upset by it? When she

explained to him that she had felt humiliated because he would never have done it for

a man, Jake laughed, ‘I’d love it if I got a push into a wave every now and then. He

was just being nice! What’s the problem with that’? Over the years, Jake and Rebecca

have revived this story in their conversations, with Jake often teasing Rebecca in the

surf by offering to push her into waves or jokingly warning others against doing so.

His cheekiness is friendly and amusing, but is also illustrative of the difficulty many

men who surf have in understanding the reactions of women to receiving their advice

and support. For Rose (1999), moments like this can be described as a conflict of

‘authenticity versus hypocrisy’ (p. 267), where such comments can become treated as

a thankless female response to men’s welcoming behaviour. In Rose’s conception,

‘The celebration of authenticity thus generates hypocrisy as its privileged form of

pathology and is linked to a self-righteous macro- and micro-politics of disclosure’

(Rose, 1999, p. 267). When women want to be ‘differently the same’ as surfers*that

is, to be women who surf or surfers who are women*their hypocrisy as non-

normative cultural subjects is highlighted as an example of what is not a surfer. In

terms of Rebecca’s example, responses like Jake’s are difficult to argue against; why

do women care if someone pushes them into a wave? Yet in that one ‘helpful’ and

‘supportive’ move, Rebecca was reminded that she was the only woman in the surf:

the only one who was deemed in need of a push onto a wave. Even without meaning

it, she was reminded that she was different.

Indeed, for these Wavetown women surfers it was often the extra levels of

attention, support and encouragement they received from many male surfers that

they found more difficult to negotiate than openly discriminatory behaviour. While

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the advice and support some men give might be intended as altruistic and caring,

from the perspective of the women interviewed, such actions differentiate them in the

water, reinforcing and maintaining their place as ‘women who surf’ rather than

simply including them as ‘surfers’:

Georgie: I, I’ve had paddling advice, from a person who I didn’t think surfed thatmuch better than I did. And, and it was a guy, and it was an older guy, and I justsort of, felt like, he was, I don’t know! I just was like, ‘why, why?’ and I sort of feltlike the only reason he was saying it was because I was a girl. Because I didn’t thinkthat he would say it to a guy of the same ability as me. Like, but because you’re a girland they’re a guy, that they think they can give you advice? I don’t know.

Despite their encouraging and supportive nature, these attempts at caring can

differentiate women just as much as more exclusionary, sexist behaviours that

previous research about women and surfing has highlighted. Whether women aspire

to male acceptance or not, it is the role men play in continuing to differentiate

women within male-dominated surfing cultures that remains the greatest barrier for

everyday women who surf (Booth, 2001; Evers, 2004; Ford & Brown, 2006). While

women’s surfing is increasingly valued as skilled, technical and stylish, many men still

struggle to know how to deal with the increasing numbers of women in the surf.

Although offering advice might be considered a kind or supportive gesture, from the

perspective of the woman on the receiving end, it may feel patronising or

condescending, by locating her as less capable and requiring assistance, and

therefore inauthentic as a surfer. However, as in my experience with Jake, rejecting

men’s help can be responded to as hypocritical (Rose, 1999): ‘You want to be

included but you don’t want my support’? This reinforces existing ideas about

women as surfers, by explicitly engaging with their surfing in ways that male surfers

would not enact for other men, highlighting and bringing attention to them as

different, in ways that are difficult to argue against (Nealon, 2008).

For women who surf, the implicit and historical discourses that surround them

impact upon the ways they are included and excluded in the lineup. However,

women and men often differ in terms of their engagement with and understanding of

the discourses that ‘shape particular social practices and gender relations in [surfing]

contexts’ (Markula & Pringle, 2006, p. 31). Adding to this messiness and frustration

is the apparent need women feel to be careful not to respond too harshly to such

behaviour, but instead to appreciate men’s efforts. As Noella shows in her comment

under one of Rebecca’s blog posts (Olive, 2009), many women are both aware of and

responsive to the power relations that surround them in the surf, and are able to take

a range of positions to make sense of them:

Noella: . . . I think when these guys do and say these stupid things most of the timethey are just looking for a reason to talk to you. from now on lets just be flatteredand not offended.

Like women in other sports and physical cultures (Atencio et al., 2009; Markula,

1995; Thorpe, 2009), the women involved in this study articulated clear under-

standing of the surfing and gendered contexts and assumptions that impact these

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relations, and understood them as constructed and related to men’s perspectives and

behaviours. For women unwilling to ‘become’ surfers in the image of the men around

them, they felt that the best response was to continue to paddle out and keep surfing,

despite it sometimes feeling difficult. Women like those who surf in Wavetown might

just want to get waves, but this is mediated through surfing cultural understandings,

experiences and relationships and so, as Sophie suggests, it has ‘been a big journey’

for them:

Sophie: . . .we’re still a small amount of girls in the water. And we’re still gonnahave, different responses, we’re gonna have different experiences than what theyhave. And, um, maybe people don’t want them acknowledged. Maybe they don’twant to talk about them. Maybe they think it’s all, all just a, a bit of a farce, but, um,they are unique, you know. And many of us don’t speak about it, because it’s been abig journey for us to stay in the water over all those years, and be calm. You know.

Sophie’s insightful suggestion that maybe some people think women’s experiences as

surfers are ‘all just a bit of a farce’, illustrates the effects of how particular surfing

experiences and understandings have come to dominate surfing and to be seen as

authentic. Despite the focus in the interviews on positive, affirming experiences,

women remain differentiated as surfers. As the material presented in this paper has

demonstrated, surfing environments, as with other sport and physical education (PE)

contexts (McCuaig & Tinning, 2010), provide a unique space for corporeal

confessions, where women’s surfing bodies can be read, interpreted and judged by

others who surf around them to reveal their capacities and/or deviancy in difficult to

argue against ways.

Challenging the ‘good surfer’ regime of personhood

It is through this process of revealing differentiation that women recreational surfers

experience Rose’s (1999) claim that ‘through self-inspection, self-problematisation,

self-monitoring and confession, we evaluate ourselves according to the criteria

provided for us by others’ (p. 11). The importance of this statement for these women

surfers lies in the criteria underpinning the ‘good surfer’ regime of personhood that

their fellow surfers employ. For Rose (1996), regimes of personhood comprise a

‘diversity of more or less rationalized schemes, which have sought to shape our ways

of understanding and enacting our existence as human beings in the name of certain

objectives such as manliness, femininity, honour, modesty, propriety, civility’

(p. 130). Rose (2000) encourages researchers to conduct interrogations of the

practices within which humans have been located, and the norms, techniques and

relations of authority that shape these practices.

Normalisation practices, however, are less a matter of conforming to a standard

model than they are about ‘reaching an understanding with regard to the choice of a

model’ (Ewald, 1990, p. 148). The model of choice for ‘everyday’ surfing remains

defined in terms of white, heterosexual, able-bodied, male, core surfing participants.

When male surfers engage in their practices of advice and care, the criteria of good

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surfing they draw upon reflect the specific technologies that have emerged within the

context of the mainstream surfing culture. Importantly then, the norm is equalising

in that it allows each individual surfer to be compared to all others through this

standard of measurement, and from the moment that the norm is established, no

surfer can ‘escape its purview’ (Ewald, 1990, p. 154).

Yet, the maintenance of norms or power cannot occur without resistance and

individual difference or disparity. As Ewald (1990) explains:

. . . the norm is most effective in its affirmation of differences, discrepancies, anddisparities. The norm is not totalitarian but individualizing; it allows individuals tomake claims on the basis of their individuality and permits them to lead their ownparticular lives. However, despite the strength of various individuals’ claims, no oneof them can escape the common standard. (p. 154)

Additionally, norms maintain the status quo by bringing attention to deviations.

That is, what is not normal defines and illustrates what is. By rejecting the

authenticity of the ways and waves women surf, men draw upon their embodied

and subjective cultural knowledge and assumptions of what surfing is. Through this

process they assert their male, masculine ideas and ideals about surfing onto shared

surfing experiences, reminding women that their way of surfing is the right way, the

real way. Their inability or unwillingness to conform to these ideals can result in

women feeling confusion and shame, and questioning their own female surfing

understandings and knowledges (Evers, 2004, 2006). Although women share surfing

understandings with their male friends, men are able to use that shared experience to

highlight female differences from the established, mainstream, male, surfing norm.

For Tait (2000), individualised and subjective experience is key to the way

normalised knowledges are maintained. He argues that rather than being ‘a private

region, which external powers try to control or exploit . . . subjectivity is where

government is at its most effective’ (p. 141). Existing norms become so entrenched

and implicit that those who fit them best are able to manipulate people outside of the

norm to become active and complicit in regulating their own behaviour. This in turn

validates the dominance of the most powerful group (in this case the male majority),

continuing to locate existing norms as ‘authentic’. In this way, people ‘are persuaded

in various ways . . . to do work on [themselves], work that can be understood in terms

of an array of different practices’ (Tait, 2000, p. 160).

Women are, nonetheless, aware that existing and normative behaviours in surfing

are ‘by no means the only option’ (Tait, 2000, p. 167) for becoming a surfer. As

Sophie explained:

Sophie: . . .well, you know, you just gotta be determined. You know, just try and stayreally calm and be really rational about it and, try not to, you know, cross over to thedark side really. I mean, once, once you, walk those, those steps, one you start to belike them then, you’re like them then aren’t you.

Consequently, those who mediate or refuse to abide by the ‘rules of the game’ are

aware of what those rules are and what comprises the privileged or ‘normal’ ways of,

for example, doing the ‘good surfer’ (McCuaig, Ohman, & Wright, 2011).

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Intentionally or unintentionally, male surfers thus enact practices of help and

guidance to ensure women recreational surfers are shaped or encouraged to shape,

their surfing experience according to their privileged version of surfing.

While this paper is not about how female resistance and agency operate within

normalising power relations in recreational surfing, Sophie’s and Noella’s comments

suggest moments of agency and resistance. Rose (1996) suggests that ‘it is no longer

surprising that human beings often find themselves resisting the forms of personhood

that they are enjoined to adopt’ (p. 140). According to Rose (1996), resistance can

be defined as the capacity to oppose a particular regime of personhood:

Human beings are not the unified subjects of some coherent regime of dominationthat produces persons in the form in which it dreams. On the contrary, they livetheir lives in a constant movement across different practices that address them indifferent ways. Within these different practices, persons are addressed as differentsorts of human being, presupposed to be different sorts of human being, actedupon as if they were different sorts of human being. (p. 140)

It is at this intersection of the multiple regimes of personhood that potential for

contestation and resistance arise. In this nexus of self-constitution, people are able to

draw upon the strategies and practices intended for one objective (good mother) to

others (good surfer), which results in a collision of ethical practices that create

moments and spaces for opposition and/or alliance (Rose, 1996). As women

undertake the ethical work to constitute themselves as recreational surfers, they do

not always passively submit to the regime of personhood promulgated by the

dominant male surfing culture. Women are thus able to take different ‘self-

determined’ (Tait, 2000, p. 167) paths to the same performative surfing end, but

in various and individualised forms. As such, power is not just exerted over people,

but is instead a relational process through which it can be both maintained and/or

transformative (Nealon, 2008). Strategies such as ‘being calm’ and ‘being flattered

and not offended’ are important in coping with the multitude of experiences women

have in the surf, acting as a subtle and subversive response to increasingly ‘insidious’

processes of power that use resistance against itself to limit its potential (Nealon,

2008, p. 71).

Indeed, Nealon (2008) explains that ‘as power becomes increasingly more invested

in the minute details of our lives, so too have our modes of resistance become

increasingly subtle and intense’ (p. 108). Women’s approaches to surfing are often

considered and patient, making them equally as subtle and difficult to argue against

as the differentiating behaviours they are responding too. While such resistant and

disruptive behaviour often leads to the evolution and renewal of power relations, so

too do changes in the operation of power lead to new forms of resistance and

disruption: always in process, always becoming (Grosz, 1995). In this way, power

relations in surfing, while not necessarily dominating, are more effective and

insidious, and perhaps, as Sophie suggests, farcical. In understanding these ever

present and evolving relationships, women are better able to draw on their

multidimensional subjectivities, understandings and experiences in order to make

decisions about how and when they respond and how they become surfers.

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Conclusion

As a minority in a male-dominated physical culture, women continue to be valued in

terms of male and masculine ideals of what is ‘good surfing’, which further limit

surfing by forming ‘the horizon of the thinkable’ for those who do not conform

(Rose, 1996, p. 144). These horizons are historically and culturally developed and

perpetuated over time through relationships, media and behaviour in the lineup until

they become normalised understandings of ‘how one ought to live’ and perform as a

surfer (Tait, 2000, p. 153). While such cultural norms might not be so problematic

for surfers who can fit within this horizon, they might regulate the ways many female

(and male) surfing performances are valued, thus limiting what surfing is and can be.

In defining what is and is not real, what is and is not authentic (what is and is not

surfing), ‘different’ approaches to sport and physical cultures become embroiled in

power relations that assign cultural value and authenticity as cultural ‘knowledge’,

which in turn becomes ‘a means of representing reality in forms that can render it

governable’ (McCuaig et al., 2011, p. 14).

No doubt many of those who work within the fields of sport, health and/or PE have

struggled to understand their own and others’ perceptions or responses to caring

advice as patronising. Yet, the research presented within this paper contributes

further to our understanding of how and why individuals who are the subject of

‘pedagogical care’ (advice and support), may be ambivalent or resist the under-

pinning objective of this work. As Nealon (2008) has argued, we should pay particular

attention to those social practices that appear beyond question, as ‘power becomes

more effective while offering less obvious potential for resistance’ (p. 71). For

example, McCuaig et al. (2011) argued that one of the dangers of caring PE teaching

lies not within the acts of caring pedagogy themselves, but within the dominant model

of ‘normal’ healthy living that defines ‘bad or risky subjects [who] are targeted for

increased surveillance and disciplinary normalization’ (Nadesan, 2008, p. 213).

However, in considering women’s recreational surfing from a Foucauldian

perspective, we have highlighted some of the opportunities for change and alternative

practices within the good surfer regime of personhood. Unlike secondary PE

students who have little ‘recourse to the agency that accompanies a refusal of the

caring teacher’ (McCuaig et al., 2011, p. 16), women recreational surfers have access

to an array of understandings, experiences and practices, which have the potential to

facilitate the agency that accompanies a refusal or manipulation of the advice and

help they receive in the surfing arena. They can question and/or disrupt the criteria

that lie at the heart of the good surfer regime of personhood as a result of the social

space that surfing occupies within society. As a physical culture, recreational surfing

does not include regulatory organisations or structures, leaving the operation of

normative meaning-making processes at a cultural level. While media may have some

impact on how surfers understand and know ‘surfing’, as this paper has demon-

strated it is the everyday experiences and relationships of surfers in the waves that

remain the most powerful in how women understand and experience surfing and

surfing culture at an individual level.

272 R. Olive et al.

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As a physical culture, the complex power relations within which everyday surfing

experiences take place, offer opportunities for women to resist, disrupt and shift

existing surfing knowledges, by engaging with them in a recognisably surfing cultural

way, on distinctly female terms. Although, as Mendus (1993) instructs, ‘too much

emphasis on care may serve to disguise the requirements of justice and equality’ (p.

20), women recreational surfers nonetheless have the potential to carve out

alternative ways of operating within the power relations that circulate in the waves,

creating ever-changing spaces for new ways of doing and knowing surfing to emerge.

Whether and how women respond to this is a subjective negotiation that depends on

how they perform being women who surf, as well as how they respond to the

normalising power relations that surround them. That is, is their experience of

differentiation problematic, ‘flattering’, or something else? For physical cultures like

surfing that operate outside of institutionalised organisations, it is important to think

about individual experiences occurring on a cultural, rather than structural, level.

Similarly, if we continue to understand the effects of cultural power as explicit and

limiting, we forget that power is relational and creative, thus limiting the ways we

think about possible responses. Conceptualising cultural power operating in ‘difficult

to argue against ways’ might help us reconsider various responses as ‘difficult to

argue against’ forms of cultural resistance and disruption.

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