Women between waves of change: a visual analysis of the female surfer

• Autor(a) principal: Hinz, Antonia Sophia
• Data de Publicação: 2021
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.26/39584
• topic: Surfing; Visual representation; Feminism; Visual culture; Objectification; Sexism; Visual representation

This paper is concerned with how surf brands display females who surf through the companies’ visual narrative, which has been repeatedly linked to issues of gender discrimination and objectification, and how such a narrative is perceived by active female surfers. In particular, the paper explores the visual language published on the most relevant surf brands’ websites and focusses not on fashion, but rather on the section of surf gear. The brands Billabong, RipCurl, and Quiksilver/Roxy were chosen based on an analysis of their size and influence on the surf scene. The paper continues to compare the brands' vision and mission with the online content through visual diagrams, and also includes an analysis of an advertisement video released by ROXY, the first brand in the industry to design specifically and only for women, in 2013. The video was chosen due to the remarkable number of responses it caused throughout the online female surfing communities and other media channels. The analysis was established with knowledge from visual culture, image analysis and feminist issues and is based on qualitative aspects taking into consideration the technical and visual grammar of moving images. It was found that the video, which advertises a surf competition for women by depicting Stephanie Gilmore, seven times world surfing champion, showed strong heteronormative bias in the visual narrative construction as well as in the depiction of the surfer. A similar heteronormative bias and objectification of women has been identified in the visual diagrams of the surf brands websites afterwards. The following literature review aimed to investigate the impact of such a visual narrative on female surfers’ self-perception as well as the rationale behind it. It was discovered, that despite an increasing conversation about a more positive gender portrayal in advertising and action sports, a trend towards hyper-sexualized images and the impression that “sex sells” has led to a higher media coverage of women who comply with a heterosexist image. Active female surfers who are exposed to this kind of visual media find it increasingly disempowering and have taken a stance against gender inequality in the sport. A following in-depth field research containing interviews with industry experts and a survey demonstrated that gender-related power relations in surfing remain contradicting and impugned. Therefore, this paper encourages a radical dialogue regarding the role that visual representation plays in addressing this societal issue of gender portrayal in sports, particularly in surfing, and displays a powerful and potentially feminist way of interpreting the female surfer.