Surfer Girls in the New World Order

Comer Krista Comer

Description

In Surfer Girls in the New World Order, Krista Comer explores surfing as a local and global subculture, looking at how the culture of surfing has affected and been affected by girls, from baby boomers to members of Generation Y. Her analysis encompasses the dynamics of international surf tourism in Sayulita, Mexico, where foreign women, mostly middle-class Americans, learn to ride the waves at a premier surf camp and local women work as manicurists, maids, waitresses, and store clerks in the burgeoning tourist economy. In recent years, surfistas, Mexican women and girl surfers, have been drawn to the Pacific coastal town's clean reef-breaking waves. Comer discusses a write-in candidate for mayor of San Diego, whose political activism grew out of surfing and a desire to protect the threatened ecosystems of surf spots; the owners of the girl-focused Paradise Surf Shop in Santa Cruz and Surf Diva in San Diego; and the observant Muslim woman who started a business in her Huntington Beach home, selling swimsuits that fully cover the body and head. Comer also examines the Roxy Girl series of novels sponsored by the surfwear company Quiksilver, the biography of the champion surfer Lisa Andersen, the Gidget novels and films, the movie Blue Crush, and the book Surf Diva: A Girl's Guide to Getting Good Waves. She develops the concept of "girl localism" to argue that the experience of fighting for waves and respect in male-majority surf breaks, along with advocating for the health and sustainable development of coastal towns and waterways, has politicized surfer girls around the world.

Sujets

• Sociologie, société et politique
• Popular culture
• Surfing

Informations

• Publié par: Duke University Press
• Date de parution: 28 septembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780822393153
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 8 Mo

Extrait

Surfer Girls in the New World Order

Surfer Girls in the New World Order

Krista Comer

Duke University Press

Durham & London 2010

© 2010 Duke University Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper ∞

Designed by Jennifer Hill Typeset in TheSerif by Tseng Information Systems, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data appear on the last printed page of this book.

For my father

Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction 1 Critical Localisms in a Globalized World

Part I. California Goes Global

ôE Californians in Diaspora 35 The Making of a Local/Global Subculture

ô Wanting to Be Lisa 76 The Surfer Girl Comes of Age

Part II. Globalization from Below

REE The Politics of Play 117 Tourism, Ecofeminism, and Surfari in Mexico

FôûR Countercultural Places 162 Surf Shops and the Transfer of Girl Localist Knowledge

FîVE Surïng the New World Order 205 What’s Next?

Notes 231 Bibliography 257 Index 271

Acknowledgments

Traveling the world to study surïng is not exactly a hardship and over the course of a ten-year project I have happily accumulated many debts that are a pleasure to acknowledge. I am fortunate to have received support from ice University’s Mosle ellow- ship from 2001 to 2004, and generous support thereater from the dean of the School of Humanities at ice, Gary Wihl. I am also very grateul to have worked with eynolds Smith, Duke’s senior acqui- sitions editor. This is one of the ïnal books eynolds saw through to its end before pursuing his own projects in retirement. rom his ïrst solicitation of the book to the ïnal production phase, eynolds oered me wisdom as well as an old-fashioned kind of friendship between editor and writer. I am glad to have had him as my editor for a time.  I have named many surfers over the course of the book, but I would oer particular thanks here. In California, appreciations go to Jane MacKenzie (Jane at the Lane), who initially introduced me around the Santa Cruz scene. The ïlmmaker and photogra- pher Élizabeth Pepin of San rancisco brought her insider’s sense of subcultural life to my questions and I was saved many errors of judgment by her helpul corrections and no-nonsense ana- lytic mind. We commiserated about gender politics, surïng, and big business over sushi lunches and time at Paciïca—the most female-friendly and gender-bent surf spot on the planet (where else does one ïnd Drag Surïng?). Pepin’s photographs of women are featured throughout these pages and the black-and-whites from Paciïca are among the most beautiul I’ve ever seen. I look forward to collaborative projects we have in the works.  The community that collects around Paradise Surf S hop in