Chicks on sticks: Women, surfing, celluloid
By Paul Scott
Puberty Blues era Cronulla
Introduction
This article seeks to examine and analyse the manner in which three coming-of-age or rites-of-passage films – Gidget (1959), Puberty Blues (1981) and Blue Crush (2002) - seek to portray the relationship between female adolescence and surfing. In a sport that remains predominantly white, middle class and male – recreationally, professionally and in its key representations - these three films provide historians and cultural analysts with a suitable terrain to explore that relationship through focusing a lens on the interaction between content and context. Surfing's relationship to sex and gender appears to crash onto the shore of popular culture in waves of inconsistency, contradiction and extremes. Scholarly examination is warranted to further our understanding of gender issues, female adolescence, patriarchal anxiety and the shifting cultural significance of the surfing lifestyle.
Table of Contents
Surfing Hollywood: History, Heroes and Hodads
- Surfing Hollywood: History, Heroes and Hodads
Gidget
- Gidget: Turning on the Suburbs
- Gidget, Lolita and Anxious Dads
- Gidget: Surfing Around Conformity
Puberty Blues
- Puberty Blues: Not Just Happy Memories
- Sun and Surf and Sand and Sex
- Greenhills: Status Migration
- Surf Culture: Gendered Boundaries All Around
- Boys and Surfboards : Subservience and Liberation
Blue Crush
- Grrrrl Power or Pretty Woman Meets Baywatch Barbie?
- ‘Haolewood’: We Grew Here - You Flew Here
- Surfploitation
Conclusion
The Slump, by Nick Carroll – Part Two, The Coalface
A CW series on what’s happened to Aussie fortunes on the men’s world tour and what might turn it around
Lids Light Up Snapper
Matt Lackey and the lid gang sticking it to the stand-up crew at a pumping Snapper Rocks. There are some deep spitting wormholes in this esky edit.
Sean Doherty: Medina Wins, Single Tear Rolls Down Occy's Cheek
Corona Open J-Bay 2019, Finals Day
Surfer Found Guilty of Assault on Ex-Pro Jodie Cooper
Lennox surfer Mark Thomson will be assessed for a community work order after a hearing in Ballina Local Court on Friday
Breaking: John John Florence Is Out For J-Bay, Likely the Rest of the Year
Surfers Announced for the Bells Beach 50 Year Storm Invitational in Memory of Shaun Brooks
WSL Launches Stop Trashing Waves Campaign, Joins Global Climate Movement
Nathan Fletcher's New Film, Heavy Water, Looks Epic and It's Coming to Aus This Week
Surfer Found Guilty of Assault on Ex-Pro Jodie Cooper
Lennox surfer Mark Thomson will be assessed for a community work order after a hearing in Ballina Local Court on Friday
Breaking: John John Florence Is Out For J-Bay, Likely the Rest of the Year
Ugh, goodbye World Title? Goodbye Olympics?
Surfers Announced for the Bells Beach 50 Year Storm Invitational in Memory of Shaun Brooks
The waiting period has started
Nathan Fletcher's New Film, Heavy Water, Looks Epic and It's Coming to Aus This Week
With five special QnA screenings with Nathan and Hollywood director Michael Oblowitz from this Sunday
Lids Light Up Snapper
Matt Lackey and the lid gang sticking it to the stand-up crew at a pumping Snapper Rocks. There are some deep spitting wormholes in this esky edit.
The Slump, by Nick Carroll – Part One, The Legend
A CW series on what’s happened to Aussie fortunes on the men’s world tour — and what might turn it around
