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
Nick Carroll: Maurice Cole and the Surf Coast Showdown
The Australian Surfing Icon Is Contesting the Torquay Council Elections This Weekend
The Story of How Surfing Almost Lost Mundaka, Then Didn't
First Sessions: How the Spanish Rivermouth Almost Suffered a Man-Made Death
Watch: Episode 11 of RIVALS – Mick, Parko and Dingo Face-Off In Pumping Snapper Superheat!
Who's your pick?
Nick Carroll: Maurice Cole and the Surf Coast Showdown
The Australian Surfing Icon Is Contesting the Torquay Council Elections This Weekend
We're Hiring: Camera Operations Technician
Watch: Episode 11 of RIVALS – Mick, Parko and Dingo Face-Off In Pumping Snapper Superheat!
Remembering Biggest Wednesday, Pumping Empty Cokes, and Can You Go Finless at Teahupo'o?
Brazil's Beachies Look Fun as Hell and Gabriel Medina Is Making the Most of Them
Nick Carroll: Maurice Cole and the Surf Coast Showdown
The Australian Surfing Icon Is Contesting the Torquay Council Elections This Weekend
Watch: Episode 11 of RIVALS – Mick, Parko and Dingo Face-Off In Pumping Snapper Superheat!
Who's your pick?
Remembering Biggest Wednesday, Pumping Empty Cokes, and Can You Go Finless at Teahupo'o?
This Week In Surfing: Ten Things from Surfing & the Internet on the Week That Was October 23 2020
Brazil's Beachies Look Fun as Hell and Gabriel Medina Is Making the Most of Them
Wedges and Tubes and a Two-Time World Champ
Remembering Biggest Wednesday, Pumping Empty Cokes, and Can You Go Finless at Teahupo'o?
This Week In Surfing: Ten Things from Surfing & the Internet on the Week That Was October 23 2020
Watch: Episode 11 of RIVALS – Mick, Parko and Dingo Face-Off In Pumping Snapper Superheat!
Who's your pick?
Brazil's Beachies Look Fun as Hell and Gabriel Medina Is Making the Most of Them
Wedges and Tubes and a Two-Time World Champ
Video: The Fizzlot kids – SW Grom Bash
A stoked out portrait of Australian Junior Surfing in the year 2018.
