Surf ’n’ sex have been joined at the hip throughout surfing’s modern representation in the media – going all the way back to the 1800s, when tales of waveriding from Captain Cook’s infamous and ill-fated voyage of discovery inspired and popularised the idea of surfing in the western world.
Back then, surfing was depicted on lino- and woodcuts as the pastime of big, macho native men; but mainly of sensuous native Polynesian women, all curves, depicted riding waves topless – invitingly exotic, and dancing on water for hungry European eyes. The kind of scenes that would make sailors Mutiny on the Bounty, so to speak.
This line of representation of women in surfing remained largely intact, unbroken and unchallenged through the ages – and until very recently, the same was true in the pages of Zigzag.
The representation of women in Zigzag has been problematic since the magazine was first created in 1976 – unsurprisingly, as it mirrored broader society as a whole, and surfing in particular. In the first decade of Zigzag the space allocated to women was for bikini babes only, in the ‘Pics and Chicks’ section. Much of the advertising was equally gratuitous, feeding on sexy beach and bikini culture for brands such as Castle Lager and Renault cars.
Gotcha (under Michael Tomson) took it further, with images of Mike himself in his Gotcha trunks posing suggestively with bikini models. Or with close-ups on the midriff of a girl in a bikini, sandwiched by two men in Gotcha boardies. Rip Curl jumped in too, with ads of women in wetsuits, each looking more like a dominatrix madame than a surfer.
Nivea suncream managed to capture an incredible moment in which racism and sexism intersected in glorious irony, with their ‘Don’t just go brown, go beautiful’ tagline – in a country where legally, at the
