Leave A Message

A couple weeks ago Nike came out with a women's surf video called "Leave A Message." I watched some of it and the girls were ripping, except for the hot ones who were just hot. I'm cool with that.


In the aftermath of this release has been an interesting discussion and series of op-ed pieces in the surf world about women's sponsorship money and the whole female professional surf world. It's wrong, claim some women (http://www.theinertia.com/business-media/proliferating-stereotypes-for-profit/), to sponsor women for their looks while men are sponsored (ostensibly) for their talent. Not so fast, says I. 


This whole debate functions around this assumption that the powers that be in surfing have some sort of conspiracy against women who are talented at surfing but don't look cute in bikinis. They must be a member of the same secret society that chooses good looking women to sponsor in every other professional sport. Or the slightly larger secret society that chooses attractive women to be more successful in the workplace. My point: It's fucking nature.


Men are athletes who like to look at good looking women. Women like to watch men compete and like to see good looking women modeling the clothes they're considering buying. There is no sport at which women compete at a higher level than men. Tennis is close, but Kim Clijsters gets smoked by a one-arm, one-legged Rafa Nadal any day of the week. 


The author of the article I linked above is a former professional longboarder and is not particularly attractive nor unattractive. I get her perspective that we should focus on talent. The problem is that men and women alike prefer to watch men compete because men are better. She points out that men make $3.45 for every $1 female professional surfers make. Well, fine. Men make more money for the surf brands that sponsor events and the men themselves. There are other careers that are more lucrative for women than men, like hosting talk shows. 


At the end of the day we only have nature to blame. Men and women are built differently with brains that operate differently. Trying to force equal prize money for men and women does not make a lot of sense. We can promote fairness (like not always sending the women out in the shittiest conditions), but how do we determine what is fair? Is "fair" is taking sponsorships away from cute girls who can surf decent, and giving them to a girl who rips but looks like a trog?


If we look at how much female professional surfers contribute to the sports popularity and profitability versus what percent of prize money they get, they're probably overpaid. You can fight it, but you'd just be fighting human nature.