Stuart Nettle Jun 12, 2009

While riding the train to work this morning the lady in front of me was reading the paper and, over her shoulder, a headline caught my eye: 'Surfers Fall From Grace'. Straight away it got my attention, and I wondered who the surfer in question was. Have the Andy Irons rumours come true? Did Koby knuckle another copper while on the turps? When I reached the office I immediately checked the story online to answer the question. I needn't have been so eager. The 'surfer' was no-one I had heard of, and from what I could gather had done nothing remarkable in the surfing world. In fact, the circumstances of the story had absolutely no connection to surfing at all. He had though, at one time in his life, stood upon a surfboard. And thus in the story he was branded a surfer, and given a title that, suprisingly, still carries a lot of weight. Suprisingly because everybody surfs these days. Or so it seems. And surfing is used to sell everything from bog paper to Beemers. So the baffling thing for me is: if so many people do it, why does surfing still carry  mystique to the average punter? When surfing was a minor sport carried out by a relatively homogenous group it was easier to understand. Yet the wistful notion of surfers as 'fearless ocean warriors' or 'wandering free-spirits' is washed up and dead (if it ever was truly alive); uptight fifty year old hedge-fund managers drive their late model Mercs to Manly for a wave. They are surfers. The line-ups have become a reflection of our diverse dryland demographics. We have become an assorted mix. There no longer seems to be a 'surfer' stereotype. When the media use the desriptor 'model' in an otherwise nondescript story I can understand it. You know, as in: 'Model 21 In Drug Binge'. They wouldn't bother naming the occupation if the person in question was a copywriter. Or a newsagent. Or any of a thousand other occupations that don't captivate us. But we have a penchant for beauty. Pretty things attract us. And editors want their stories to attract attention. The connection is clear. But, let's face it, there's some ugly pricks in the water, and I've met plenty of surfers with less-than-desirable qualities. Yet mainstream society is still captivated by surfers and surfing, and seem willing to throw blanket coverage over us, as evidenced by the headline. Lazy journalism comes to mind, but then they wouldn't use the term if it didn't turn heads. Me, I was attentive to the original headline because I am a surfer myself. But is the rest of society still so smitten by the tag? And further, can one word decribe all those who pick up a board and head past the shorey? Is there any quality, however cryptic, that unifies us?

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