omfg where is this magical place of puppies, kittens and surf?
This is too much.

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Yeeeeaaaah... this looks like more of a glorified daycamp than a kindergarten to me. My daughter is in a "traditional" bilingual kindergarten now and she's already learned her colors, shapes, letters, and numbers in both languages. They've just started learning to spell and do basic addition and subtraction. She also learned how to use the school computers to surf the Net--approved sites only of course, so don't expect her to be Sifting anything anytime soon! Oh, and she LOVES school. The "pedagogue" who says kids that young aren't ready to learn is full of shit. My daughter comes home from school wanting to practice counting and spelling every day.

I think I prefer that kind of education for her future than how to climb tall trees (though I guess that kind of skill might come in handy if we have a Walking Dead-style zombie apocalypse).

And no one formally checks on these kindergartens to make sure they are doing what they are supposed to be doing? Fuck that. Sounds like pedophile paradise to me.

@Payback
>>>If they're saying she couldn't get sponsorship AFTER winning major competitions?
She was 8 times best surfer in Brazil and 2nd in the world twice. Isn't that proving yourself?

@Babymech
>>> I just don't think we owe it to the people who are the best at a form of exercise to provide them with a living.

Well, there's a whole other discussion we could have about how the world would be a better place if a) people who were really good at anything were paid to do it and b) people in general were owed a universal basic income, but that's probably too broad for this topic.

So let's take it as read that, in the world today, NO-ONE is owed a living based on what they do. I write software, I am not inherently entitled to be paid just because I'm good at it. I'm paid because I provide value for my employer.

My issue is not whether or not anyone should be paid for surfing. If no-one was paid for surfing, I can live with that. But people ARE paid for surfing and my issue is that she's not being paid for two reasons: she's a woman and she's not a model.

Even if you wanted to say that all surfers have to be attractive, well, I'd think that was stupid, but I could deal with it. But no one tells Mick Fanning he's not hot enough.

Because he'd shark punch the shit out of them. Because Mick Fanning is awesome.

I fully see your point, and I really wasn't trying to say that the scale of one problem diminishes the need for adressing another problem. I was more trying for this:

The gist of this video seems to be that because she's a great surfer, she shouldn't be subjected to shitty attractiveness standards. I'm saying that she shouldn't be subjected to shitty attractiveness standards, but I don't care if she's good at surfing. That doesn't play into it for me. I think the video posits a false relationship, where being good at a pastime is an objective and terrific quality, and being attractive is a base and demeaning quality.

Don't get me wrong - I think everybody who's not struggling to get by should be doing regular physical exercise, for a number of reasons. I just don't think we owe it to the people who are the best at a form of exercise to provide them with a living.

Do I think our expectations on women's attractiveness for success is unfair and unconstructive? Yes - it's harmful to society at large. Do I think that her being good at a sport makes this somehow more unfair, and more unconstructive? Not at all.

This is somewhat disingenuous. Companies with active sponsorship programs look for two things: marketability and marketability.

If they're saying she couldn't get sponsorship AFTER winning major competitions? Then ya, there's something screwy, but there's two ways to market a human being, through their looks or through their skill. Looks are immediately apparent, skill has to be proven. She proved her skill, she got sponsored.

Companies get 100s if not 1000s of requests for sponsorship. If you can't surf worth shit, at least you can sell the product... I'm more disgusted with that then a skilled athlete having to prove themselves...

Ahhhh, OK then. I retract my thin defense of them then. They should have focused far more on women surfing then, and much less on how their asses look....but there's no reason they couldn't have done both IMO. Surfing tends to make people's bodies look better, male and female, there's no reason to hide that, but it would be good to not focus on ONLY that.

@newtboy yeah, but that ad was specifically for a surf competition that Roxy was sponsoring. It took a lot of flack at the time for being demeaning to women surfers and inspired this awesome parody.


@Babymech of course teachers and civil rights activists (and most importantly software developers ) should be paid. And before that, we should make sure that children have enough to eat, and stop wars and fix climate change and so on and so on.

I don't know how many times I've said this, but just because problem A is worse than problem B doesn't mean that problem B isn't a problem.

No-one tells teachers, activists, etc. that they're not hot enough to be paid (certainly not in software anyway )

My issue is not that she's not sponsored, it's that she's not sponsored because she's not good looking enough.

I get why that is from a commercial sense. There's a definite expectation on female surfers to be attractive (probably because they tend to wear bikinis a lot). I mean, look at this. If you removed the one surf pic, it could be a generic modelling agency roster.

But that only goes on as long as we accept it. There's nothing wrong with attractive women modelling bikinis. I appreciate the female form as much as the next straight guy/lesbian. But it sucks when a young girl with great talent, looks at that list and thinks that looks are more important than ability in surfing.

Let me be more precise:
- If someone wants to give her money for being attractive, for surfing, or for breeding bulldogs, I won't be outraged.
- If nobody wants to give her money for being attractive, for surfing, or for breeding bulldogs, I'm not gonna be outraged either.

I don't disagree at all that sponsoring her could make commercial sense. Being a good surfer can definitely help sell products, just like being hot can, or breeding an artificially designed dog breed can. That still doesn't mean that I see any injustice in somebody not getting paid for being a good surfer, being attractive, or raising bulldogs.

I would be more upset about teachers not getting paid, or developers of renewable energy solutions, or civil rights activists.

To be fair, Roxy is a bikini company, so their commercial being focused on hot women in bikinis is what you should expect from them.
I'm not saying you're wrong about the surf industry, just that Roxy isn't exactly in the surf industry.

I'm with you on the inbred dogs and being hot, but why shouldn't people get money for surfing?

If they're good at what they do, and it encourages people to buy a companies product, why shouldn't that company sponsor them (or at least give them free gear)?

But really this is no surprise to me at all. The surf industry is pretty adolescent when it comes to these things.