*promote

Promoting this video and sending it back into the queue for one more try; last queued Monday, February 29th, 2016 3:02am PST - promote requested by eric3579.

OK, that sounds pretty messed up, but where are the women led businesses and their sponsorships?
Back when I raced off road, I went to hundreds of businesses looking for any sponsorship. I never got any. I don't think it had anything to do with how I looked, or even my personality (although I could be wrong there). Getting a business to put out money to MAYBE get mentioned during a competition is not an easy prospect, especially when you are relatively unknown. I wonder how many businesses actually said 'no' to her, if it's <100, she just didn't try hard enough.
OH....watching to the end, now I have to say the title is totally misleading. She got sponsorship from 'a very important brand', so obviously 'not being hot enough' was not the problem, she didn't suddenly get hotter this year. Now I wonder how many competitions she had won before last year, since after winning one in NZ she got fully sponsored.

She's not too bad.

I don't think people should be getting money just for being hot. I also don't think people should be getting money for surfing. Or for breeding really inbred dogs. I have opinions on the internet

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.

She's amazing

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.

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.

@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.

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.

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...

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.

@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.

Like I said in what you didn't quote, in that case, that's fucked up. The video seems to make it sound like she came out of virtually nowhere to win at New Zealand, either that or I wasn't listening too hard.

Eh, life isn't fair. I wonder sometimes how many great scientists, artists, and just all around good people we miss out on because of where they were born or how they were raised.

I mean look at the caste system in India. How many Einsteins, Newtons, and others have we never known of due to them being born as low caste or Dalits (untouchables)?

I'm glad she struggled through, but her story is far from unique.

Oh Nike, here's your chance to practice what you preach.

I love her looks. She is strong and competent and Not White and interesting.

She is a person.

And most especially strong. Having her on a Wheaties box would sell a lot of Wheaties and inspire a lot of young girls.