The gendered emotional labor of male professional ‘freesurfers’ digital media work

Abstract

Male professional ‘freesurfers’ are paid to live an aspirational lifestyle and communicate this through their digital media work. In this article I argue that a ‘stoke imperative’ championed by the surf industry necessitates emotional labour. Stoke is surf vernacular for a clustering of feeling thrilled, joyful, pleased, happy, optimistic, excited and satisfied. The surf industry manufactures and commodifies stoke to profit from it. Emotional labour is often assumed to be what women are ‘naturally’ predisposed to and ‘better at’. It is found that male professional freesurfers are competent at employing strategies for doing emotional labour when doing digital media work, such as micro-celebrity. However, this involves negotiating expectations, traits, and values of masculinity. It is also found that digital media technologies direct a professional sport ‘technosoma’ that networks emotional labour for profit. The article extends a small body of literature on how emotional labour is practised by men in sport.

Acknowledgements

Thank you to the research participants, some of whom went to great lengths to participate given their busy schedules. They also provided honest and revealing information despite how this goes against the stoke imperative. I would also like to thank Katarina Olausson, Glen Fuller, Dexter Hough-Snee, Elspeth Probyn, Kyle Green, and Adam Doering for their discussions and advice regarding this research. Thank you to the three peer reviewers who carefully looked over the manuscript and provided helpful and considerate guidance. Finally, I am very grateful to Holly Thorpe and Guillaume Dumont for their editorial work on this important Special Issue.

Notes

1. As of 22 November 2016, STAB Magazine listed on its website ‘Watch: Chapter 11, The New Feature Film By Dane Reynolds,’ http://stabmag.com/stabcinema/watch-chapter-11-the-new-feature-film-by-dane-reynolds/

2. As of 21 December 2011, The Inertia listed on its website ‘Dane Reynolds’s Declaration of Independence,’ http://www.theinertia.com/surf/dane-reynolds-declaration-of-independence/

3. That said, some scholars are arguing that there has been an emergence of ‘inclusive masculinities’ in sport settings, whereby men are discarding with such emotional policing (cf. Anderson 2008). That argument is outside the scope of this article.

4. See the film Blue Horizons. 2004. DVD. Directed by J. McCoy. Written by J. McCoy.

5. The term ‘action sports’ is an industry-driven term. It is used to describe participation in activities such as skateboarding, snowboarding, climbing, BMX, parkour, kite-surfing, and more. Enthusiasts outside the industry and those emphasizing recreation tend to use the term ‘lifestyle’. This latter arrangement lends itself to the term ‘lifestyle sport’, as championed by Wheaton (2004). I proceed with the term ‘action sport’ here unless I am referring to both industry and recreation.

6. As of 22 April 2002, GrindTV listed on its website ‘Ten Commandments of Pro Surfing Sponsorship,’ http://www.grindtv.com/surf/the-ten-commandments-of-pro-surfing-sponsorship/#0TI7WOqfmeek0kmE.99

7. As of 18 March 2016, Magicseaweed listed on its website ‘Positive Vibrations with the Gudauskas Brothers,’ http://magicseaweed.com/news/positive-vibrations-with-the-gudauskas-brothers/8810/

8. As of 22 July 2016, Surfer Magazine listed on its website ‘What’s a Stoke-O-Rama?’ http://www.surfer.com/surfing-magazine-archive/surfing-news/g-bros-stoke-o-rama-back/#WelbR7lPJToiOdOb.99

9. As of No Date, Surfer Magazine listed on the Facebook feed ‘Let life coach Mason Ho energize your stoke with a breakdown of his favorite sticks laying around his backyard,’ https://www.facebook.com/surfer/videos/10155259815453856/

10. As of 7 September 2017 World Surf League listed on their website ‘The WSL Wants You as Our Ambassador of Stoke and Leisure.’ http://www.worldsurfleague.com/posts/270312/the-wsl-wants-you-as-our-ambassador-of-stoke-and-leisure

11. Hoy, Matt. ‘Still at the airport.’ Instagram. 4 August 2017. https://www.instagram.com/p/BXYhSy1h68 k/?hl=en&taken-by=hoy666

12. As of No Date, STAB Magazine listed on its website ‘Watch: Chapter 11, The New Feature Film by Dane Reynolds,’ http://stabmag.com/stabcinema/watch-chapter-11-the-new-feature-film-by-dane-reynolds/

13. As of 22 May 2016, Coastalwatch listed on its website ‘The Unsponsored Surfer,’ http://www.coastalwatch.com/surfing/17032/sean-doherty-on-the-unsponsored-surfer

14. As of No Date, Girl Surf Network listed on its website ‘Boss ladies of the Industry,’ http://girlsurfnetwork.com/boss-ladies-of-the-surf-industry-part-1/

15. I employ here a sociology of emotions paradigm. In this paradigm, affect is a preconscious or unconscious form of biological sensation and emotion is the conscious attention to and evaluation of this according to cultural and social discourses (Wetherall 2012). Affect and emotion are co-dependant and mutually-shaping.

16. Social media refers to online platforms through which users can create and publish content. It may facilitate social networking. Social network sites afford the online creation and maintenance of public or semi-public profiles and relationships with other users (boyd and Ellison 2007, 211). For ease of reference I use the term ‘social media’ throughout this article, as due to media convergences it affords all the activities and so has come to popularly be used to refer to both forms (Fuchs 2014a).

17. The understanding of gender in this article is through the paradigm of corporeal feminism.

18. There are ‘multiple mutating masculinities’ (Watson 2015). This is a post-Deleuzian paradigm, which is much more dynamic than the dominant critical masculinities paradigm stemming from the work of R. W. Connell (1995).

19. I do not provide any more detail (e.g. company names) because anyone with a knowledge of the industry would be able to determine who some of the participants are. Anonymity would be threatened. Pseudonyms are used to anonymize participants.

20. Evidence of this can be seen in the responses to ex-professional surfer Cori Schumacher, who was framed as bitter whingeing ‘butch-lesbo’ ‘feminazi’ when she spoke out about structural inequalities (e.g. gender, sponsorship, and labour rights). See the comments section of Surfer Magazine: http://forum.surfer.com/forum/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=2082216; also see the podcast Everything is Always Terrible: https://vimeo.com/145680310; https://soundcloud.com/eachrit/everything-is-always-terrible-episode-seven-w-guest-cori-schumacher.

21. Informed consent was gathered from all participants following ethics clearance by the University Research Ethics Committee.

22. I have not been a professional freesurfer, hence the word ‘partial’. Insider knowledge has benefits and limitations. My gender and surfing history helped me build rapport, gain access, and provided me with a familiarity with frames of reference for interpretation. On the other hand, some nuances are likely lost as I overlook them as ‘common sense’. The perspective here is provisional, situated, and partial.

23. This media is a body of data in and of itself and is worthy of textual analysis, however that is not the focus of this study.

24. Homosociality involves a reproduction of heteronormativity by orientating any relationship and desire between men through a third ‘object’ or activity, often involving sexually objectifying women or playing/being fans of sport (Sedgwick 1985).

25. Gendered self-presentation has always been a popular research topic in the studies of digital social norms on social networking applications (boyd and Ellison 2007).

26. See the interview with high-profile and celebrated professional freesurfer David Rastovich in Three Stones from the Sun: Into the Mind of David Rastovich. 2016. Produced by Desillusion Magazine and Billabong. Directed by S. Zanella. Available at: https://vimeo.com/144459572

27. Some male professional surfers and marketing teams latch onto the tension between traditional hegemonic expectations of masculinity and what is interpreted by some male surfers, both within the industry and as fans and followers, as ‘feminization.’ The tension is exploited by performing a hyper-masculinized rebellion as part of their act. This ‘rebellion’, though, is not presented as an angry backlash but rather as playful, fun, and ironic. The irony helps to reinforce traditional norms of masculinity in a post-feminist era (Smith 2005). For example, see the profile of professional freesurfer Mikey Wright in his clip ‘Mongrel Mike,’ where he is represented through an excess of rock and roll and working-class masculinity signs. Fans and followers revel in and have fun with the contrivance of this ‘authentic masculinity’ to ‘get amped to go surfing’ (stoked). The process affirms particular gendered dispositions, yet interestingly also involves an acknowledgment that they are not fixed and require reproduction and reaffirmation to remain powerful.

28. Vimeo is a video hosting site which markets itself as for filmmakers, animators, and other creatives. See www.vimeo.com

29. See Alex Gray, Tracking the Muse in Africa, 2017, directed by Mike McNulty: http://www.surfline.com/surflinetv/featured-clips/exclusive-alex-gray-tracking-the-muse-in-africa_146381

30. Instagram is a social networking site where users post photos and construct a personal profile. It is popular for self-branding.

31. See an example of real-time athlete social media analytics of MVPindex at: https://mvpindex.com/