Cori Mermaid Argumentative Essay

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Cori Schumacher, the world’s leading women’s longboard champion, has always dreamed of becoming a professional female surfer at an age as early as twelve. However, her journey to success was not so much of a smooth ride particularly because very few women in the surfing and longboarding industry are ever able to earn a living by doing what they are best known for. In fact, after Schumacher competed for her second world longboard title in 2001, the young surfer soon realized that she could no longer support herself financially. Schumacher now has a job as a waitress at Naked Café in Solana Beach, California and though she still surfs every day, she continues to feel the need to stand up for the exploitation of female surfers. Much like other…show more content…
Now, for each shot of a woman participating in the actual sport of surfing, there were roughly thirteen more pictures of men surfing. It is sad to say that the surf industry and surf media have greatly minimized the actual surfing achievements of female pro surfers. Instead, the media grandly focuses on “hypersexualizing the image of the female surfer”. The idea of masculinity is personified by the “virile, heroic, risk-taking, strong, aggressive, valorized male who dominates the waves and women” (Schumacher, Gender Across Borders). On the other hand, bluntly stating, femininity is characterized as “an object with a greater or lesser ability to sexually arouse the male libido” (Schumacher, Gender Across Borders). The fact of the matter is that for female pro surfers to uphold the feminine image of the surf industry, they must present themselves as what is required to be “feminine” to the male eye. In 2011 body issue for ESPN, the top-ranked female pro surfers posed in various nude shots while the surfing industry glorified the women for “embracing their femininity”. As Dr. Brooks mentioned in his lectures, it is because of the media attention drawn onto these portrayals that our society would find this sort of act attractive for female athletes. The surf media is fueling the further exploitation

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