Looking back now over 8 years later, we reflect on what caused all the fuss, what’s changed since then, and why today we have reason to feel positive for future of equality in watersports.

The scene for the surf competition ad begins with a soft lens focus, showing the body of a half naked woman lying in bed, moving the camera over her naked back and frilly underwear. After we catch glimpses of her drop her shirt and take a shower, we get closeups of her bum walking on the beach. When we watch the woman paddling out, the focus of the shot is her bum on the board. At this point, the ad ends with some information about Roxy’s Pro Biarritz event.

Despite being eliminated from the internet, some copies of the original video exist in old news articles, which we’ve included below:

A petition with 21,000 signatures

You can see why after watching the competition ad, Cora Schumacher, who is 3x Women’s World Longboard Champion, was motivated to start a petition on change.org called “Roxy: Stop Your ‘All Sex, No Surf’ Ads!”. In a short period of time, over 21,000 women and men signed the petition, and Schumaker suddenly found herself spearheading an international campaign against Roxy.

The petition not only gathered signatures, but people also started leaving comments vowing to boycott the brand, and women told their personal stories of sexism in the water, such as men catcalling them in the lineup to wear bikinis.

As news of the public discontent started to spread in the wider press, Roxy announced that the video was part of a competition to guess the female surfer, which is why the woman’s face was not shown. The brand also posted a strange message on Facebook about how “Women are complex and multi-dimensional. To ignore this fact is to ignore who we truly are”, which was met with a barage of 238 comments, such as:

While all this backlash was going on, Schumacher set to work with Krista Comer, Rice University professor and author of Surfer Girls in the New World Order, to deliver a 45-page report on the topic to Roxy. They gathered evidence on sexism in the industry, evidence from scientific studies (in particular a 1998 study in which women in swimsuits “performed significantly worse” on tests than the ones wearing sweaters), excerpts of women’s stories, and a call to Roxy to be part of the fight against sexism.

When Schumacher and Comer were finally granted a meeting with some of Roxy’s marketing team, they were told: We’re not discussing the video. “I was told that they would not answer any questions specific to the trailer,” Schumacher said in an email. To make matters worse, Roxy soon after released a sequel to the video, which picks up where the first left off, snowing Gilmore surfing for eight seconds, preceded by 6 seconds of body shots similar to the previous video.

Photo from Cora Schumacher’s website. left to right: Krista Comer, Cori Schumacher, Cynthia Krueger. © Maria Cerda

Although it seems that Roxy initially stood behind their advertising choices, it speaks volumes that the original videos have been removed from many channels (it is often shown as ‘no longer available’), and no such advert has been seen since.

A reminder of how far we’ve come

So almost 10 years on, what has changed? On a positive note, it’s clear that the voice of women all over the world can be heard when we band together, mobilise as one, and speak up against inequalities. When we compare advertising campaigns from 2013 and 2021, we can see a huge difference. Today’s brands are more likely to feature diverse models, supposedly having realised not only the moral value, but also economic gain, of these decisions.

There’s still a long way to go, in both the fight for inclusivity and sustainability. But during this long (and sometimes exhausting) battle, it’s worth remembering stories like this one to celebrate how far we’ve come, take stock of our collective successes, and remind ourselves of the power we have for the future. Take that, sexism.