Sexy Surfers

I was struck by Kathleen’s beauty, drive, and commitment to protecting the oceans. She’s a Harvard MBA grad who bikes, runs, swims, surfs, climbs, skis, golfs, and plays tennis. At 40, she’s managed to do what most of us only dream of: fold all of her passions into life.

Kathleen can check the surf from the roof of her San Francisco house. Ocean Beach, her local break, is one of the most powerful along the entire California coast. When I asked Kathleen, who seems absolutely fearless, how the challenge of surfing relates to other things in her life, she replied: “When something else scares me (a new role at work, climbing higher routes, mountain biking, etc.), I try to compare it to surfing and tell myself that I will get better at it and the fear will go away. If only I could apply this to talking to cute guys!!”

In an effort to raise awareness of all the plastic that’s dumped in the oceans, Kathleen uses plastic debris to create art. Discarded bottles, collected from her surf friends over just a 2 week period, tile the rebar of her giant wave sculpture. The piece is part of Smart Art and the Plastiki expedition, which will soon launch a plastic catamaran from San Francisco harbor to a floating, Texas-sized, garbage patch north of Hawaii.

Ana is a teacher and mother of two, yet still manages to find time to surf the beautiful breaks at the tip of Baja, at Acapulcito, Mexico.

When I asked Ana how surfing affects her outside the water, she told me a story about getting a flat tire on her way to work. She said before she started surfing, she would have gotten really stressed out about something like this….instead, she changed the tire, drove to school, washed her hands, and started the day a few minutes later than normal.

They founded Rock’er Board shop, which was one of the first surf shops for women in Los Angeles. I photographed them in 2005, when they’d just opened their doors. After a number of “board meetings” in the water, they decided to leave their high-paying jobs with 401k plans, stock options and health insurance to open this store.

Christina and Allison say that founding the shop has been “an uphill battle from the get-go”, yet they did it, in spite of most people’s predictions that they wouldn’t. I was impressed with their honesty, courage, and poetic descriptions of their transformations.

Uceli lives near Salvador, which lies south of the equator, on the seemingly endless, impossibly gorgeous Brazilian coast. When I photographed her in 2002, she was 40 years old, surfing everyday. When little, she used to carry one of her kids under one arm, and her board under the other. Her husband and both of her children surf.

I mistakenly thought I could get by with my limited Spanish in Brazil. Though I found many “surfistas” there, I couldn’t speak to any of them without a translator. I enlisted a New York writer who spoke fluent Portuguese and who was staying at my flat, to take the bus with me to Uceli’s out-of-the-way surf paradise 20 minutes north of Salvador.

I was struck by Uceli’s complete comfort with her own body. Perhaps it’s due to the warm climate, the blend of African, Portuguese, French and native Indian cultures, or the way Brazilians dance and make music everyday. I’m not sure why, but found it such a nice change to see so many so comfortable in their own skin, regardless of their body type.