Wright recalls her relationship with her Father as a source of great stress and mentions his early-onset dementia. I found her Dad Rob in a zombie-like state, dragging a half dead dog through a car-park at my local surf spot.
How nuts has women’s surfing exploded into mainstream consciousness in the last little while. It’s been on a slow burn but the thing went supernova after the release of Girls Can’t Surf, then International Women’s Day and now the release of Tyler Wright’s bombshell confessional in ESPN.
It’s a crazy case of cometh the hour, cometh the gal.
I feel so ecstatic about all this I can’t hardly breathe.
Pumped to see my pal Pauls get some long overdue reco and money in the bank. Pumped that Tyler has come out with no adverse reactions. Pumped she retro-fitted herself from a millionaire pro-surfer at 16 to a frustrated academic : “I don’t fucking dream of this shit. I want to read books. I want to go to school”.
That’s just too good.
What do you want? A million-dollar contract and a life travelling the world going surfing or sitting in that hot classroom trying to get your head around The Tempest? If she had her time again she’d take the sweaty classroom and the Shakespeare.
Great. If that is what she believes it’s OK by me.
I really mean that.
She says she suffers from PTSD. How the hell do we know otherwise?
Your subjective experience is your own. Ain’t no-one can tell you how it is for you and you alone when the thoughts are racing around the fringes of the mind at three am. I’m pumped that some of the demons and the strangeness of the Wright family have now been put into the public domain.
It’s a very singular family dynamic.
” I found her Dad Rob in a zombie-like state, dragging a half dead dog through a car-park at my local surf spot. We got him into a ute, drove him home and I got some help from his mate. That caused me great distress and some trauma. If Tyler claims her upbringing caused her distress and trauma then who are we to question it?”
To quote Tolstoy’s famous Anna Karenina principle: “Happy families are all alike, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way”.
Wright recalls her relationship with her Father as a source of great stress and mentions his early-onset dementia. I found her Dad Rob in a zombie-like state, dragging a half dead dog through a car-park at my local surf spot. We got him into a ute, drove him home and I got some help from his mate. That caused me great distress and some trauma. If Tyler claims her upbringing caused her distress and trauma then who are we to question it?
On the surface it might seem ridiculous and absurd. A multi-millionaire young athlete with two world titles to her name- more set-up than most of the poor schmucks busting their asses trying to make payments – playing what seems like a classic woke victim card.
A woman with all the earthly riches and fame that eluded earlier generations of women pro surfers claiming to be oppressed in an existential fashion, to the point of life and death, by the very thing that has elevated her into the sporting pantheon?
This is incredible stuff. Tolstoy could not compress this into a novel a thousand pages long.
I do not disrespect this untameable zebra of an athlete for a second.
I hope you all radically revise your position vis a vis Tyler Wright as I have done. More than anything I’m pumped that this anger, this rage she references will be a cleansing fire for the cutesy-wutesy but diabolically dysfunctional charade of women’s pro surfing.
All the body image pressure, the self loathing, the home-schooled pathway, homophobia, racism the psycho Dads etc etc – it’s all fair game now.
All thrown on the pyre of Tyler’s righteous fury. What a wonderful development.
Who will be the next to flame on?
I predict Carissa. Steph may follow suit.
Which opens up the delicious possibility of the three women surfers at the top of the tree rampaging gloriously through this garden of truth, all with “honest eyes” and unencumbered by the need to appease an organisation or sponsors. I don’t think the implications of what Tyler has done are fully appreciated.
Walking this path of woke may not be the easiest path for Tyler, long term. She has rebranded herself as an ally, claimed to be a beneficiary of white supremacist structures and that these structures need to be dismantled.
Fair enough.
British academic and author Kehinde Andrews in a recent book claims “rebranding a racist product is not a step in the right direction. It is a kick in the teeth to all those who suffer the impacts of white supremacy”.
See what I mean? Very tricky path to tread.
You could get called out and cancelled in a heartbeat if the walk doesn’t match the talk.
We don’t have to agree with Tyler to dig this new frisson added to the impenetrable bland of normal WSL programming. I thought I would never get back the brain cells I lost listening to the young Tyler’s pressers.
Now I know she is studying, reading books. Reading fugging books! What lies ahead. Big words, maybe some interesting thoughts. Big statements.
Anything will be a vast improvement on the “it’s all good #blessed” talk of recent times.
Surf fan wise, I’m a Gilmore gal.
I like the flow and the style, the double-hand layback cutbacks. Tyler is a little too predictable on the heavy backfoot for me.
Irrevelant though.
Women’s surfing just got more interesting than it has for years. Finally some personalities let off the leash.
Can we find some common ground and enjoyment at least on that?
Is she only person to win a pipe contest without getting barreled?
why the fuck would you choose a famous pedophiles name ?
or maybe an alcoholic that bashes his wife?
or maybe someone like you who chooses a paedophile name .get pissed and rape some kids!
There are multiple severities of PTSD ranging from mild to totally debilitating. PTSD diagnosis requires a stressor event(s) and rates the PTSD on behaviors. Question is has she been professionally diagnosed with PTSD? I work with people that are diagnosed between 30 -100% disabled by PTSD and I can tell you it is seriously debilitating. These folks aren’t social media darlings, and most can barely hold a menial job.
The bit that bothered me most was they diagnosed her with influenza and gave her antibiotics. Gee… thanks!
“But I can’t get any Japanese people to raise their fist in solidarity” – Not with that attitude you can’t.
Why is it always a selfish point of view when arguing against privilege? Just because it was shitty for you doesn’t mean it needs to be shitty for the next generation.
Imagine if women said “we’ll back in my day I didn’t get to vote, why should younger girls get to vote? That’s not fair.”
That’s not how affirmative action works anymore, racial quotas are illegal.
White people are not legally discriminated against, cry me a river.
I agree that grouping people by their race does not fix the issue, nor did I say that is what white privilege is.
I find the most damning thing to be her admission that she safety-surfed to a win at Pipe. If the judges don’t start adjusting their scoring to reward the women taking risks in unmade barrels and airs, we aren’t going to see the type of surfing in the women’s tour that the fans and surfers both deserve.
Every time Longtom drops in a literature quote (especially Dostoevsky) i’m reminded of this part in “the office”
http://www.youtube.com/watc…
https://www.youtube.com/wat…
Didn’t know that Wright senior had dementia.
That might somewhat explain the 10 minute beach shower he had at a local spot while a queue of people who just needed to rinse their feet off gradually formed. Tough gig for the whole family.
Longtom saw an opportunity and slipped it in nicely
I wasn’t going to mention but now that Tyler has bought the issue into the public realm I made a judgment call that it was pertinent and in the public interest.
no disrespect to Rob.
There’s that old parable about the mexican fisherman sitting on the beach drinking beers with his mates and the gringo tells him to buy a boat to get richer and work harder to get richer still. And then when finally the Mexican guy is rich he asks the gringo what to do next and the gringo says “Then you sell your business and sit on the beach drinking beers with your mates”.
Like I said before, it’s like the monk who sold his ferrari. Easy to do after you’ve had a ferrari. Not so easy to do beforehand. Hell, even Buddha was a prince with nothing to worry about before he went off on his pilgrimage and realised that everything was superficial.
More Piers Morgan than anything long including Tom. Time you also took a leave of absence you redneck quack
I’d love too, have to pay rent and school fees.
no sponsors.
Well obviously not by choice but regardless you shouldn’t stress because I’m sure Q will provide
Yeah who knew that simple misadventure of getting sick could trigger PTSD. It used to be called ‘adversity’. On the other hand, our grandfathers and fathers went off to war and got shot at, lived in fear of their lives and and saw chunks of meat that used to be people.
Kids grew up in Syria, lived through ISIL and all that shit and ended up in a refugee camp.
Kids in Sierra Leone get asked short sleeves or long sleeves and got their arms chopped off.
Yeah being sick as a dog is fucked but on the grand scheme of things, harden the fuck up.
Well good on Tyler for coming to the shocking realisation that the world is not fair and entitled white women get an easier ride than most. It’s all very “The monk who sold his ferrari”. How refreshing it must be to dictate how the world should work because you are a millionaire who gets paid to surf.
I hope she takes it a step further and realises that if she wants to use her platform as a champion surfer to enact change then she needs to be a leader and not a follower.
Writing BLM slogans on her board isn’t leadership. It’s being a follower and not only that it’s a shallow platitude and anyone can do that. Just like anyone can put a big oil don’t surf sticker on her car.
If she really wants to be a leader and make change through headlines she should go enter that comp in Hainan Island and write Uighur Lives Matter on her board. She will of course be promptly arrested and probably chucked in jail but it will make headlines worldwide. That’s standing up for a cause by putting your balls on the line.
Or she could upload a vid of her chopping the made in China labels off all her Rip Curl clothes and then burning them. That’s the kind of shit that Rip Curl would have to either sack her for or actually do something about.
How about saying no to disposable surfboards and better yet, saying fuck it, I am not flying to any surfing comp from now on, I will sail instead. That’s the kind of shit that will make headlines and get people talking about the issue.
Until she does something like that, well you know the kind of stuff she is banging on about is obvious to most people when they turn 16 years of age.
Somehow you just made the whitest Hawaiian surfer of all time sound like the most radical, woke activist ever.
Though taking a dump on your sponsors and sailing to ‘CT events is much easier when you’re multi-millionaire.
Bam , totally nailed it.
Being a victim pays well…Tyler is now going to get paid a lot of money and gain new sponsors by painting a BLM sign on her board and coming out as a lesbian. Who cares…Really most of the people reading this just want to catch nice waves have a laugh and get away from this BS..I will just go all in here.. Women’s surfing is an inferior product anyways. Besides Steph who is a God and Carissa. Who really wants to watch a women’s heat over a men’s heat? It’s not like women’s tennis which is actually more watchable than the men’s. Does anybody remember one incredible heat from women’s surfing?
Steph’s 10 in Bali was probably the single best wave of 2019. Or at least the most memorable.
The fade, the tube, the soul arch claim, the closeout reo. Not just speed, power and flow, but style and feeling as well. That’s proper surfing, and anybody here who claims that wave wouldn’t get them all giddy if they rode it themselves is full of shit.
Heck, I only want to know the truth about her mystery illness.
Was she actually just on the meth or what ?
kinda off topic but i also remember Derek Hynd mentioning something about Owen and his coke habit and why no one was talking about it? it was all brushed under the carpet right quick and never mentioned again. that was during what i think Derek referred to as his “injury” . i can’t find any mention of it anywhere now. pretty sure i didn’t dream it.
You didn’t dream it, but all that resulted was a choir of no comment’s.
Yes I heard a very similar thing from numerous other sources before the ‘injury’…
ahhhhhh, right!
I’d been lead to believe that Carissa came from a straighto family, went to a private school, and received all the extra privileges that that upbringing brings.
Isn’t that correct after all ?
Girls can surf–they just can’t surf as good as the guys. From what little I’ve seen, actually a little painful to watch. Kind of like trying to watch women’s basketball.
To anyone thinking the child prodigy thing is an automatic ticket to happiness, read up on Todd Marinovich sometime.
Not to be pedantic but it’s actually Todd Marijuanavich.