Premium surf magazine Stab pivots full Inertia in hiring near-mythical “woman” to cover inaugural WSL Finals Day: “And beyond human to human respect, there is an Earth to human connection intrinsic to the activity itself that forces a holistic and progressive approach to sport!”

"Surfing wins."

If you know anything about me, you know that I loathe to kick a premium surf magazine when it’s down but… dang it. Stab begs for it. Lays on the ground whimpering “stick one in the ribs” and what am I supposed to do? Refuse? It’d be so rude so to do.

And, for the hyper-successful just-wrapped World Surf League inaugural Finals Day, the one-time Venice-adjacent publication went into the wilderness and virtually signaled an actual woman to cover.

One that was not of surf.

One who, according to Stab, has been published by The Paris Review, Cultured Magazine, Bon Appetit, and Real Pain Fine Arts and, in wonderfully woke fashion, the man powers that be “decided to test.

But what did Toniann Fernandez see? What did she experience?

“What I think is unique to surfing, and is universally legible, is the culture and spirit of what I saw streamed from the finals. All day, people said that regardless of the outcome, ‘surfing wins.’ And beyond human to human respect, there is an Earth to human connection intrinsic to the activity itself that forces a holistic and progressive approach to sport. It’s responsible in a way that just can’t be matched by anything happening in a stadium. the growth of surfing into its deserved place in the world of serious sport seems, to me, a force for good.”

Whoa.

Yeah?

Oh.

Serious sport?

Hmmm.

I’ll trust someone from Stab is man-splaining the non-serious nature of surfing to her now.

Fingers crossed.

More as the story develops.