Surfers VS Manopause.
Yesterday, late, Australia’s Tyler Wright bravely confessed the horror, debilitating horror, of her monthly cycle.“It’s hard when you put so much work into something, you feel great and then you have a period so horrible it hospitalises you 3 days out from an event,” the two-time world champion wrote on Instagram. “Competing after those 3 days of being mostly bedridden and unable to eat was the harsh reality of navigating my period while meeting requirements in my professional career. At times it’s deflating physically and emotionally, feeling like you have no say in it. Managing my period has been a journey. I’ve come along way from my teen years, not even knowing it wasn’t normal to suffer monthly excruciating pain that would lead to passing out, vomiting and hours on the toilet. These days my period management looks like a customised training program based around the 4 menstrual stages, listening and planning carefully for what my body needs – even if that means less time practicing in the water before comps, prioritising sleep and recovery leading up to my period and being aware this is the time I am at highest risk of injury. At this stage in my life I am also heavily reliant on painkillers while I menstruate. They aren’t ideal but my other option is to have surgery to try find and fix the reason for these debilitating periods. The surgery isn’t a guaranteed solution and I would have to take time off from competing as well as rebuilding.”
Media, both mainstream and surf across the vast gender spectrum, appreciated and applauded the confession.
Media except for premium subscription surf website Stab, that is, which used the moment to proudly announce that it has precisely zero female readers nor cares to have any.
In a bit of tone deafness not seen since World Surf League CEO Erik Logan decided to victim shame Brazilian surfers for their passion, Stab used Wright’s highly personal disclosure to publish the think piece “Surfers VS Manopause” in which the pains and frustrations of males getting older and experiencing hangovers plus lower back pain, diminishing eyesight and desensitized taste buds.
“Around age forty, one begins to lose muscle mass and power. By age eighty, one has lost between a quarter and a half of one’s muscle weight. By the age of sixty, people in an industrialized country like the United States have lost, on average, a third of their teeth. After eighty-five, almost 40 percent have no teeth at all,” wrote Paul Evans, a Hemingway-esque adonis, “But what does that mean for our surfing?”
This country for old men.
“Tell me you have no women subscribers without telling me you have no women subscribers,” the initial hot take from stunned observers.
It is unclear if the move is purposeful, Stab declaring war on The Inertia by going directly after the beach wagon loving incel market, or accidental. A piece long planned but thwarted by Wright and her honesty.
Oceanside, or whichever newly-ish cool beachside community Stab now calls home, certainly recoiling tonight.
Over/under on it moving to San Francisco’s Outer Sunset district within three years, while you’re here.
More as the story develops.