"The goal is to look like you just threw together your outfit last minute, plucking discarded clothes from your bedroom floor or from the back of your jeep..."

Now, anyone here with a young-ish daughter or niece has come to realize the word “aesthetic” has an entirely new meaning in this modern age. In old times, it simply referred to the particular principles connecting an artists work back to itself or that defined a whole artistic movement. Now, it means style and is quantified by a descriptor. Girls can be VSCO, cottagecore, fairycore, dark academia, baddie, pastel goth or the newest and hottest, surfer nephew.

What is the surfer nephew aesthetic?

Per Fashion:

Think about what one of the girls from 2002’s surfing movie Blue Crush might wear today for a casual dinner with a hunky out-of-towner — perhaps a white tee layered over a slip dress with Tkees sandals and a raffia bag? Quintessential surfer chick Ivy Sullivan from 90210 is another good reference. The goal is to look like you just threw together your outfit last minute, plucking discarded clothes from your bedroom floor or from the back of your jeep, and they just happen to look phenomenal together. It could be your situationship’s oversized button down! Your brother’s old graphic tee! The only criteria is it has to look casual, coastal and oh so chic.

The phrase was coined by stylist Allison Bornstein and is related to the desert aunt aesthetic though the desert aunt is into dogs and cats, surfer nephew just dogs. The desert aunt also says “wonderful” while surfer nephew says “awesome.”

Observing the obsession with different aesthetics is, I must say, fascinating. Girls will get in knock down drag out fights if their aesthetic is either mislabeled or misidentified.

A wild sort of localism we surfer uncles/fathers can only dream of.

“It feels a little bit like we’re running down the beach to get to the surf while trying to put our boardshorts on at the same time.”

Now, the last thing any surfer wanted or needed was the exhumation of Surfer Magazine’s rotting corpse. Once proud and true, Surfer had fallen into various odd hands before David Pecker stuck it in the heart with a gilded knife and buried it in a shallow unmarked grave.

A short handful of years later, the Arena Group, a “tech powered media company,” marched into the wood with shovels, found it and shocked it back to life. Being “tech powered,” the easy go was to plug artificial intelligence into Surfer’s brain hole et voila.

Emily Morgan.

Except investors weren’t happy with non-humans writing, editing etc. and so the powers that remained tapped one Jake Howard. A dominant figure in surf editorship, having held positions at the World Surf League, Red Bull, etc., Howard wasting no time, in changing directions entirely from Surfer’s old cloistered and mean, often racist generally misogynistic reputation to… well, to a bold progressive future.

Howard was, officially, finally introduced via a Shop-Eat-Surf interview moments ago and let us read his words without spin.

“It feels a little bit like we’re running down the beach to get to the surf while trying to put our boardshorts on at the same time.”

“Surfers today are seeing the sport differently. They’re coming at it from different perspectives. There are more women and people of color in the water than ever before. And, for many surfers, surfing is just part of their outdoor interests.”

“We want to invite them all into the big tent. We all started surfing because it’s so fun. The world is seeing challenging times and surfing can be a beacon of hope. Let’s build on that.”

“Evergreen stories that will be meaningful and hold their value — that’s our guideline.”

Clearly a brutal slam on BeachGrit at the end.

But bright skies ahead

"Some gnarly news for those who love to hang 10."

“Some gnarly news for those who love to hang 10” dropped this morning as the World Surf League has officially admitted that the much-loved Apple TV+ program Make or Break has been cancelled after just two seasons. Surf fans have been logging into smart televisions for weeks, now, terrified that they might miss the premier. Alas, that terror now transformed into run-of-the-mill depression.

The “newly minted” (i.e. demoted) WSL Commissioner Jessi Miley-Dyer was forced to almost admit to the failure at the recent “Winning: Women & Sports” conference, declaring, “Make or Break‘s on hold. Obviously, it’s been a great show for us. It’s been really valuable. But the most important thing we’ve had are the relationships through Make or Break, and we still have that exclusive relationship with Box to Box [Films], the production company.”

“On hold” a common euphemism for “shit canned.”

Miley-Dyer continued attempting to apply lipstick to a canceled series, hinting that “other things are in development” including “Pipe Dreams” and “Inside Pro Surfing” but “This one’s on hold, obviously.”

One surf fan, preferring to remain unnamed, responded, “Obviously? It wasn’t obvious to me. I’ve been waiting to see the behind-the-scenes around champion Filipe Toledo’s shock withdrawal at the start of the season for months. I guess I’ll never get to know the reason now. Gnarly news.”

Pipe Dreams, though. Do you imagine its a film adaptation of the culturally important Kelly Slater biography which takes us:

From Beach Blanket Bingo to Baywatch to Blue Crush, surfing has fascinated people for years, and Kelly Slater is the sport’s hottest star. He has won more world championships than any other competitor, and he continues to change peoples’ minds about what can and can’t be done on a surfboard. His wild ride has included fame, fortune, a stint on Baywatch, and a high-profile relationship with Pamela Anderson. Not bad for a skinny kid from a broken home in Cocoa Beach, Florida.

Not bad at all.

More as the story develops.