Surfing world needs to shed Weinstein-like behavior

It’s difficult to imagine anyone wanting to be Harvey Weinstein for Halloween or anytime, but just in case, several media outlets have put the disgraced Hollywood producer, against whom nearly 60 women, as of press time, have voiced allegations of sexual assault, on their lists of “don’t go there” celebrity costumes.

This includes any Halloween references to Weinstein’s accusers, who include Academy Award winners Angelina Jolie, Mira Sorvino and Lupita Nyong’o. As Nyong’o recently wrote in The New York Times of Weinstein’s repeated attempts to seduce her when she was in drama school, she kept silent so as to not “suffer another abuse by not being believed and instead being ridiculed.”

If only such behavior could be shelved as easily as Halloween costumes.

His accusers describe how Weinstein leveraged his power in the film industry to try to get them to submit.

This made me reflect upon sexual harassment in surfing, which is also, in large part, an entertainment industry.

I remembered how, as a teenager, I was repeatedly hit on by a former world champion surfer 10 years my senior.

A senior in high school, I was spending winter break at the home of friends, where he was renting the guest cottage.

As soon as I arrived he started flirting, trying to lure me into his waterfront lair. Initially I was amused, even flattered by the attentions of the surf celebrity, although I didn’t find him attractive, with his copious body hair, paunch and egocentric attitude.

As Nyong’o said of Weinstein, this self-styled Don Juan could be charming. But one afternoon, when I was alone at the house, he pounced, wrapping me in a muscular, python embrace, all the while chuckling like an evil Halloween clown.

He would not take “no” for an answer, until I lost my Korean temper and kicked, scratched and screamed my way out of his grasp.

A few months later, at 17, I was asked on a date by a tall, handsome, 24-year-old surfer, a member of the “in crowd” of elite 1960s Hawaii surfers.

He wasn’t the brightest, but to an honor roll student like me, that made him all the more attractive.

I hadn’t seen my mother so worried since the year before, when a pomaded, Zorro-channeling stranger swooped in to partner me during a friend’s Sweet 16 party at a roller rink. She forbade me from seeing this older surfer. But as a single parent, she couldn’t keep tabs on me and my brothers all the time.

So I saw him. And quickly I saw that he wasn’t able to understand that I was an independent human being with feelings of my own. The turning point was when he accelerated his car suddenly as I took a sip from a bottle of juice, chipping my front tooth. He mocked me mercilessly for being upset. (His own teeth were not his best feature.)

A NEW book, “The Critical Surf Studies Reader” (Duke, 2017), edited by Dexter Zavalza Hough-Snee and Alexander Sotelo Eastman, addresses ways in which the surf industry markets female athletes as girly, teensy-bikini-clad babes performing such maneuvers as a “cheeky carve,” as former competitive surfer Cori Schumacher writes in one chapter, quoting a commentator at a World Surf League 2015 contest in Bell’s Beach, Australia.

But some women, like Hawaii-born pro surfer Carissa Moore, want to be judged by their athletic performance and not their looks.

“I’m not going to wear the small bikinis,” Moore wrote in a 2014 letter published in Surfer magazine. “That’s not me.”

Moore’s athletic approach has brought her three world championships and the strength and resilience that, 10 months into a disappointing tour, delivered her first 2017 WSL championship event victory, winning the Roxy Pro France.

“I hope we are in a pivotal moment,” Nyong’o wrote of the emerging sense of community among women and men in the film industry who are speaking out.

Thanks to spokeswomen such as Moore, surfing is making progress, too.

“In the Lineup” features Hawaii’s oceangoers and their regular hangouts, from the beach to the deep blue sea. Reach Mindy Pennybacker at mpennybacker@staradvertiser.com or call 529-4772.