The gendered emotional labor of male professional ‘freesurfers’ digital media work

Abstract

Male professional 'freesurfers' are paid to live an aspirational lifestyle and communicate this through media. In this article I argue that a 'stoke imperative' championed by the surf industry necessitates emotional labor. Stoke is surf vernacular for a clustering of feeling thrilled, joyful, pleased, happy, optimistic, excited, and satisfied. The surf industry manufactures and commodifies stoke to profit from it. Emotional labor is often assumed to be what women are 'naturally' predisposed to and 'better at.' While numerous studies argue that men have complex emotional lives, we still have some way to go to better understand how these play out through emotional labor, as men negotiate social, economic, spatial, cultural, and ecological contingencies. It is found that male professional freesurfers are competent at employing strategies for doing emotional labor when doing digital labor, such as microcelebrity. However, this involves negotiating shifting but also conflicting expectations, traits, and values of masculinity. It is also found that digital media technologies direct a professional sport 'technosoma' that comes to be a material digital networking of emotional labor for profit. The article extends what is currently a small body of literature on how emotional labor is experienced and practiced in relation to masculinity in male-dominated industries as new economic and social conditions of possibility emerge. A clearer understanding of what is taking place hopefully helps to interrupt any smooth reproduction of inequities borne of gendered stereotypes in the sport industry and through digital labor, which is nested in the new economy.

Fans as e-participants? Utopia/dystopia visions for the future of digital sport fandom

“…Thorpe (2017) has also flagged the role of drones for reproducing and reinvigorating action sports for television. Additionally, drone and Go-Pro footage shot by amateur participations (Hollett, 2019), as well as by professional surfers (Evers, 2019) and rock-climbers (Dumont, 2017), is often uploaded to sites such as YouTube , infusing participant-fan footage with access, engagement, analysis and for further dissemination.…”

“…For example, Andrews and Ritzer (2018) suggest that contemporary prosumer sport fans add to and offer a “real-time” alternative to the discursive framing and meanings that circulate around sports via their user generated content. Moreover, the fan-as-interactive-participant will continue to appeal to fans as co-creators within their knowledge cultures and communities (Evers, 2019; Sanderson, 2011), utilising whichever futuristic digital tools exist to interact with “their” sports. Accordingly, these invested fans will continue to co-construct nuanced archives, histories and knowledge databases that cover popular, niche and historically significant sports (Andrews and Ritzer, 2018; Lawrence and Crawford, 2019), while using digital technologies to engage with and “exchange” their objects of interest and affection.…”

“Parents, Me & X-Sports”: Mapping the BMX Culture in Contemporary China

“…BMX riders and communities usually employ one or more forms of social media for updates, communication, or learning a new or big trick. Following the rapid development of digital media in China, the presence of Chinese BMX enthusiasts relies on social media as happens in other such sports around the world (Dumont, 2017;Evers, 2018), for instance, to "mediate and alter the aesthetic experience of taking part in lifestyle sports" (Woermann, 2012, p. 625). BMX social media has become a key portal for BMX riders to construct and negotiate their subcultural capital.…”

The ‘boy scouts’ and ‘bad boys’ of skateboarding: a thematic analysis of the bones brigade

“…Studies of lifestyle sports such as skateboarding (Beal, 1996), surfing (Westly Evers, 2018) and snowboarding (Thorpe 2007) nevertheless remind us that even activities that encourage alternative masculinities can still diminish and exclude females in various ways, while Yochim (2010, 4) argues that skateboarding's nascent critique of dominant masculinities nevertheless maintains the power of 'white middle-class, heterosexual men'. Systemic sexism continues despite significant increases in women's participation in such sports (Thorpe 2010;Mackay and Dallaire 2012;Backstrom 2013).…”