‘I just eat, sleep and dream of surfing’: when surfing meets motherhood

Abstract

In this paper we draw on in-depth interviews with six women to examine the construction of surfing mums' subjectivities. We are interested in what discourses surfing mums draw on to constitute their subjectivities; in the conditions that make possible the constitution of surfing mums; in how the women negotiate the oft-contradictory dictates of motherhood and surfer; and in the different modes by which women render themselves as viable subjects. Furthermore, we examine the extent to which the dispositions and practices of surfing mums can be regarded as technologies of the self, affording disruptive potentialities or spaces of freedom. We suggest that contemporary individualist, healthist and familial discourses afford a range of subject positions, yielding opportunities for surfing mums to occupy shifting positions of power and resistance, some of which potentially transform and re-work traditional constructs of motherhood. Furthermore, we argue that practices of self stylization, and a critical and reflexive attitude towards their own practices and positioning as 'mothers' and 'surfers', can be discerned in the stories of the women.