To challenge the postcolonial narratives of what it means to be Filipino, Geotina dubbed his project Pearls, a reference to a line from the national anthem, “Perlas ng silangan”, that translates to “pearl of the east”. With the help of surf photographers Bren Fuentes and Jose Mirasol, Geotina captured his friends riding the waves while wearing the traditional Filipiniana style of dresses. 

He included both cis and trans women in his project as a way of highlighting the role Spanish colonialism and Christianity played in the repression of gender diversity in the country. The clothes, Geotina says, have both a metaphorical and physical weight. Soaked in water, the women’s ability to surf while wearing them proves both their talent and resilience. 

The decision to produce them in black and white, he says, adds to their timelessness. The Pearls project, which was symbolically released on Philippines Independence Day in 2021, quickly went viral, generating thousands of likes, shares and comments on social media from both the local and international community. 

It has also been exhibited outside the Philippines. After extending the project to feature surfers from Indonesia, Geotina says that Pearls evolved organically into “a project for humanity, transcending the boundaries of myself and my team. “Never has a project I’ve done met so much success. It shows how much the people of the Philippines, and of the rest of Asia, need to be included in the global surfing conversation.”

Where: Indonesia
What: Female empowerment

When 32-year-old Flora Christin Butar Butar—who goes by just Flora—started surfing in Bali in 2016, not only was she one of the very few women in the water, she was also the only local one. 

“People thought surfing was a sport for foreigners, not for locals, let alone a local woman.” Flora may be a pioneer for Indonesian female surfers—she became the country’s first female competitive longboard surfer in 2017—but her rise has not been without its difficulties. 

Take, for example, the time she was physically and verbally assaulted by a man who wanted to surf a wave before her. “Some men think the big waves belong to them … In general, surfing is a male-dominated sport,” she says. “But I knew I was brought here to break cycles.” 

Born in Medan, North Sumatra, Flora said she grew up not feeling like she was a member of her own family: “I was a girl, so I was supposed to go back home right after school to clean the house, cook for my brothers and do the housework.” She is a member of the Batak indigenous group, where traditional gender roles are even stricter than in the rest of Indonesia, she says.

Flora’s father died when she was 11, and her mother ran away when she was 17, meaning she had to support her two brothers. “I was killing myself in Jakarta in an office job I hated,” she says. “So, when my youngest brother turned 18, I called him and said ‘Look, you’re old enough, it’s time for you to take care of yourself because I need to look after me’.” 

Flora decided to travel around Asia, and then around Indonesia. Once arrived in Bali, she decided to teach herself surfing, as she didn’t have the resources to pay for an instructor. Her hard work led to spectacular success. 

In 2017, she was featured on international sports channels and in an Asia-wide beauty campaign for Dove, and podiumed at the Asian Women’s Surf Championships. She also collaborated with numerous photographers, producing images that have built her a huge fanbase around the world. She has also developed female-only surfing programmes, called Flora Retreats, with some of the profits going partially to buy local surfboards for local girls, as well as to making custom-made swimming suits. 

“They don’t surf in bikinis, so I need to make them long one-pieces with sleeves for example.” “My main motivation today is to help more Indonesian women reach their dreams,” she says, adding that she wants to both give back to the community and lead by example. 

“You know, we [Indonesian women] have been brainwashed into thinking that we can’t surf and that our skin can’t be darkened by the sun. But that’s not true, and I want to show them. We’re strong and beautiful.”

Where: India
What: Body positivity

When Tanvi Jagadish’s mother discovered in 2012 that her daughter had been secretly surfing in the sea off Malpe, Karnataka, for three years, she was furious. Not only was she worried about the preteen’s safety—as the sea was perceived as “too dangerous for women”—she was also concerned about the consequences surfing would have on her daughter’s body. 

“My mum was really afraid that I would become too muscular, that my hair would become blonder and damaged, and that I would become too dark to attract a husband,” Jagadish tells Tatler. “She was actually so angry that I [was forbidden from going out] for a full year.” 

On her journey to becoming India’s sole female representative in the stand-up paddle (SUP) World Cup, and a seven-time national champion—as well as to being comfortable with her body—23- year-old Jagadish had to fight against a lot of societal and beauty norms. She describes herself as a “chubby and muscular kid”, and explains that growing up while navigating the surfing scene took an emotional toll. 

“I grew up being body-shamed a lot,” she says. “I always was the only woman in the sea, and because I was surfing in a swimming suit, people felt that it was an invitation to comment on my body. They called me fat, chubby and suggested that I lose some [weight]. It was really hurtful, growing up with that.” 

Her struggles were compounded by not having a role model to look up to in the international surfing community. “I used to feel very confused and lost because most of the foreign surfers I would look up to were really skinny and fit. Also, there was very little dark skin representation.” 

Historically, surfing was practised by men and women of all shapes, sizes, ages and societal backgrounds in premodern Hawaii and Polynesia, but the modern pop culture image of the sport is very homogenous: in contemporary movies, commercials and books, surfers are usually young, white, heterosexual men from Southern California or Australia. 

The body positivity movement within the surfing community is improving slowly, and Jagadish has taken the lead in her hometown. With one of her best friends, Rohan R Suvarna, she founded the Kadal surf school, a place meant to demystify the ocean, teach surfing, and provide the support system that Jagadish was missing when she started out, as well as be a safe space that can “show all the other little girls that they can surf and be who they want to be”, Jagadish says. 

Today, she finally feels supported by her family, friends and community, who help her secure the necessary technical and economic resources to allow her to thrive in international SUP competitions. And now she hopes other young women from her country who don’t fit the stereotypical “surfer vibe” can feel similarly welcome: “The surfing community can be so beautiful and supportive—I want to bring that to India.”

Where: China
What: Sustainability

For Darsea Liu (formerly Darci Liu), being known as “China’s first pro-surfer” wasn’t meaningful if it wasn’t associated with her conservation work. “Everyone has their own superpower,” she tells Tatler. “My gift is my motivation to impact society in a positive way.” 

The woman who would later change surfing history in China was born into a traditional family in Hubei, in the centre of the country. She had never seen the ocean, nor did she know how to swim before she was introduced to surfing in 2007 at 19 in the island province of Hainan. It was love at first sight—or at first wave—and she decided to move to the island the same year. 

But in 2015, after cresting with the world’s surfing elite and creating a path for China’s future surfers, Liu abruptly retired from the sport. Instead, she decided to focus her energy on raising awareness about climate change and beach pollution in the surfing community of Hainan and beyond. 

“Surfing [became] popular very quickly [in China], and that was as exciting as it was frightening” she says, meaning that the booming industry attracted a lot of investors whose priority was making money from it, but they cared little about surfing itself, and even less about their impact on the environment.

Liu took it upon herself to show how to keep the sport sustainable; after all, she says, giving back to nature is a big part of surf culture. She has organised beach cleanups since 2009, but she took it to the next level in 2022 by creating the Clean Island Movement. Once a month, Liu organises cleanups of the island’s more remote shores, and has also stationed specially painted rubbish bins on these beaches to discourage littering. She also arranges for these bins to be emptied weekly to keep the beaches clean.

The rubbish they collect from these beaches is then transformed into keychains that Liu distributes to volunteers; it’s a 360 initiative, she says. While a deep ecological dichotomy exists in the surfing community—being deeply connected to nature while travelling the world to surf new waves and therefore leaving a large carbon footprint—sustainability has been a growing concern in China. 

With her company Island life, Liu is hoping to change the norm. For example, with “surf competitions that are completely zero waste”. Liu has inspired a whole generation of surfers to protect the environment, and her initiatives are such a success that her work has been recognised by the local government. 

It’s a first step, she says, and it’s motivating her to take it to the next level. “I’m like a gardener,” she says. “I put seeds in people’s minds and water them until they grow and bloom into a beautiful garden.”

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