A Seea family photo in the VW tent. |
A Seea family photo in the VW tent. |
conciliacionconstrupaz VW tent and our spot on the sand at famous Malibu Surfrider Beach. |
Amy Lowry and Jenayl Peters before their heat. |
Shakas from Makala Smith. |
And they are off! |
We stayed cool in the hot sun under umbrellas. |
We got to meet Kathy Kohner Zuckerman, the real live Gidget! Kathy's dad wrote the 1959 movie, "Gidget" based on her diary about hanging out at the Malibu pier and learning to surf with the guys. |
Surfboard shaper extraordinare and musician, Ashley Lloyd showed us her band merch stored in an awesome vintage suitcase. |
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The rad hat pack. From left, Bing Surfboards' Margaret Yao Calvani; Ashley Lloyd and Amanda Chinchelli. |
Go Lola! Just before the finals. |
Lola wearing the Tourmaline under her jersey for her heat in the finals. |
We met Sayulita local Lola Mignot in Mexico on a surf trip earlier this year and fell instantly in love with her young, fun energy in the waves, worldly cultural perspective and friendly smile. It wasn't long before we returned to Mexico to shoot the Spring 2014 lookbook with the Seeababes from California and welcomed her to the family!
Lola is lucky to have the longboard-friendly waves of Sayulita be her home break and to have traveled around the world with her family. She recently scored her first cover shot in Foam Symmetry magazine's September 2013 issue, so we caught up with her while she was in town to participate in the Malibu Surf Classic Women's Longboard Open tomorrow to find out how it felt when photographer Nick LaVecchia delivered the news.
Lola Mignot makes her cover girl debut on the front page of Foam Symmetry magazine. |
Age: Turned 15 on the 4th of September
Born: In Paris.
Has lived in: Tahiti, in my sailboat, and Mexico
Parents are from: My dad is half Argentine, half Spanish, and my mom is from France.
Well, Nick [Lavecchia] told me "I have a surprise for you..." and I thought, well, what is it going to be? So he told me to check his Instagram and I saw the picture and he was like "yeah, that's the cover!" I was like, "wow, really?" I had never seen the picture and it was so pretty. I told my mom and she was so happy!
Photo by Nick Lavecchia. |
It's the best. It's just like hanging out with everyone, except we're in the water! We have fun, take party waves and push each other around. Everybody sings in the water... I love it!
All the surfers in Sayulita have taught me—especially my brother, my cousins, and my coach Israel. They're always there to help me and point out how I can improve my surfing.
I'm going to the ISA Longboard Championship in Peru this month, and hopefully on to Australia with my friend Karina. I'd like to compete and travel more, so I'm looking for sponsors who could help me with that.
Yes! I'm so happy that they invited me!
Graceful goofy. Photo by Nick LaVecchia. |
To see Lola in action surfing around frequent spots in Mexico, check out the videos below.
Lola Mignot, Sayulita, Nayarit , Mexico from higher latitud(Sayulita) on Vimeo.
Congrats to Seeababes Mele Saili who made it to the semi-finals and Amy Lowry that took third place in the finals!
With only five people per heat, there were amazing set waves that sneaked past unridden! |
Mele in the pocket. By Tim Reda Photography. |
Go Amy! By Tim Reda Photography. |
Not a sliver of brick wall went uncovered. |
Why can't we all just get a longboard? |
Therasurf caught party waves with kids with special needs. |
You had to be apart of a surf clubs to enter the contest. The clubs staked their tents across the beach. |
Amy on her way to a free surf. By Tim Reda Photography. |
Photo of Lauren Hill by Swilly |
Photo of Lauren Hill by Swilly |
We are continually inspired by intelligent lady gliders whose extracurricular passions include making art and doing good. Environmental activist Lauren L. Hill is wholeheartedly all of the above and more.
We were pen pals with Lauren before meeting her in person in Pisa, Italy after we came back from the girls surf trip in Sardegna.
Lauren currently lives between Florida (she was born in St. Augustine and grew up on Anastasia Island) and Byron Bay, Australia where her schedule is dictated by when’s the best time to surf. We caught up with Lauren to learn more about her many irons in the fire: a documentary surf filming trip to India; educating about gas drilling in Australia and her zine Sea Kin. The zine and website is a dense collection of stories and images compiled by famous surfers and relative unknowns that’s captivating from page to page. It swallowed up our afternoon in escapism like a good book while on vacation.
Read on to hear Lauren’s insight on the male/female dynamic in surfing cultures across the globe and what it means to label yourself as a feminist today.
Portrait of Lauren Hill by Takanami |
I love the slow pace of Florida and, maybe more than anything else, I love the food: datil pepper sauces, lemony sweet tea, boiled peanuts and black bean burritos are basically a recipe for home.
Floridian surfers have exceptionally low standards for surf, and I take a bit of pride in that. Haha. We are born and bred with an appreciation for anything rideable, because the surf doesn’t get amazing all that often.
In my experience, Australians are comparatively quite snobby when it comes to judging the surf. But they have every right to be. You have to be picky as a surfer in Australia, because you could spend every waking hour getting good surf, by Floridian standards.
I love the beach culture of Australia. I guess it makes me feel less like a beach bum odd-ball when I’m surrounded by lots of others who really just want to be playing in the ocean all of the time. And they actually make it a priority. I also love Australian humor. They have a way of not taking things so seriously that is so very different from American culture.
For the past few years I’ve had distinct 6-month spells that are starkly different. I try to spend the first half of the year in Australia and then the [second] half of the year traveling with Florida as a home base.
I’m a bit of a homebody, so I really love staying still for the first half of the year. If there is surf (and there usually is), a typical day revolves around swell, wind and tides. My favorite days are when I get to ride a shortboard at one of the punchier points in the morning, followed by a big lunch of veggies from our garden, a sunset longboard slide in Byron, and then just collapsing in bed from surf exhaustion afterward. In between surfs are for writing, reading, gardening, nap taking, or researching.
Photo of Lauren Hill by Swilly |
I’m working on a few projects at the moment:
1. The threat of Coal Seam Gas in our backyards here in Australia is really disconcerting, especially the inevitable poisoning of water that occurs as a causality of the process. Last weekend I visited another one of the exploratory drill sites in our area. It was perturbing to see drills already in the ground, hunting for gas so near to home, and so close to world class surf breaks. The local community there has been demonstrating for weeks, trying to ward off Met Gas Co. from carrying on, but to no avail. The amount of shortsighted greed and destruction involved in CSG in unthinkable. We must prevent these corporations from pillaging our homelands and waters. To get educated and involved read here. And watch: 101 East: Risky Business on Youtube.
2. I’m helping with The Economics of Happiness Conference here in Byron, held at the community centre March 15th-17th. It’s an amazing gathering of thinkers and activists from around the world who will speak and hold workshops about localization. All kinds of topics will be covered, including education, economics, art, surfing, health, community, and ecology, for example.
3. In April I’ll be traveling to India with a crew of four other lady sliders for the first all-female surfing/humanitarian documentary trip:
"With unshakable determination for a better world, we—Crystal Thornburg-Homcy, Liz Clark, Emi Koch, Ishita Malaviya and Kate Baldwin and myself—will travel through Southern India. Our goal is to document the ways that surfing, yoga, and ecological creativity are bringing hope and fueling change for local people and the Planet. We’ll be making a film of the journey. Help us fund the trip!
The Kovalam Surf Club in India |
I don’t really aspire to educate people, I just like to share what I’ve learned and experienced. Most people are more receptive to hearing first hand accounts instead of abstract facts and figures. And that’s the real strength and importance of surfers being environmental custodians—we’re canaries in the coalmine. We’re not in labs studying the slow decay of marine ecosystems, we get sick from ocean water filled with runoff and we are on the beaches that are littered with plastics. I appreciate book learning, but experiential knowledge helps bring environmental issues to life.
I tend to find trying to share ideas about gender much more challenging than talking about environmental issues. Most people can see the ways that we are altering our planet now, but it’s much more difficult for most to clearly see something as deeply ingrained as gender and how destructive rigid conceptions of gender can be for men and for women.
Photo of Lauren Hill by Swilly |
Feminism means standing up for equality and recognizing that the feminine has traditionally been overlooked and undervalued.
For example, women and men tend to surf differently. Instead of celebrating this, most people (women included) tend to judge women as inferior surfers. The way men surf has been accepted as the best way. In reality, women’s surfing tends to emphasize characteristics that are just different to the way men ride waves.
Feminism means that all people should have the right to choose how they want to be, unfettered by social impositions of how they “should” be.
Feminism is about supporting men AND women. Men have just as many crazy expectations placed on them as women—to look and act in certain ways—and men suffer from those pressures just like we do. Most men in western cultures have essentially been taught to deny any semblance of femininity. And that’s not fair, or possible, for any holistically healthy human, in the same way that it’s crazy to deny that all women also possess what we call “masculine” traits.
So many women of my generation and younger are terrified of the word feminist. They associate it with being angry, man bashing or think that it’s no longer relevant. It’s such a shame.
We need look no further than our own surfing culture to see gender imbalances at work. One of the founding missions of second wave feminism was to attain equal pay for equal work for women and men. Today in the US women still only earn .76 cents on the dollar for what a man earns for doing the same job. And if you want to see extreme inequality, look at the pay gap between women and men on the ASP world tour. Women are able to earn only a fraction of what men earn for winning contests. I don’t really follow contests or care much for them, but it’s still not fair, and it’s undeniable proof of the devaluation of women’s work and unique talents.
Images from Sea Kin zine |
I’d love for it to be a hub for creative thinkers, sliders, and do-ers; a place to share the stories that are so often overlooked by mainstream surf media.
I think that the average Australian woman tends to be more fashion-forward than the average American gal. When you combine that passion for fashion with the outdoorsy nature of Australian life, it seems like we end up with some pretty innovative takes on surf wear.
Sometimes the more popular line-ups around here look like fashion parades—filled with women and men getting really into what they wear in the water. As long as people are having fun, it’s awesome.
To be still and listen.
Photo of Lauren Hill by Dawe |
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From roller skates & longboards to vintage shades and shoes, we've got you covered at Seea HQ! |
Professional make up by Elizabeth Root - Amateur hair!! The girls having fun with their "bedhead" looks! |
Mid day yoga pause to refresh and reset. |