Pro Surfer Alana Blanchard Opens Up About Eating Disorder Struggles
Alana Blanchard surfing. Photo: © WSL / Cestari Social
*Content warning: eating disorders, body dysmorphia
“Let’s start from the beginning.”
At the age of 12, Alana Blanchard witnessed the shark attack that cost Bethany Hamilton her arm. Though Blanchard felt it wasn't her story to tell, she would carry the trauma of this experience forever. The two girls, best friends, had grown up on Kauai together. They pushed each other to surf competitively and revelled in their shared passion for the sport. Blanchard was still navigating the emotional turmoil of the attack’s aftermath when she signed with her first sponsor as a professional surfer.
As is protocol for girls and women in surfing, Blanchard was expected to model in her sponsor’s swimwear marketing campaigns. (The boys, meanwhile, were photographed surfing.) “For a young girl, I was only 15 at the time, I never saw my body like that,” Blanchard shares in a YouTube video posted September 15, 2020. “I was shooting in bikinis, and they would show me all these shots and I realized, like, wow, my stomach is sticking out. I would be shot next to models that have these crazy bodies…I’ve always had an athletic body, and it really, really made me just pick myself apart. I didn’t even know that was bad at the time, but I just remember thinking I was disgusting.” As she looked for the first time through the lens of the surf industry’s expectations for women, her self esteem eroded.
A talented surfer, Blanchard quickly rose through the competitive ranks and earned a spot on the world tour by the age of 18. She competed all over the world and modeled in high-profile sponsor photoshoots. “It was super high stress, and I really didn’t know how to deal with stress that well,” Blanchard reflects in the video. When Ripcurl—the big-ticket sponsor of a young athlete’s dreams—came calling, Blanchard was equal parts excited and nervous. Posing alongside the brand’s thin, non-athlete models, Blanchard determined that she would have to lose weight in order to meet Ripcurl’s standard. Thus began the vicious cycle of disordered eating.
Blanchard bravely details her eating disorder story in the video, from her lowest moments through her journey to recovery. She sought professional help and learned the tools to reclaim her mental and physical health. Now a mother and stronger than ever, she says she still struggles at times with “negative self-talk.” But she’s resolved to carve a path forward for herself and others in her shoes which resists the unrealistic and unhealthy standards perpetuated by the surfing industry.
Holding the surf industry accountable
“Ain't no sugarcoating the fact that one of her best assets is her kicker, kinda because Stab is not in the business of sugarcoating, but mostly because Stab believes a girl with a kicker like Alana's should celebrate it.” –Stab Magazine, 2012
Alana Blanchard’s talent for shredding waves has long been overshadowed by the surf industry’s obsession with her body. Ripcurl’s campaigns have featured her modeling passively rather than surfing; magazines have marveled relentlessly at her physical features. Her image has been carefully tailored to serve the male gaze, and she’s become best known for the parts of her that the surf industry chooses to commodify and sell.
In an essay about the male gaze, Rebecca Olive, a PhD researcher in sports and gender, reflects on the complicated role surfers-turned-models like Blanchard play in their own marginalization. Referencing comments professional surfer Laura Enever made after participating in one of Stab’s voyeuristic boudoir photoshoots, Olive explains: “[Enever] describes how other women who surf had warned her about the behaviour of men on photoshoots for this magazine, about how ‘they were freaked out’ about the degree to which they were sexualised. And yet, [they] continue to pose for Stab, and to profit from allowing the magazine to sexualise them.”
Indeed, Blanchard has profited from her participation in hypersexualized editorials and campaigns. She was, at the height of her surfing career, one of the most well-known and well-compensated female surfers in the world—despite being outranked competitively by lesser-known world champions. But Blanchard’s fame and paychecks came at a steep cost: a toll to her self esteem and her mental and physical health, stemming from the conflation of her value with her physical appearance. Her male counterparts in the industry were valued for their performance in the surf; she, for her body.
Blanchard now connects the dots between her eating disorder struggles, her career, and the industry as a whole—and she’s not afraid to speak up about it. “We’re constantly looking at these [images] on Instagram and Tik Tok, what everyone else thinks beauty is, and we have such a high standard. I think it’s good to be open about it and to be real, because if I was growing up now…I couldn’t imagine how hard it would be.”
Blanchard’s story shows that the imagery produced and sold by the surf industry holds real consequence, and can cause real harm.
Life post-Ripcurl
“They really didn’t like that I had a kid.” –Alana Blanchard on the end of her 14-year contract with Ripcurl
Alana Blanchard’s appearance in no way deviates from the idealized image of the female surfer—thin, blonde, bronzed. But her public persona has evolved: no longer the doe-eyed darling of the male-dominated surf media, she has adopted a more natural look and become an advocate for a healthy plant-based lifestyle. After giving birth to her child, Banks, in 2017, she is more muscular than ever—focused on peak performance and having surmounted the immense, internalized pressure to be skinny. Now a mother, and still a force to be reckoned with in the surf, Blanchard has taken to YouTube to share a more personal side of her life. Her videos are candid, honest and unfiltered.
In March of 2020, feathers were ruffled when Blanchard announced the end of her relationship with Ripcurl on her YouTube channel. The reason, said Blanchard, was that Ripcurl didn’t want a mother representing their brand.
Blanchard and Ripcurl were synonymous for over a decade: the brand that dominated in a hyper-competitive industry, and the athlete-turned-model who made it rain for them. Their lucrative My Bikini campaigns splashed images of Blanchard’s body on storefronts all over the world, far from the ocean’s shores.
Then, Blanchard got pregnant. Fans took notice of Blanchard’s disappearance from Ripcurl’s Instagram, once indistinguishable from her own, and of the conspicuous removal of the Ripcurl sponsor sticker from her boards.
Blanchard’s pregnancy coincided with a greater shift in the surf industry: mergers and acquisitions, bankruptcies, the end of storied sponsorships. But according to Alana, the end of her contract with Ripcurl had more to do with her pregnancy than with industry hardship or market forces.
“Things ended okay with [Ripcurl]…they stopped using me pretty much after I had Banks, or found out that I was pregnant,” Alana revealed in the announcement video. “They really didn’t like that I had a kid. We kind of both decided that we needed to go our separate ways…they, yeah, no longer really wanted to use me any more. I want to be with a company that really supports who I am today, and what I’m going through, and that just wasn’t Ripcurl at the time.”
Alana Blanchard and husband Jack Freestone. Photo: Alana Blanchard / Instagram
Ripcurl gave a statement to Stab Magazine refuting Blanchard’s story: “When Alana stepped into the next phase of her life as a mother, we went to great lengths to support her throughout her pregnancy and months after,” the statement read. “Rip Curl wanted to re-sign Alana and continue her relationship on our surf team, and made an offer to do so, but unfortunately could not agree to terms. We are a little surprised by the comments in her most recent video, but can empathise with her disappointment in leaving the brand. We did some great things together.”
Why would Blanchard falsely claim that Ripcurl ended their relationship over her becoming a mother? It’s not clear what her motives would be for fabricating the story. On the other hand, Ripcurl has good reason to refute pregnancy discrimination claims. From Blanchard’s perspective, Ripcurl wasn't looking to support her as a mother. In fact, they saw her pregnancy as a threat to their brand.
Whatever the true reason behind the end of Blanchard’s Ripcurl sponsorship, it marks the end of an era.
Having now picked up a camera herself, Blanchard has her own platform to share what she believes in with the world. Her image is no longer controlled. And this mirrors a broader change in the surf industry: women are starting their own brands, publishing their own magazines, and writing their own narratives. Ripcurl, Stab and the industry as a whole will either adapt or fade from relevancy.
Welcome to the future of surfing.
