Sasha Jane Lowerson, the first trans surfer to win a longboard competition.
With just one Instagram post, Rip Curl inadvertently placed itself at the center of the debate over including transgender athletes in women’s sporting events. After days of backlash online, the brand has now responded.
The controversy started last week, when Sasha Jane Lowerson, a transgender surfer, was featured in an Instagram post on the Rip Curl Women Instagram account as part of its Meet The Local Heroes of Western Australia campaign. Almost immediately, the post was flooded with negative comments and replies. Many fans and several activists even called for a Bud Light-esque boycott of the brand. Soon after, the post featuring Lowerson was quietly removed.
“Our recent post has landed us in the divisive space around transgender participation in competitive sport,” a Rip Curl spokesperson said in a statement emailed to surf industry news site Shop-Eat-Surf Wednesday evening. “We want to promote surfing for everyone in a respectful way, but recognize we upset a lot of people with our post and for that, we are sorry. To clarify, the surfer featured has not replaced anyone on the Rip Curl team and is not a sponsored athlete.”
The last half of the statement alludes to baseless accusations by many internet commenters that Rip Curl “replaced” longtime sponsee Bethany Hamilton with Lowerson. Though Hamilton has been reported to have parted ways with Rip Curl (and anonymous sources have claimed it was regarding her stance on transgender athletes), Hamilton was still posting Rip Curl-branded social media posts at the end of August, a month after Lowerson was featured in the Summer Looks Good On You campaign. Furthermore, according to this most recent statement from Rip Curl, Lowerson is not even technically on their sponsee roster.
