sex and surfing

The undercurrent of sex and sexuality that runs through surfing has at times overshadowed the act of wave-riding itself. Prior to the early 1800s, men and women surfers in Hawaii often used the wave zone as a venue for flirting and display, and a shared wave often amounted to foreplay. Westerners got their first look at surfing through sketches of nude Polynesian women riding gracefully for shore; crusading American missionaries in the middle and late decades of the 19th century railed agains...