Love, beauty and women who surf: Tourism, transnational relationships and social mobility on Siargao Island, Philippines

Abstract

On Siargao Island, as elsewhere in the Philippines, women who enter into intimate relationships with Western men can attain economic capital, global opportunities and social mobility through their partners. On Siargao Island, local women who surf differentiate themselves from imaginings of ‘other’ Filipinas by emphasising their relationships with Western men as being ‘for love’ not money. Nevertheless, the economic benefits that can accrue to local women in transnational relationships is observable. However, through identification with surf culture, women who surf possess a global social capital and transnational networks that extend beyond their Western partners, and which alter the dynamics of these relationships in the women's favour. Further, local women's social mobility and adherence to the ‘surfer girl’ identity creates a space in which they are implicitly challenging colonial and class-based beauty ideals in the Philippines that privilege fair or light skin over darker skin.