Women Surfers

Although The Beach Boys sang about their “Surfer Girl” in 1964, she was rarely depicted on a surfboard in the water. Still, surfer girls were there and had been there for a long time. In fact, Mark Twain made an etching of one in Hawaii in 1819. Before that, there had been female surfer folklore on the Hawaiian Islands as well as in Tahiti, New Zealand, and Easter Islands for many generations. The truth is that in Northern California, where I come from, none of the women depicted on the back of those Beach Boys albums would have made it two minutes in the water – not in those bikinis, anyway. Actually, there has been nearly a century of Chick Surfer History in California, starting around 1920 with a trailblazer named Mary Ann Hawkings, who putt women surfers on the map. Marge Calhoun made a name for herself riding the California waves up and down the Pacific coastline in the 1940s, and Linda Benson reigned as the Pacific Coast Women’s Champion in 1959, 1960, and 1961. She also did all the “real” surfing footage that was shot for the Gidget movies. In the mid-1970s, Margo was also the first woman to go “pro”. The Association of Surfing Professionals finally created a Women’s Category in 1974. Other early female surfing icons were Linda Merrill, Jericho Poppler, and Rell Sunn.

KQED, the public television station in the San Francisco Bay Area, has had a fireball for an associate producer for more than twenty-five years by the name of Elizabeth Pepin. She has been surfing nearly as long, and has recently published a nice photo journal of local female surfers – from six years old to sixty-six, all shot in sepia tone. It’s important for her to remind us that people like her exist… and she does it with spunk and taste. She’s a rocker, too! She used to come into my music shop in the Bay Area, and I remember her having a very eclectic taste in music.

A poll in 1980 revealed that only about five percent of all surfers were female; however, a recent poll now puts that number at more than twenty percent. It’s not half, by a long shot, but it’s a nice climb nonetheless. Current top women surfers on the circuit include four time world champion, Megan Abubo, Lisa Andersen, Layne Beachley, who turned pro at the age of sixteen, Rochelle Ballard, who has been surfing professionally for nearly two decades and is the co-founder of International Women’s Surfing (IWS), Tita Tavares, and Serena Brooke. It’s great to see these positive female role models and a new industry behind them, such as Surf Diva in La Jolla, California, Wahini Surfing in Honolulu, Hawaii and Las Olas Surf Adventures for Women in Nayarit, Mexico.