SURF COUNTY, USA : REPORTER’S NOTEBOOK : Sexism Doesn’t Dissolve at the Water’s Edge

When I first picked up my Daytona Pintail longboard, it was 1968. I was 11 years old, and the only other female surfer I knew of was my best friend, Nancy.

Every summer morning at 6 Nancy and I would pile into the back of her brother’s faded red hatchback. (Nancy’s mother made her brother take us to the beach with him, but he made up for it by making us siphon gas out of the neighbors’ cars.) Then off we’d go to spend the day surfing at a deserted nature preserve on Cape Kennedy in Florida.

Because Nancy and I were beginners, and because we were the minority surfers in the water, our surfing territory was always a few hundred feet away from any of the guys. It never mattered that we might have been better surfers than some of those dudes; as females we learned fast that we were expected to give way to the fellas when they paddled over to catch a glassy wave set that had come into our territory. In the water, our goal was to not get in their way. It was fine that we were out there, according to the guys, as long as we stayed out the way.

Competition for the right to ride a wave was fierce among surfers, even when it was male versus male. To throw a girl into that sociological jumble was really asking for trouble. The intensity of territorialism probably forced Nancy and me to improve at a much quicker pace than beginning male surfers. Proving ourselves capable of turning a 360 or riding the tube or hanging 10 proved our worthiness to be out there with the guys.

But my days on the surfboard--punctuated as they were by daily barrages of verbal harassment--were doomed to dwindle. At 15, Nancy deemed herself too old to surf anymore. She sold her board and took up horseback riding. Without any female role models to draw on for support, I gradually began to surf less and less. And a family move to North Carolina finally put my surfboard into storage.

When I moved to Southen California a few years ago, my old Daytona Pintail got dusted off, rewaxed and plunged into the cold Pacific waters. Even at 30, I made certain to stay out of the boys’ territory, surfing after work on a fairly empty piece of Huntington Beach.

It was only after going out on a weekend morning that the old harassment reared its ugly head. Boys little more than my height were calling me off waves that were clearly mine. Teen-agers sniggered at my old longboard. Feeling too old and too tired to face the battle again, I paddled into shore.

But within the week I was goofy-footing my way across the waves at Huntington Beach again. A few days of dry dock put it all in perspective. The old adage “the more things change, the more they stay the same” came to mind. Just as in Florida, I would have to put up with attitude problems until I proved myself. Surfing is a growing sport, and in an ever-growing Orange County there will always be territorial tensions between the sexes. Some rules never change.

With more women surfing--from girls honing their skills on high school teams to pros competing internationally--the opportunities for female surfers to be on the cutting edge of the sport are beginning to roll in.

Yet women on surfboards remain a rare enough sight that we seek each other out in the water. While inlanders gaze at us in curiosity, the locals are used to us. Still, there’s a bit of consciousness-raising to be done as we all shred the waves.

A friend of mine summed it up best when he asked me, “Which is more dangerous to the female surfer--the great white shark or the great tanned jerk?” Sometimes I’m not sure I know the answer.