Female surfers will be allowed to compete at Lower Trestles

The top 17 female surfers in the world, a list that currently includes Alana Blanchard, Carissa Moore, Sally Fitzgibbons and Lakey Peterson, will finally get their shot at showing the boys that surfing like a girl can be a good thing.

On Tuesday, the Assn. of Surfing Professionals announced in a tweet that female surfers will finally have the chance to compete at Lower Trestles in northern San Diego County, one of surfing’s most revered breaks, as part of the 2014 ASP Women’s World Championship Tour.

“To have a contest for the women at Lower Trestles is so big and I think all the girls are excited to have such a high-performance wave as a part of our tour next year,” Carissa Moore, the 2011 ASP women’s world champion, told The Times.

“All the women surfers have definitely been campaigning for better venues and surfing more quality waves,” Moore added.

The addition of female surfers to such an elite location could not have come at a better time for the surfing community.

Three-time world champion surfer Cori Schumacher this month delivered more than 20,000 signatures from angry fans to Roxy’s Huntington Beach office protesting the company’s racy ads that focus more on women’s bodies than their talents in the water.

“As a lifelong surfer, I’ve seen the sexism and objectification women face on a daily basis in this sport,” Schumacher said in a news release. “Roxy’s recent ad ... reinforces the inequalities women face in surfing and other sports.”

According to Dave Prodan, ASP’s VP of communications, the tour’s new owners are committed to changing that image.

“I think beauty should be absolutely celebrated in surfing, I think it just comes down to balance,” he said. “I think the girls at the elite level are incredibly balanced individuals. Obviously they are very beautiful and incredibly athletic, but they are also great human beings.”

Prodan noted that the ASP’s new owners have publicly committed to making women’s surfing a bigger part of both its business plan and its philosophy in the coming year, a change surfers like Moore are thrilled about.

“All the women have so much to offer. All of them have such a high talent level,” Moore said. “Unfortunately surfing in the conditions we are given most of the time, we aren’t really allowed to open up and show how progressive we’ve gotten, but you know with a wave like [Trestles] I think we’ll really be able to show what we have in our bag of tricks.”

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