Wahine World

Girls have come a long way since Gidget.

They travel into outer space. They sit on the Supreme Court. And they surf the world’s waves--confidently and in new shorts that stay in their place, unlike the women who wear them.

Surfing is being forced to confront its contradictions: Avowedly countercultural, it is also traditionally chauvinistic. Long regarded as ornamental sand maidens in a male-dominated sport, women have evolved from surfer chicks into assertive wahines--Hawaiian for “women”--who will not waive their water rights.

Now with their own grass-roots organizations, their own specially designed gear and their own magazine, more and more women once beached in bikinis are paddling out to shred and carve up the sea. They’re surfing despite the whines--and occasional whacks--of territorial dudes who still view women on boards as “kooks,” who “snake,” or steal, their waves.

“The first time I went surfing, the towheads in the water were all male, and I felt like they were vibing me--’Eewww, it’s a girl! It’s a geek!’ ” recalls Elizabeth Glazner, 32.

Glazner had always wanted to surf, and when she met Marilyn Edwards in 1993, she found her teacher.

As a teenager in Long Beach, Edwards, 43, used to paddle her red Gordie down the San Gabriel River, past the jetty, through the marina and across two channels to surf at a special spot off Seal Beach called “the Crabs.”

“When I complained about the bad vibes from the guys,” Glazner says, “Marilyn shrugged and said, ‘Oh, it’s always been this way.’ And that just infuriated me.”

And so did surfer magazines, with what Glazner calls their soft-core representation of women.

In August 1995, Glazner, a journalist and self-described “eco-feminist,” and Edwards, a speech therapist, launched Wahine, the first surfing magazine for women.

“We assume we have a place in the water, not that we have to fight for it,” Glazner says.

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Their place in the waves is sizable. There are 1.75 million surfers in the United States, and 260,000 are women--a figure growing by 15% a year, according to the Surf Industry Manufacturers Assn.

“There are some enlightened guys, but then there are those male egos that feel threatened by women and take it personally,” says Deb Hopewell, whose biweekly Surf Check column has been appearing for a year in the San Jose Mercury News.

Stories of miffed males abound, says Hopewell, who started surfing four years ago. Recently, she says, a surfer burned her on a wave and she kicked back to avoid a collision. He did it again, saying: “What are you going to do about it, Petunia?”

“It was so hilariously sexist, I laughed,” she recalls.

Women and men alike credit Lisa Andersen, the first women’s world champ from the United States since 1988 and the first mother to win a surfing title, with breaching long-standing barriers.

Andersen is tanned, blond, photogenic and, not coincidentally, has seized the attention of corporate marketers, such as Quiksilver and Motorola. Consistently named “favorite surfer” by young women in the National Scholastic Surfing Federation, she has inspired women to take to the waves. In less than a year the number of females in the Huntington Beach-based organization has doubled.

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Surfing has been encrusted with macho attitudes since it entered pop culture in the late 1950s and ‘60s. Surf sounds and beach movies established a lasting image of tanned, rebellious boys on waves and tanned, submissive blonds on shore.

“The girls were on the beach working on their tans; that was their job” recalls Dean Torrence of Jan & Dean, who, along with the Beach Boys, were icons of surf music in the 1960s. His music, he says, reflected the reality on Will Rogers State Beach--his beach.

But in her movies, says Annette Funicello, women crossed the line in the sand. Funicello’s character, Dee Dee, caught waves right alongside Frankie.

It happened, of course, only through movie magic.

“A pro tried to teach me to surf, but it didn’t work. I am not a surfer,” Funicello says.

Still, she adds, “women have come a long way, and it’s about time. It does my heart good to know they are out there surfing.”

It’s not bad for business, either. At Jason Senn’s Endless Summer Surf Camp, all 15 students enrolled in a recent weeklong session at San Onofre State Beach were female. The youngest was 12, the oldest 50.

What’s transporting many women into the sport is the long board, which began a strong comeback in the 1980s and has taken off this decade. The mellow long board is easier to use. And it doesn’t weigh a ton anymore.

Most liberating, however, has been the advent of women’s board shorts, cut to reveal only the wearer’s strength and skill. Men, say female surfers, have no idea how uncomfortable and humiliating it was to surf in a swimsuit.

“Trying to be radical is one thing, but trying to be radical wearing a swimsuit is another thing entirely,” says short-boarder Andersen, 27, who has an unprecedented three-year, six-figure contract to model the board shorts. (The endorsement contract for world men’s champion Kelly Slater reportedly runs into the millions.)

Earlier versions of the shorts were strictly “fashion items,” says Bonnie Crail, president of SIMA.

Marketing to women, she says, now mirrors marketing to men.

“We used to show how cute a product looks on a model,” Crail says. “Now we are showing product on someone because she’s a world champion athlete.”

Just yards from the beach in Encinitas is WaterGirl, a surf shop just for women. The brainchild of Ilona Wood-Rerucha, 36, WaterGirl opened in April. Already it has sold more than 60 boards shaped for a woman’s frame and decorated not with fire striping but flowers, birds and Hawaiian prints.

Like many of her customers, Wood-Rerucha came late to surfing. A lifeguard, windsurfer and bodyboarder, she had developed aquatic skills and an aversion to guy surfers. At 29, she decided the men were not going to keep her off the waves. But she, too, tired of tugging at her suit and waiting months for a special-order wetsuit.

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Women have probably been surfing for as long as men, at least in Hawaii. More than 500 years ago, Kelea, a female chief of legend, led the lineup off Puuloa Beach, Oahu, according to Tom Blake’s 1935 book, “Hawaiian Surfriders” (Mountain & Sea Publications). At the turn of the century, Princess Kaiulaini rode a long board at Waikiki.

But more recent accomplishments of women surfers are nearly as difficult to document as those of their board-riding ancestors. Last year, when the Huntington Beach International Surfing Museum decided to honor women surfers, staff worried that they might be mounting an exhibit-free exhibition.

Curator Caroline Cass, 49, who grew up surfing in Southern California long-board clubs, persisted and eventually spotlighted the careers of 1930s surfer Mary Ann Hawkins-Midkiff, the “mother of California surfing”; Linda Benson, surfing double for actress Deborah Walley in “Gidget Goes Hawaiian”; and Joyce Hoffman, the first women’s world champion.

Huntington Beach’s Surfers’ Walk of Fame will provide more concrete evidence of contemporary women’s contributions. The 3-year-old monument mandates that at least one of each year’s five inductees be a woman. Just last month, Hawaiian Rell Sunn, a top-ranked surfer in the mid-1980s, joined her sisters in granite.

In February, Andersen became the second woman to solo on the cover in the 37-year history of Surfer magazine. In its current 266-page Collector’s Issue, Kelly Slater shoots the tube on the cover. Inside, a lone editorial page features women. The ads, however, are awash in female buttocks, all on land.

“It’s just a sorry surfing fact of life that only a handful of women surf as well as the guys and we are not going to damage our credibility with our core audience, which is 90% male,” says Surfer Editor Steve Hawk.

Few photos of women apparently meet the required “Wow!” factor. Part of the problem, Hawk says, is that photographers don’t shoot women because they know they can’t sell the pictures. He has been putting out the word that now Surfer will at least take a look.

Other surfing impresarios may soon ride the women’s wave. Coca-Cola, an umbrella sponsor of the World Championship Tour, is considering a Diet Coke Women’s Tour next year. A tour with its own title sponsor will generate bigger contests and more prize money.

At last month’s U.S. Open in Huntington Beach, the world’s largest surfing contest, the men’s purse was $105,000; the women’s was $25,000. The prize money gender gap is partly due to the disparity in numbers. About 650 men around the world compete professionally. No more than 60 women do so.

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On a recent Saturday at sunset, after the day’s swells had flattened, a dozen bronzed, fit women of various ages gathered at WaterGirl and discussed a plan: their own competition circuit for surfing, bodyboarding, swimming and other water sports.

It was 1975, the International Year of the Woman, that the newly formed Women’s International Surfing Assn. organized the first all-women’s international surfing contest at Malibu.

“Then the guys who were organizing big events at big wave places like Pipeline and Sunset Beach said, ‘Well, I guess we have to give the women a tidbit,’ ” says Jericho Poppler-Barlow, 44, mother of four who won the U.S. women’s championship in 1970.

Momentum was sustained for several years until TV bailed on smaller sports and sponsors disappeared. Whatever money was left went to the men and the trailblazing WISA fizzled out.

“What the women need is their own tour. Run it themselves. No men,” Poppler-Barlow says.

Andersen disagrees.

“The girls aren’t as advanced as the guys. I need to watch some guy that just blows my mind, look for ways to improve myself. The guys are my heroes, and they brought me to where I am today, which is pretty better off.”

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Four years ago Marilyn Edwards returned to surfing to rehabilitate after a motorcycle accident. Every morning before dawn she drove to Seal Beach to surf by the lights of the pier, sensing it was time to start paddling when a wave’s shadow enveloped her.

She didn’t surf on the first peak with the small pod of guys. They had warned her off. Instead, she surfed down the beach and caught the second-best peak. Day after day, month after month, she surfed. One morning she didn’t come and the guys missed her.

These days Edwards surfs with Big Wave Dave, Doc, J.C., Little Wave Dave and Tom.

She’s surfing in the pack.