Blue crushing it.
As grumbly and grouchy as surf fans can sometimes get, there is no denying that we are all in the middle of a glorious, gilded shift. Namely, women professional surfers and their meteoric rise. While the men’s draw coming into the 2023 Championship Tour season is littered with familiar names and styles, it is the women who are providing true excitement. Rookies like Molly Picklum, Sophie McCulloch, Caitlin Simmers join the already exciting Caroline Marks, Isabella Nichols, Carissa Moore in what is certain to be a knock down drag out brawl to the dastardly mid-season cut.
Well, The New York Times, finger ever on pulse, has recognized this brave new world and, minutes ago, published an exhaustive profile on the state of women’s surfing, focusing particularly on Pipeline.
The piece begins with a recollection of the film Blue Crush, which depicted a fictional surf contest between women at “the world’s most famous wave,” and how it took one of its stars, Keala Kennelly, all of those two decades to bring it to reality. “It had been a dream of mine to have a legit women’s event at Pipeline,” she declared before the just-wrapped Pipe Masters which was won by the aforementioned Picklum.
“If I had known it would take half a century to get a contest at Pipe or pay parity, I probably would have given up,” added Patti Paniccia, one of professional surfing’s founders.
The work of Kennelly and others is chronicled, building to the present day with Tyler Wright about to paddle out at Pipe, declaring, “It takes a lot of minor, small, minute shifts for progress to really happen. My view of the overall picture is that women’s equality takes a long time because we’re only getting the investment today. Give us 50 years of insane money and equality and access and value and inclusive lineups and you’ll have a pretty similar product (to the men’s side).”
The future is then presented in the form of Moana Jones Wong, how she battled through social perceptions that women did not belong out at Pipeline in order to carve a place for herself and others, before ending appropriately with the world’s greatest surfer Carissa Moore then back to Picklum and the glories just over the horizon.
You must read in full but tell me you aren’t appropriately moved.
Tell me you aren’t equally excited for the women this year.
Equality for the win.
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Nah, I just think you’re holding back your best work from BG. You got the chops, no doubt, but Rielly probably doesn’t pay you enough to give us the best you have.
Somebody’s gotta step into this gaping void.
Tyler talked a big game at pipe. Whinged about getting no time to practice and the. When the swell was overheard refused to paddle out with the rest of the girls and they waited for the swell to drop. Won the Maui event and called herself a pipe master for not getting barrelled a d doing the same lame ugly drop wallet. She is old news. New breed molly and Sierra Kerr heaps better
I agree with you 100 percent, her record as California attorney general on mass incarceration is shameful. Nevertheless, I want to see a female president and she seems like the likeliest candidate. I would really be in a bind if a Republican woman ran for present. Who is president matters less than whether or not masses of people are willing to take to the streets in a general strike to demand meaningful action on climate change, mass incarceration, taxing the rich to help the global poor, etc.
So you would vote for a candidate based solely on their sex? That’s sexist! Pure and simple!
Its fucking idiotic
I’m always curious, how exactly do you think companies crunch the numbers on how “marketable” one of their surfers is and how much $$ their surfer is bringing in?
Let’s take Alana Blanchard, for example. For years, she was paid fucktonnes more than other women coz, well, boobs and bum and face and yeah. But she was average to shithouse in contests. But that was OK for Rip Curl coz she was “marketable”.
But, but…
How would Rip Curl etc ever know how much money Alana was actually raking in for them? Did they survey girls in ever shop around the globe after they made a Rip Curl purchase of some kind? Did they send a Google survey out to every surf-adjacent female asking them how much they’d spent coz of Alana?
How does any company actually objectively crunch the numbers and analyse what a “marketable” pro brings in for them you reckon?
and lab results/
trending…#womenarefrommars.menarefromuranus!
With respect, if you don’t see the correlation between elite women’s sport and lesbianism its because you don’t want to look. Especially in traditional “male” sports like football.
Mind you it also works in reverse in disciplines like diving and cheerleading.
That takes a lot of time. She would be lucky to get one wave a day.
Escondido is the place to practice charging big tubes like pipe.
I rolled out a bed this morning looked in the mirror and thought yep nuthings changed I still don’t give a fuck about pro surfing.
So its just a coincidence? And if its not a coincidence why not ask the question?
Surprised you mentioned and know about Patty Paniccia. She was an original Waialua Hawaii surfer, originally from California, who helped Rell Sunn organize the Hawaii Women’s Surf Hui. Those wahine charged big north shore long before Keala and the other needy, greedy egomaniacs claimed to be the first women pioneers.
Rell Sun, Patty Paniccia, Linda McReary, Lynn Boyer, Cherie Gross, Betty Depolito, Linda Davoli, Margie McDowell, Kathy Davis are just a few names from that era of real women soul surfers.
Patti went on to become quite accomplished and is highly respected in many areas.
Ahh I love a good surfing ” truth” re alignment
I know you can write better stories than the ones you’ve been selling Rielly for $100.
What’s the deal Jen? Why no wrap on Haleiwa or Vans Pipe wahine contests?
Why is elite women’s sport over represented by carpet munchers?
As a guess.. As kids, realising they were different and also were genuinely interested in sports that are traditionally “male” centric. It’s often a point of difference personality wise that drives people to want success and also have the required levels of competitiveness to want to win. That’s just a guess though.
Please lord keep their gaze from the free-surfing edit
what’s coming next year…? alternating periods of surfing for men and women…enforced by ACLU, Harbor Patrols, Coast Guards, Navy Seals, Marines…not unlike mixed-sex bathrooms, which are patrolled by mall security guards. required for alt-beach use permit: sex test! proof of marriage cert will allow for a restricted number couples…lesbians can surf at all times; men under 5’7″ must stay in the shallows and ride reforms…CT surfers can only surf when WSL deemed to save the beach ballons are flying…vagrants, hippies, and tourists will be chased out by The BlackHeadHounds (headed now by Makua and his has said that much on PipeMasterPublicRadio…
(ed note: D-S&S is entirely sober at the time of this posting and willing to continue at the right price &/or will type for beer!)
You done outDane yurself…
Can I mail you a case of everclear and a pound of ChemDawg for Christmas to make the comment section interesting again?
What makes you think I am a misogynist? I’m a feminist.
Funny how feminists don’t complain about equality in all the shit jobs.
Yep.
99% of sewage workers are male.
What is a feminist?
Someone who wants things like a female president of the USA, and equal pay for Carissa Moore when she wins a surf contest, compared to what Medina gets when he wins one. Also someone who feels like humans are more than animals — just because men are often physically stronger than women doesn’t mean they should run the world.
So needy.
You come across as more of an immature man hater than anything else.
I don’t hate men.
an inspiration (or instructions) to young women around the world that want to become pro lesbian
surfers.(of course I don’t ever read the Times.) there’s a real marketing niche, FFS!https://scholar.princeton.e… You can also get to this article by Google-ing “The average woman is smaller and weaker than the average man.”
Can I ask how has equal pay affected the mens tour? Has there been a drop off in the amount of male WQS surfers?
Unfortunately, no.
https://uploads.disquscdn.c…