At age 22, she was done, and with the creation of world tour pro surfing about monopolize the conversation for the rest of the decade and into the '80s, Trim was forgotten before she'd even had a chance to dry off.

Historian skewers Australia’s wild “surf-misogyny” in search for forgotten female champion, “She is the most overlooked and hardest-done-by surfer in the sport’s history!”

"At 15, just after winning her first national title, Trim was asked to pose naked, on her back, beneath a surfboard, for a full-page magazine ad."

Nat Young’s SURFER Magazine report on the 1969 Australian National Titles, a five-round marathon held that year in Western Australia, mostly at Margaret River, skips completely over the women’s event and doesn’t even bother to post the final results.

(For the record: Josette Largardare won, followed by Nola Shepherd. We’ll skip the men’s.)

This is actually an improvement over Nat’s take on women’s surfing from three years earlier, when he flatly stated that “girls shouldn’t surf, they make fools out of themselves.”

Is it fair to make Young the exemplar of shitty treatment of women surfers during this period? Probably not.

For all that Young built his surfing career on arrogance and bluster and overwhelming force (Bob McTavish described him as “Australia’s answer to Bismark,” and Young’s 1998 autobiography was shyly titled Nat’s Nat and That’s That), he has also proven to be open to change and progress and reinvention. Church of the Open Sky (2019), Young’s second autobiography, finds him in a spotlight-sharing mood, with much love and attention going to his wife and daughter.

On the other hand, from the mid-’60s to the early ’70s the Australian surfing universe revolved around Young like planets around the sun, and if American default position with regard to women’s surfing was to ignore it, the Aussie way to ignore and debase it in equal measure, and Young was certainly on point there—the opening chapter of Nat’s Nat contains a wistful look back at the gang-banging he and his Collaroy Surf Club friends did on the regular with a school-age girl Young identifies as “the Grunter.” Aussie surf-misogyny was truly in a league alone.

Much work remains to be done in simply taking full measure of the injustices, large and small, heaped upon female surfers over the years.

But at the same time, and without reducing or distracting from that injustice, surf history needs to swing its attention to the fact that, barriers and all, women went surfing, and loved it, and that some gifted few—then, as today—were incredibly good at it.

The history they made was barely broadcast at the time, or not broadcast at all. The skill and flair they brought to the game went mostly undocumented. The sport is paying for this still, and will be for a long while.

The mark left on surfing by women in the 1960s and ’70s in many ways consists of the mark left upon them—or, rather, the erasure.

(2020’s Girls Can’t Surf jumped the queue in that it presents the second chapter of a struggle that was engaged two generations earlier. No fault to the Girls producers, though, because good luck finding enough photos and movie clips of women surfers from the ’60s and ’70s to fill out a feature-length documentary.)

So how do we erase the erasure?

More to the point, how do we raise up and salute Judy Trim?

This is not a rhetorical question. I’m asking as a gatekeeper of surf history who is amazed and slightly panicked at the lack of source material available to fill out a basic Encyclopedia of Surfing page for Trim, two-time Aussie National Champion and three-time qualifier for the World Championships, and possibly the most overlooked and hardest-done-by surfer in the sport’s history.

Nearly everything I have on Trim bends toward indignity. At 15-years-old, just after winning her first national title, Trim was asked to pose naked, on her back, beneath a surfboard, for a full-page magazine ad. She refused, another girl took the job, and Trim claimed that was the end of her board sponsorship.

(Judy on the right, not Judy on the left.)

In 1968, Trim, as the reigning Australian champion, was invited to the World Championships in Puerto Rico. The two top-ranked Aussie men (Nat Young and Midget Farrelly) both had all travel expenses covered. Trim was left to wrangle the funds herself, and the round-trip fare from Sydney to San Juan was steep.

“At the moment,” an Australian newspaper wrote, not long before the world titles, “nobody holds much hope that Judy, the champion without a sponsor, will be able to go.” 

The Aussie team flew off without her. Margo Godfrey, another 15-year-old regularfoot phenom, won the contest—nobody in Puerto Rico was close. Trim would have given Margo a run for the title.

1972, same thing. World title invite extended. No money to pay for the trip. Except by this time Judy had come out as gay, meaning the sport had even less time or interest in her. Trim hung around competitive surfing for another two years, but by 1975, at age 22, she was done, and with the creation of world tour pro surfing about monopolize the conversation for the rest of the decade and into the ’80s, Trim was forgotten before she’d even had a chance to dry off.

So there’s my a grim and depressing little sketch of Judy Trim, and that’s exactly what I’m talking about.

It’s so lopsided. Trim’s story, as told, is important.

But it is also incomplete and buried in grievance and I don’t have the material to go any further, which in a way perpetuates the rip-off. I can’t find a description, anywhere, for example, of how Trim actually surfed. I have zero film footage of her, and just two action photos, both duds.

She was tall and blond, with big front teeth and an easy smile, and I gather from some of the Facebook comments posted after her death, in 2018 (she was 64; cause of death is unclear, but her post-surfing life was checkerboarded with drugs, alcohol, and recovery) that Judy was outgoing, loyal, funny, and smart-mouthed.

How to define Trim more on her own terms, rather than what was visited upon her?

Again, not rhetorical.

Any photos out there?

Did you ever surf Did you ever surf with Trim, or watch her surf, or know somebody that watched her surf?

How good was she; what made her stand out?

From the Facebook comments, I know there was joy and flash and stoke in Trim’s surf life, and that should be given equal time, at least, with the cultural beatdowns.

Here is Judy’s EOS page. It needs work.

(You like this? Matt Warshaw delivers a sassy surf essay every Sunday, PST. All of ’em a pleasure to read. Maybe time to subscribe to Warshaw’s Encyclopedia of Surfing, yeah? Three bucks a month.)

Load Comments

Bros but not the successful sort, apparently, save WSL CEO Erik Logan (insert). Photo: Bros film
Bros but not the successful sort, apparently, save WSL CEO Erik Logan (insert). Photo: Bros film

World Surf League brass begin 2023 terrified as Fox News publishes “Go Woke, Go Broke” expose detailing year’s progressive failures!

Anti-equality.

The World Surf League had an undeniably wonderful year, save asterisks hung on both its male shortboarding and longboarding champions. Wild growth, crazy uptick in partnership vectors, eight million people, and counting, still tuning in to catch September’s Finals Day, but the most colorful feather in that cap is the many social strides made on various social fronts.

Equality, inclusion, recognition, ally-ship, love wins.

Only the hardest of hearts could not stand and applaud but apparently this sort of approach is poison for the bottom line for just this morning Fox News has published an exhaustive list of “liberal books, movies, TV that bombed in 2022.”

Amongst the alleged casualties, Disney’s Strange World, featuring the first openly LGBTQ+ which had a $180 million budget and only made $24 million, the gay rom-com Bros which made maybe nothing, political firebrand Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s climate change documentary which, according to Fox, made $80, amongst many others.

Per Fox and, I guess, Christian Toto:

Christian Toto, editor of HollywoodinToto.com, said entertainment projects with “woke” themes tend to turn away audiences.

“The American public is increasingly aware of ‘woke’ Hollywood projects and often steers clear of them. The examples from 2022 include ‘Strange World,’ ‘Lightyear,’ ‘Bros’ and ‘Amsterdam,’” he said.

Netflix and Hulu also canceled “woke shows” and defended comedians that have been attacked by progressives.

“Hulu canceled its original series, literally named ‘Woke,’ after just two seasons. Netflix nixed an animated series based on Ibram X. Kendi’s ‘Anti-Racist Baby’ book. The streaming giant similarly stood up for unwoke comedians like Dave Chappelle and Ricky Gervais, understanding their robust ratings dwarf the attacks on them,” he pointed out.

Well yikes.

Will this string of un-fortune dampen World Surf League financier Dirk Ziff’s passion for doing the right thing?

Professional surfing turning back to the butts n boobs heyday of yore?

Candles lit for not.

Load Comments

Mark Richards at his late-seventies zenith, main photo, and, inset, nasty herpes zoster outbreak.

“Baby-faced” surf icon who loves “sex and tube rides” shocks sports fans with health emergency and photos of “ragingly infected puss-filled back!”

A horror outbreak of herpes-zoster!

Surf fans were left reeling, no, retching, on New Year’ Eve after Australia’s greatest ever surfer, the four-time world champion Mark Richards, posted photos of what was subsequently described by the great Jedaum Smith as his “ragingly infected puss-filled back.”

Richards, a sixty-five-year-old surfer-shaper who dominated pro surfing between 1979 and 1982 and described as “unimposing, with a baby face, thin shoulders, and an extra-long torso”, told fans of his horror herpes zoster, or Shingles, outbreak.

One month into my Shingles outbreak on my back, hip & stomach.

Only a couple of the blister scabs still to heal but I still have the constant burning, itching, numbness & stabbing pain.

Unfortunately i’ve ended up with PHN where even though the skin is nearly healed you are still left with the constant nerve pain which can last for weeks, apparently months in some cases. The pain is constant but at times it can be excruciating.

I’ve been out the water all December & with the amount of pain I’m still experiencing around my stomach I doubt I could lay on a board & paddle.

I’ve been cranky with myself for not taking more notice of the Health department ads on TV warning of the risk of Shingles when your in your 60’s, Stupidly I had barely glanced at them.

I’ve posted my Shingles recovery experience as I’ve had so many enquires on my progress. Also as a warning to talk to your Doctor about it on your next visit. It’s definitely not something to take lightly !!!

On the cusp of his first of four consecutive world titles, Surfer magazine asked Richards what makes him happy.

“Sex and tube rides!” said the cheeky twenty one year old. 

Neither is on the cards, right now, for the champ.

 

Load Comments

Hero Paul. Photo: Paul Myles
Hero Paul. Photo: Paul Myles

Surfer hailed as hero after picking up spastic shark off sand and returning it to lineup!

Anti-depressive!

Well, it is 2023 now and how did you ring in the new year? With a wild party filled with champagne lit strangers? A quiet affair at home in front of the fire? I enjoyed a prix fixe dinner in Hollywood, right next to either Mary-Kate or Ashley Olsen, followed by a nice chat with wonderful friends upstairs while fireworks popped over the rain soaked horizon.

It was wonderful though I was not hailed as a hero during any point of the evening unlike the surfer Paul Myles.

The Australian was surfing off Victoria’s Great Ocean Road when he saw a shark flipping and flapping on the beach. Now, most of us would have either let it be or quietly cheered its demise but not Paul who marched straight up to the beast in order to see if he could help.

“I just thought I’d give it a chance,” he told the Daily Mail. “I wasn’t sure if it was just disorientated or sick or whatever.”

After initially trying to poke it back into the surf with his board, he realized that he was going to have to pick it up, saying, “I thought I’d get it out in the water a bit further out, see if it would swim out to sea but it didn’t seem too well.”

Didn’t seem too well is right, violently spazzing on the sand.

Being a hero, though, Paul picked the shark right up, spazz and all, and waded it out to deeper water where it flicked back out to its home.

The captured video has since gone viral with animal lovers and people with hearts praising hero Paul for his actions. Some are imagining that karma will reward him but isn’t there some story about a crocodile, or alligator, ferrying some animal across a river, eating it midway and declaring “it’s in my nature to do these sorts of things” or some such?

No good deed etc.

Load Comments

The Inertia's LA bureau struggles with the eternal shame of white privilege. "I…I…I'm filled with loathing and self reproach. I feel bloated and empty at the same time."

Surf fans left reeling after fiercely independent and scandal-prone surf-adjacent website sold to big-digital for reported millions!

"Paternalism mixed with dismissiveness ladled with passive-aggression and served warm with the emotional seasoning of a college campus safe space genre."

The online publishing giant AllGear Digital has swooped on scandal-prone website The Inertia, gobbling it up for a deal reportedly worth millions as part of its play to become the biggest online collective  in the “outdoors and active-lifestyle space.”

“Building The Inertia has been one of the most rewarding journeys I can imagine,” said The Inertia’s founder Zach Weisberg, a Virginia Beach surfer who was inspired to launch what would become the template for the vulnerable adult learner tsunami following a talk by the Huff Post’s Arianna Huffington in 2010. “Since day one, we’ve committed to forging great relationships, sharing valuable stories from unique perspectives in a culture we love, and challenging ourselves to embrace new opportunities.”

Weisberg said the AllGear sale was “an intuitive next step… I’m so excited for this new chapter in our evolution.”

It’s been a wild and not always happy climb to the number six slot on the surf website ladder for the tabloid whose audacity often shocked hardened BeachGrit readers, with its use of racist tropes, “foul bait and switch”, “singling out women surfers as perpetrators of lineup violence”, as well as its now famous blood feud with  former world number four Dane Reynolds who responded to a poor review with “In my opinion your review sucked, your site sux, and i’m relieved to never respond to your silly emails again.”

Weisberg’s reply to the charge from Reynolds, wrote Chas Smith, “will go down in history as the pièce de résistance of the paternalism mixed with dismissiveness ladled with passive-aggression and served warm with the emotional seasoning of a college campus safe space genre!”

(Read here.)

No jobs will be lost in the sale, says AllDigital.

Weisberg remains at the helm as General Manager, Joe Carberry and Alex Haro are still gonna wear their Senior Managing Editor and Senior Editor badges and Mark Sawyer-Chu is still SVP of Partnerships.

Load Comments