Women in Cold Water Surfing

It’s 5:45 am on a sand covered road just outside Portland, Maine. A line of small houses run along each side of the road, with dew still glistening on the carefully manicured front lawns. Slowly, a group of cars start to show up, parking one behind the other – some with boards strapped to their roofs, some without. There are hushed friendly murmurs as women start to unload wetsuits, surfboards and other miscellaneous beach gear from their cars. They begin their trek down to the empty beach where small, clean knee high waves are peeling across the glassy ocean. These women are here for a surf lesson.

Part of an all women-led surf collective, these lessons are hosted by “More Women+ Surf” in Maine. They provide regular free surf lessons to women-identifying individuals and members of the LGBTQ+ community in the Portland area. Co-founded by friends Pam Chevez and Britt Dahl, MW+S, since its founding, has been committed to making the surf scene a more welcoming and inclusive place for all those who want to participate. Both founders coming from different backgrounds – Britt born in Connecticut and Pam born and raised in Mexico City – have both chosen Maine as their local surf area and home.

Surfing is still very much a heavily male dominated sport. According to the prolific book “She Surf” by Lauren Hill, published in 2020, somewhere between 20-30% of surfers globally are women. However, when out in the lineup, especially depending on the location, it does not always feel that high. Yet in places like Maine, women have said repeatedly how many women they do see in the water. So why is this? Why do some areas have more women surfing than others? And who are these cold water women?

Alice, speaking from not only her own experience but also the experiences of other women she knows, says “...I know a lot of my girlfriends who surf, um, like they paddle out and ‘I'm like, oh, if I don't catch a wave within the first 20 minutes, these guys are just gonna think I can't surf. They're gonna drop in on me’. And there's that kind of pressure to prove yourself that you're part of the, um, mix, I guess”.

Even as the women from New England, Ireland and the UK all said that overall the lineups where they are, are mostly very friendly and the men they surf with are generally nothing but supportive, there’s still a lot of harm in just simply being the minority. Grace, pulling at the popular phrase, says “...if you can see it, you can do it, or something like that. So the fact that I couldn't see another girl sometimes made me feel like, Oh, I shouldn't be here. I'm not strong enough for this, or I'm not good enough for this”.

Cold water surfing is a unique battleground for increasing women’s, not only participation but also representation in greater surf culture. For most of the year in cold locations, surfing requires head to toe wetsuits with gloves, hoods, and booties. It becomes a lot harder to sexualize the bodies of female surfers when covered head to toe in neoprene. For this reason, it actually provides a rare space for women where they do not need to fear being overtly sexualized while participating in their sport. This is huge in not only drawing more women into the sport but in also taking one more hurdle out of the way when it comes to entering those more heavily male dominated, advanced surf breaks. 

Women have had to fight for decades for not only representation in the mainstream surf media, but also representation which isn’t objectifying. Laura spoke about this saying that even as brands try to somewhat diversify what kind of women they feature, they still include the woeful “Butt-shot” – “You know what I mean, like they’re doing bottom turns in a small bikini”. She sighs and continues, “...what you still see, a lot of is surf videos of men surfing and they just show, like the women on the beach, like as the cutaways in the video which, like really does my head in cause it's like ‘this is a lad space, and like we only portray women as the people who sit on the beach in the bikinis’ but I… just can't relate to any of that, because we don't have that culture like this. Like, a few weeks in the year we can sit on the beach…”. Anyone who has ever tried to have a true beach day in the UK or Ireland will know this sad truth. 

Lastly Laura adds, “So just seeing more people in wetsuits like men and women, to be honest[would be great] because it seems to be like a massive lack of people in wetsuits”. This is why photographers and videographers like Alice and Jonathan are so important. They shake up the idea of what can be not only beautiful in surfing, and what this means for women in the sport, but also what can be alluring about it culturally. The rise of the cold water niche is also a rise in opportunity for women to redefine a lot of the assumptions around what defines ‘surfing’.

This is why it is so important, according to a lot of the women in the community, to make it accessible. Wetsuit availability for women has significantly improved over the past even ten years but it is still not great. When the quality and warmth of your wetsuit is the biggest barrier to trying the sport in cold regions, how could a lack of range and availability of winter wetsuits not affect female surfers?

Laura remembers when she first started surfing in the winter almost a decade ago, she would have to layer a spring suit underneath her 4/3 millimetre wetsuit in order to go out because Roxy simply did not make a wetsuit thicker than 4 mm. In the depths of winter in New England, most surfers wear at least a 5 mm wetsuit if not a 6 mm on particularly cold days. 

She also said that trying to find boots and mitts which fit, as they all came in men’s sizes, was also incredibly difficult. Now many brands do carry women’s 5/4 mm wetsuits, as well as boots and gloves which come in a range of sizes. However, there are still brands which don’t offer any women’s wetsuits at all, and very few carry 6/4 mm wetsuits in a women’s fit. If they do, they won’t always be in stock very often as they tend to sell out quickly. 

Despite all of these challenges however, cold water surfing continues to grow and there are many groups across the world dedicated to making sure it grows the best way that it can. More Women+ Surf is one of such groups.

Pam struggled a lot herself to get into the sport as she moved to the U.S. from Mexico City right before the pandemic hit, leaving her isolated and without any form of employment as she waited tirelessly for her work visa to be processed. She had very little money and hardly knew anyone, but what kept her going was walking down to the beach everyday in Portland and seeing people surfing in the water. She knew immediately that it was something she wanted to learn. She found some free trial lessons available in the area and was instantly hooked. She didn’t want to stop after she had used up the two free lessons.

Pam, as a graphic designer and artist, went from surf shop to surf shop asking if she could trade some of her work for gear to use. Almost all said no, until eventually one shop, Black Point Surf Shop in Scarborough, ME said yes – clearly seeing just how much she wanted to surf.

Since then she has never looked back and has also made it her mission to ensure that no woman will ever have to struggle as much as she did to get into the sport. She said “How I got first into surfing was out of desperation…. I feel like that was like my mental health saviour”.

Now, running MW+S with Britt, they provide all the gear and resources completely free for any woman who wants it. They also work to improve the representation of women with diverse identities in cold water surfing.

In Ireland, Rip Girls is an organisation Grace volunteers for in her hometown of Waterford. Rip Girls works to build networks for teen girls who surf so that having a female friend group in the sport will keep them from giving it up as they get older. She also mentioned another group called T-Bay Betty’s which caters to all ages of women in the area. “Betty” is slang often used in surf and skate culture for a woman who does the sport. In Wales and nearby England, Laura also listed a host of different organisations set up to support female networks. She listed: Gower Women Surf Society, Pembrokeshire Women Surf Society, Bristol Women Surf Society, Channel Women Surf Club and many more. She says “it's amazing to see”.

As more women get into cold water surfing, there is endless hope for where the next phase of surfing will go as well as a great deal of excitement around simply getting more people into such a special sport. Now there is also a lot of advice which women who are already in the sport gave for other women just starting off. As a beginner surfer there is a lot which can feel quite daunting. However in the wise words of Laura Truelove: “the main thing is to just bloody enjoy it!”