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Girls Can’t Surf ★★★★
At the beginning of Girls Can’t Surf, a female surf competitor is shown in archival 1980s footage.
“This is where the men are surfing,” she says, pointing to the left side of a wide beach where waves roll in perfect symmetry. “And this shitty hellhole scum-pit of the ocean is where they have the women.”
Girls Can’t Surf is all about the gnarly pioneers that changed surfing for good.Credit: Madman/ABC
She indicates the beach’s right side, where beyond a rock mass, desultory waves break like confused porridge. Yet she, and other surfing greats featured in this feature-length documentary, decide to surf it, and other crappy waves at 1980s competition events, anyway.
It’s the kind of spirit that fills the film’s exploration of how a group of rebel female surfers – from Jodie Cooper to Frieda Zamba, Pauline Menczer, Lisa Andersen, Pam Burridge, Wendy Botha and Layne Beachley – defied sexist attitudes and rules in surf culture and competitions to create their own professional sport.
After rising in popularity during the 1950s and ’60s, surfing became a professional sport in the late 1970s. But it was a monoculture. There wasn’t “room” for women and, anyway, men are just better at balancing on water, aren’t they? In more archive interviews, various (unnamed) male surfers provide facepalming utterances: “I don’t think they’ll ever be as good as the men, and that’s the same in any sport”, and “I think they just need to look like women – look feminine, look attractive, dress well”.
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As Girls Can’t Surf shows – with a winning mix of present-day and archival interviews with the heroes of female surfing – women were relegated to the sidelines. It’s ironic it was partly about room. “In the ocean?” you want to cry. “How big a body of water do you want?”
US surfers and sisters Jolene Smith and Jorja Smith Harmon, who competed professionally in the 1980s, recall their grandfather asking if they had embark on typing and shorthand classes after high school. “I remember looking at him and going, ‘Are you kidding? I’m going to be a pro surfer,’” Smith says.
Directed by Christopher Nelius, produced by Walkley Award-winning journalist and producer Michaela Perske and edited with poetic precision by Julie-Anne De Ruvo, Girls Can’t Surf makes you gasp, weep and punch the air in celebration at the same time.
Former world champion surfer Wendy Botha is one of many legends featured in this Australian documentary.Credit: Madman/ABC
The surfers’ stories of grit, injustice and injuries, of kicking against prevailing rules and attitudes, carrying on without official accolades or prize money and, for some, finally being recognised for their talent, is completely inspiring.
Supreme surf talent (and a billion-dollar industry) was inexcusably held back – but these gnarly pioneers changed everything.
Girls Can’t Surf is streaming on ABC iview now, and will air on the ABC at 9.20pm Monday, December 22.
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