Waterpeople Podcast
Stories about the aquatic experiences that shape us.
Listen with Lauren L. Hill and Dave Rastovich as they talk story with some of the most adept waterfolk on the planet.
Waterpeople is a gathering place for our global ocean community to dive into the themes of watery lives lived well: ecology, adventure, community, activism, science, egalitarianism, inclusivity, meaningful play, a sense of humour. And, surfing, of course.
Waterpeople Podcast
Patti Paniccia: Raising the Bar
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What are you unwilling to ignore?
Through her experience in pro surfing, journalism and law, Patti Paniccia is a formidable advocate for equity in the water and the workplace.
Patti helped build the IPS tour from the ground up, organised the Hawaii Women’s Surfing Hui to create opportunity, and then carried that same tenacity into law and journalism—ultimately winning a landmark workplace discrimination case against CNN. We sit down with Patti to unpack how a young surfer inspired by chasing lost boards at Huntington Pier became the woman cold-calling promoters, writing qualifying criteria, and pushing the sport past the tired trope of “curiosities with too many male hormones.”
Patti takes us inside the inaugural 1976 world tour—its camaraderie and the mess of sponsors asking for wet t‑shirt contests and “date raffles.” She breaks down why equal pay without equal opportunity is still inequity, citing the principle that interest and ability grow from access and experience. We talk media erasure and the plaques that forgot women, and the everyday tactics it took to earn respect in the lineup.
Then the story widens. Law school at Pepperdine with dawn sessions at Malibu. Local TV, an Emmy nomination, and an on-air career shaped by a reporter’s craft: tell the human story first. Motherhood reveals the limits of “we love your reporting” as doors close and memos suggest “mommydom.” Patti’s lawsuit—gruelling and precedent-setting—shows what it costs to confront power and what changes when you win. Through it all, surfing remains the anchor: of strength, confidence, and perspective that travels from the lineup to the classroom, newsroom and courtroom.
If you care about surfing history, gender equity, media accountability, or how to hold a line under pressure, you’ll find a blueprint here. Patti Paniccia is one of professional surfing's under-celebrated architects.
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Listen with Lauren L. Hill & Dave Rastovich
Sound + Video Engineer: Ben J Alexander
Theme song: Shannon Sol Carroll
Additional music by Kai Mcgilvray + Ben J Alexander
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I ate them for lunch and was still hungry. When all was said and done, it just pushed me so far that I just got angry. And I that's not like me, but I just said, all right, done. I've had enough.
SPEAKER_01:Welcome to Water People, a podcast about the aquatic experiences that shape who we become back on land. I'm your host, Lauren Hill, joined by my partner Dave Rastovich. Here we get to talk a story with some of the most interesting and adept water folk on the planet. We acknowledge the Bungalak Nation, the traditional custodians of the land and waters where we work and play, who have cared for this sea country for tens of thousands of years. Respect and gratitude to all First Nations people, including elders, past, present, and emerging. This season is supported by Patagonia, whose purpose-driven mission is to use business to save our home planet. Thanks to all who entered our season seven giveaway by leaving reviews of the podcast. Adam Baldwin is the winner this season. He scored a three-night all-inclusive stay at the permaculture and surfing haven of Melankala in Indonesia. Congrats, Adam. Can't wait to hear all about it. Today, we're in conversation with Patty Penicia, co-founder of International Professional Surfers, or IPS. That's surfing's original world tour platform. Through her experience in sport, journalism, and law, Patty has been a formidable advocate for gender equity in the water and in the workplace. She helped form the Hawaii Women's Surfing Hawaii in 1974 and was amongst the six women who competed on the inaugural IPS World Tour. In the late 1970s, Patty stopped competing professionally to attend Pepperdine Law School, where only 15% of her class were women. After law school, she transitioned into journalism, working as a TV reporter and anchor before becoming a CNN correspondent. In 1988, she was nominated for an Emmy for her work as a reporter and producer on an investigative series on the failure of court systems to deal adequately with infant abuse. In 1993, after the birth of her second child, Penicia was fired from her job and replaced by a male reporter with no children. She then filed what turned out to be a landmark workplace discrimination lawsuit against CNN. She won, and the case made national headlines. Patty's the author of WorkSmarts for Women, the Essential Sex Discrimination Survival Guide, and has taught as an adjunct professor at Pepperdine Law School since 1987, specializing in employment discrimination law and First Amendment Law. In 2023, Patty was the presenter of Battling the Waves, a BBC radio documentary on the early years of women's pro surfing. In 2025, Patty was inducted into the Hawaii Waterman Hall of Fame.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, Lauren, how does it feel having just had a chat with Patty?
SPEAKER_01:I just wish that I had had the opportunity to connect with her sooner in my life, in my surfing life, in my writing life, in the work that I have committed myself to in and around surfing and pulling in more women's stories. I just feel like really ripped off for not having been able to connect with her sooner. She is such a vibrant leader, storyteller, surfer with oh my gosh, so much to share about the realities of where surfing began as a professional sport.
SPEAKER_00:100%. I am so grateful we got to have a chat with Patty, considering that when we started Water People podcasts eight or so years ago, and even earlier than that when we were first together, much earlier, so yeah, 15 years ago, one of the things that we really bonded over and clicked about were these sort of stories. Yeah. Like how there's all these peripheral stories that shouldn't be peripheral, they should be central. Yeah. And that we had this really good fortune of being traveling surfers and getting to meet through just friends and connections some of these people and how incredible their stories are and the level of skill sharing too, you know, like this is not just like, oh what a lovely conversation. This is like how to do life properly and better and how to upgrade ourselves and our cultures that we belong within.
SPEAKER_01:Patty's story has been, whether willfully or otherwise, omitted from those founding of professional story narratives that we all have inherited. Why? Why do you think?
SPEAKER_00:Oh yeah, you know, it's just because she's superior. She has a better intellect, a better way with language, she has understanding of law behind her, she has uh journalistic skills and perspective, and also skill in the water. She's taken off deep and steep on the peak. And you look at the people who have been those journalists over the decades who keep resurrecting the same old stories. I don't know if I've seen them taken off deep and steep behind the peak at sunset. They might have been just sitting on the beach, smoking siggies, drinking beer, doing that, you know, and and writing and speaking from the bleaches. And so she's she's a powerful force, and uh perhaps that has been a conscious choice from people who have resurrected those same old stories for decades, and it's the same old names. But you know, it it we could zoom in and be like, oh that person, this person, but it's more of a systemic thing, and I do think that when she's speaking about those periods in time like 70s, 80s, 90s, I can't help but think of like my dad and his generation, yeah belonging to that generation, and the lack of role models he had. Because probably due to World War Two and so many traumatized men either dying or returning from war and just unable to see past the next step in their day, the next step not wanting to go into how they feel or others or whatever, just a massive level of disruption and trauma in that generation. So there's a bit of that too, and you have to I feel like I have to think of where surfing sat at that point in time. You've got a place like Hawaii, huge military pre presence was bombed, Pearl Harbor. A lot of the people who are in surfing were connected with the military. A lot of the things that we use within surfing, wetsuits, surf forecasting, surfboard technology, all came from military institutions in Southern California.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:There's a lot of that culture and those sort of influences around those founding figures of the Western surfing story. So yeah, m that softens me up a little bit and go, Oh yeah, those men were maybe yeah, struggling at this at that time and could have done a lot better, but here we are now, we can do a lot better, and it's a different evidence it's a different world. And having these kind of conversations seems super important to me because I want to know what the right language is. I want to know how can I be kinder, how can I be more inclusive than that. Do you relate to that?
SPEAKER_01:Oh, totally. I love hearing from the elders of surfing Paddy's in her 70s, and it's so interesting to hear how both how different the world was not so long ago and how similar it has continued to be. And so what a gift to be able to still have these conversations with people who have seen and experienced and helped shape the culture that we know from the start in its modern iteration, anyway, and to learn from them.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, such an honor and a blessing.
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely. So we always begin by asking about a time or experience after which you were never the same. Would you please share a story like that with us today?
SPEAKER_04:I knew you were going to ask that. You told me. Okay, so I spent like the last week thinking about it whenever it came up, and I learned something about myself. What I learned was that nothing happened. I'm sorry to give you such a weird answer. I I'm not trying to be difficult, but nothing happened to me. I would make decisions and then I would just push to get them. Nothing said, oh, this happened, so it changed everything. Everything, all my all four of my careers were just nothing happened that just, you know, people used to ask me, how did you fall into CNN? It's like, no, nothing happened. I pushed my way in. And so it was all directed by me and thinking and pushing forward. There was not I try couldn't think of anything that really changed my life. I just kept pushing in one direction and then another, of course, and surfing was that first big push, you know, and always my heart.
SPEAKER_00:Well, that is fantastic. We've never had that answer. We've never had that response. Such a considered response. No, it's fantastic.
SPEAKER_01:It's great for people to know that that's an option.
SPEAKER_04:Well, I'm glad you said that because I thought they're gonna think I'm difficult with the very first question. So I started to think, well, maybe when this happened, you know, mm-mm, there's nothing I can think of. What about meeting your partner? Uh, my husband of 40 years. Yes. Of course, that was meaningful and having my family, and they're always first in my life. Yeah. I don't know that it changed that much, but it, you know, uh, which was the question, but oh yeah, uh, he's like the nicest person on the planet. Oh. I think he'd have to be to be married to me this long. Always tell him he needs me for excitement. Um but uh yeah. So we just celebrated our 40th anniversary and we have two children. They're grown now.
SPEAKER_01:Congratulations.
SPEAKER_00:Wow, wonderful. Yeah, wonderful.
SPEAKER_01:I'd love for you to tell us about growing up in Southern California in the 1950s and how the counterculture that was bubbling up through the 1960s played out in your life, if at all.
SPEAKER_04:Oh gosh, you know, I can remember when surfing came, you know, in the 50s. I was born in 52. So and it was for me, if for we we we didn't live by the beach. I mean, my story is not like it doesn't fall into the boxes like all my surfer friends, you know. I lived in the ghetto. But I remember a skateboard is where, you know, would I and it was I had my roller skates and I my dad gave me a piece of wood and he put the roller skates on it. And uh I painted it black and I wrote the word she devil on it.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, that's fantastic.
SPEAKER_04:1962, I'm embarrassed to say that, but I would just go blasting down. So, you know, that was when I felt like, you know, coolest, you know. There's nobody around. I wasn't showing off. I just felt the wind, you know, in my face and, you know, wiped out a few times.
SPEAKER_01:Well, we all do. You're a first generation Italian American. Um I'm curious about how that cultural foundation shaped your experience as an American young person.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, my parents were immigrants. They didn't get a lot of what was going on around me at school, you know, but they worked really hard and they did really well. It was like what we call, used to be anyway, the American dream. So I was kind of left on my own. And then I was able to explore, but I mean, I, you know, we would eat pasta for dinner five nights a week. Homemates. And oh yeah, everything. And and um, you know, I had a lot of Italian relatives, but but there weren't a lot of Italians around me. And I didn't even go to like New Jersey until I was like in my 30s, and I went, oh, this is where my my dinner table comes from, because it was like a the dinner table was like a microcosm of all of that, and all these relatives were like, Oh my god. So yeah, I don't know. Did that answer the question?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, definitely. So you grew up away from the ocean. When did surfing seed itself into your life? And I'm curious about whether there were any early mentors in your watery life.
SPEAKER_04:Oh, good question. My grandparents moved to the United States and they got a little place, a duplex in Huntington Beach. And uh my mom used to drop me there in the summer. I think maybe she had too many kids, she just get rid of one of them. Uh and my cousin, she would meet me there too. But mostly it was just me and my grandparents, and she would go fishing off the pier at Huntington every morning, and it was for lunch, you know. We would catch these little halibut, which you can't do now, but they weren't, you know, rare then, overfished then, and we would fish off the pier, and I would watch guys surf from where I was fishing. And I made up my whole vocabulary. I remember thinking, and I tell my grandmother, Grandmom, it's a smooth day today. And I think that meant glassy, you know. So that's where I thought, oh, I want to do that, you know. You know, it never occurred to me they were all men, and I was a little kid, you know, 11, 12, whatever. But yeah, I think that was the first. And she would go back to her house for lunch and make us lunch, and she'd drink a little wine and fall asleep. And I say, Grandmom, I'm going back to the beach. And she would go, Oh, okay, goodbye. Um, and I would stand by the water. There was no leashes back then. I would stand by the water, and as soon as somebody lost a board, I would run get it and carry, you know, wait out and say, Here's your board, can I try it? You know. Quite pitiful, right? Also, where were my parents?
SPEAKER_00:Did anyone ever share? Was it a cultural? Yeah. Oh, two.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:So when did you get your first surfboard that was yours? I started babysitting and I saved$114 because that's what it costs. And I bought it at the Greek surf shop in Honeyton Beach.
SPEAKER_00:Wow. Do you remember who had made that?
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, it's so funny. Uh, it was signed by someone named Weasel, and it was a 9-6 Maui model. And I was talking with Tom Parrish, you know, who Tom is, and I had uh, and he had heard me say, Does anybody know who Weasel was? And he actually got back to me, he goes, Oh yeah, he was, and he gave me his name. I said, I want to meet him, and he said, Oh, he's he's passed away. So I never got to thank him, you know.
SPEAKER_00:Did you write Shea Devil on your board?
SPEAKER_04:No. Yes. But but you know what? I have to tell you this story. This is the honest to God truth. Where we lived was not just a regular intersection, but it was five points where five different roads came together. You know how they all cross with big intersection and traffic lights. And we lived on the point of one where the two roads come. We were and the my front, there were cars going all around us. This is when I was really little, but there was a billboard in my front yard. And this was before I'd really seen Huntington, but I used to, I used to climb that for fun, you know, going across the and it, you know, it wasn't really high up off the ground like they are now. You know, they're like 40 feet up. It was probably, I don't know. I found some old uh not video, but film. It was that, you know, stuff without sound they used to shoot. And it looked like about 15, 20 feet. It seemed higher. Yeah, yeah. That was my idea of a good time. So that's that's maybe that's where She Devil came from. Maybe. And then I used to get busted doing that because at night my dad would come home and he'd notice splinters in my hand and go, You've been on the billboard. You know.
SPEAKER_00:Did you have brothers and sisters, Patty, at that age where you run with the pack or were you on your own?
SPEAKER_04:Well, I had a brother who's ten years older, a sister who's five years older, and another sister who's uh two and a half years younger. But there were no friends or anything. We were where we lived was very industrial. Like across the street was a junkyard and uh railroad tracks. So it wasn't like a neighborhood, you know. But we moved up in the world. We kept moving up. So how do you remember the day we got a bathtub?
unknown:Wow.
SPEAKER_04:I was running around the house. We're rich, we're rich. We'd only had a shower, which is actually better than most people in this world these days. So I don't know. I'm curious about how Gidget landed for you. Oh, Gidget. I loved Gidget. And I she's a friend of mine, Kathy Coner. Yeah. The real Gidget. I just love her. But the movie, I was a little bit older by then. I just thought, I I want to, yeah, okay, that.
SPEAKER_01:Me too. Actually, she had the same impact on me a couple of decades later. Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:Nice.
SPEAKER_01:I just found there were there were so few women captured as actually surfing, really. Yes. That she was one of the standouts, even when I was growing up in my surfing life in the early 2000s. Wow. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:She she was an amazing person. You know, she lost everything in the Palisades fire.
SPEAKER_01:Oh wow. Did you know that? No, I didn't know that.
SPEAKER_04:Her whole house burned down.
SPEAKER_01:Oh.
SPEAKER_04:And I brought her an ornament from Hawaii last uh December because she said, I I try to put up a tree, but I don't have so I brought her one from Hawaii and gave it to her. And you know, she uh she they moved to a condo instead. They had a really nice house, it was her parents' house. And they she said this is all we can do at this age because she's in well into her eighties, you know. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, we haven't had her on the podcast yet, but we'd love to. Hope we get to. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so at some point your family transitioned to living in Hawaii. Can you tell me about what led to that move and how it impacted your surfing life?
SPEAKER_04:Yeah. Now there's an answer to the question if you if if you were asking my dad. He he was he grew up in uh New Jersey and Trenton and jerk poor immigrant, not enough to eat, all of that, and then hanging out in pool halls, which at the time were you know not great, and you know, shiny shoes and at age six and you know, selling papers, newspapers. But World War II happened. And when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, my father joined up. Wow. And they sent him across the country after training him across the country to California and then to Hawaii. And he was here for like, I don't know, six or eight months, camping out at the Pali on the other side of the island. And they put him on a a ship and they were on their way to Japan to be the first invasionary force, which is like you know, Utah Beach at North, you know. Ugh. But on the way, uh they dropped the atomic bombs. And so instead, he was the first occupying force. But it was a peaceful occupation. But the bottom line is he saw a lot. You know, he had been taken out of this, you know, not a great neighborhood, and and he went back to my mom. He had been married, he got married right before he left, and my brother had been born, and he said, I've seen things. We need to go. We're gonna go to California and Hawaii. That's what he said. And so, you know, he slowly, you know, they moved there uh before my sister was born.
SPEAKER_01:Did he continue did he continue in the service?
SPEAKER_04:Or did he he leave after yeah? Yeah, he got discharged after World War II. He he was an enlisted guy, you know. It wasn't his career. Yeah, you know.
SPEAKER_00:And was his response when you said Patty there about wanting to take you all to uh California and Hawaii, was that because he felt they were uh more peaceful places, more healthy places to raise a family, or what was his motivation?
SPEAKER_04:Or was it about opportunity? I I think so. I think that he thought life was just downtown Trenton, New Jersey, which is you know not great. And he came out to California and to Hawaii and life looked good. You know, and he started his own cabinet making business, and then he became a contractor, and then he started building things, and you know, he you know did well. Um how old were you when you all made the move to Hawaii? Well, you know, I always ended up for a long time I was going back and forth, just like I do now. You know, I think the first time they they had to drag me here. I think I was like 12. It's like, no, I I don't want I'd rather stay here with all my friends doing drugs, you know. I mean, that's the neighborhood we were in. And eventually it occurred to me as after a couple years went by, you know, that we'll have your choice, you know, this neighborhood, which was okay. We had moved up a little. It was kind of a middle-class neighborhood in Los Angeles, or Hawaii, you know, and it occurred to me, oh, okay.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, Hawaii.
SPEAKER_04:You know.
SPEAKER_01:And where were your early surfing experiences there? In Hawaii. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:Waikiki, Alma Wana, um, Roc Pio, Kaisers, Diamond Head, Um, Holly Eva. You know, because now we're sure I was in the Holly Eva Surf Club. And that was an experience because all those guys, the young ones, they went on to be pros and stuff, but we were just the local kids, you know. Yeah, it was all those places.
SPEAKER_01:Were there many women on Oahu that you got to surf with at that point?
SPEAKER_04:You know, not really. Uh not until I was like maybe 17, 18. Then there were some, but there was never a lot. There were never a lot of people. Who was the who was your first surfing buddy? Oh, Sally Prang. I don't know if you've ever heard of her, but she always surfed better than me. She would say, you know, I I sold her a board I had. Well no, she sold me a board. She had because she she thought she was going to move to the mainland, but that only lasted a month. Uh but she said, How much do you want for the board? And and I said, She wanted 40, and I offered her 20, thinking we would negotiate. Because you know, I'm from like, you know, she's from Hawaii. And she goes, Okay, if if if you can only afford 20, that's okay. And I'll paddle out with you tomorrow and and see if you like it. And that was like, I have a friend, you know.
SPEAKER_01:You know. That's so sweet. That's so sweet. Okay, so how yeah, how how did you get wrapped up in the pioneering of professional surfing? When did that step happen from being a sort of casual young surfer into being part of creating what would become professional surfing as we know it today?
SPEAKER_04:Wow, that was not like an overnight thing. No. Well, we uh well, first of all, I had was living in Wailua, so this is like the North Shore. And so, you know, I don't think I was really ready to surf the North Shore, but that's where the way where I was. So we jumped into it, you know, and so pretty soon it was okay. It was, I mean, you know, I wasn't going to drown. So first we formed the Hawaii Women's Surfing HUI, and that was with we were just trying to help other women and trying to get more women in the water, and that was like some really awesome women, some of whom are still my friends today. Sally, uh Linda McCrary, Rel Sun, Jeannie Chesser, Lynn Boyer, you know, you probably know those names from surfing in the 70s. La Ola Lake, Claudia Nueva, and more, and more. Yeah. And so we would meet and we had an expression session, and we, you know, we did all these things to try to bring attention. We we had ding repair classes for young girls. And I think Lynn Boyer was only about 14, you know, 13. She was just a little redheaded kid out at Kaiser's. So we, you know, brought her along too. And and so one day I remember this distinctly. They said, okay, somebody needs to go talk to Fred Hemings and tell him that he needs to have women in their contests. And somehow it was me. I don't remember how that happened. So, and somehow I had a title. I think we made up a title so that I could go see him with like pro-competition director, but you know, we were, you know. And I called Fred, who I'm gonna have lunch with tomorrow, by the way. We're still friends, but the way it started out was a little dicey because I called him and I and I said, Hi, I I just cold called him, and he said, Who do you think you are trying to get me, tell me how to run my contest? So, but we met for lunch and he he he listened to me. After a while, I realized he wasn't as tough as I and I was I was like 19, I was intimidated, you know, very much so. But uh and then, you know, at the time there was no criteria for women, you know, so they and or men, but the only woman he had invited had been in Playboy magazine. And she's a really good surfer, and I love her dearly, so this is not about her. But I wanted to, you know, he let me run a qualifying contest, basically, you know, for women. And he said he would take the top six and put them in his contest, you know. So we did this for a little bit, and then one day he said, I'm gonna launch IPS, International Professional Surfers, and Randy Rarek's gonna run the men's division, will you run the women's division? And that's when he and what he said was Since you think you know everything about women surfing, why don't you come and work with me? And I still tease him, I still tease him about that, and I will tomorrow too, because usually we go out to lunch, me, Fred, and Randy, friends for life, and we'll sit down and Fred and I will start to argue, you know, about women's rights and all this stuff. And Randy will put the menu over his head, and then he'll go like this Are you two done yet so we can order our lunch? That's that's the nature of our very loving relationship.
SPEAKER_00:Wow. Wow. And and so what do you talk about? Like what would be in those conversations that get you fired up with each other and and yeah, in that dynamic.
SPEAKER_04:Good question. He will taunt me on purpose, and sometimes I'll just say, I'm not taking the bake, Fred, but he'll you know, he'll start start talking about women's rights and stuff. And I told him, you know, don't try because I I'm a lawyer now and I teach gender and law, and you'll wanna lose. But you know, it doesn't stop him, and you know, he'll just say whatever he can. I I think sometimes he knows he's saying it ridiculous stuff, but he just enjoys it.
SPEAKER_01:Provocateur. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I feel so frustrated at the writers and media makers of our surfing narrative for the way that your name has been either accidentally or purposefully omitted from this foundational role you've played in shaping surfing industry, culture, sport as we know it. Are you familiar? Were you familiar with Patty's name in this way that we know we know Fred Hemming's name, we know Randy Rarrick's name, your name has not been celebrated in the same way.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that makes me um think of like Patty, you were just saying with your friend who uh was invited to surf in the competition and l largely because of the Playboy shoot draw card for media or whatever, and that you don't you don't hold that against her, you hold that you you hold your gripe with the system that enabled that to be happening, and so I think a similar thing. I'm just like, how unfortunate that for so many decades a lot of people have fallen into those media maker positions because their buddies were in there and they hooked them up with a job, and they didn't take up those positions with any exposure to anything like what you teach, Patty, any kind of awareness of the power of the words that they use and the just the repetition of I guess low-risk stories too is a p is a perspective I've had for years where I'm like, these magazines, websites, filmmakers and everything are choosing these same old stories because they're kind of low risk, they're not gonna piss anyone off, they're gonna keep their sponsor money coming in, and they just kind of continue business as usual, and that's that's one of the biggest motivating reasons we started this podcast eight or so years ago, was because at that time we were so fed up, and yeah, Lauren, like frustrated by hearing the same names over and over and the same stories over and over when we knew there were people like you s in in these positions in the surfing organism that had grown stories.
SPEAKER_01:Who had grown so far beyond the tiny surfing bubble, like had blown the few dudes who have been celebrated as lords out of the water by like meteor like oh my gosh. Um so Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So we're just showering you with appreciation, and we're so stoked and honored to be able to have this conversation with you and also to perpetuate it and share it with others for some perspective and to change and to crack open for so much of my even my surfing life working with brands from you know the time I was maybe 17 until now, still working with surf brands.
SPEAKER_01:For so many of those years, I was told there just aren't enough women surfers to justify putting time, energy, and resources into funding films, into funding magazines, into funding stories or surf trips, giving you all the resources you need to upskill. Um and it seems like it was very similar during your day as well.
SPEAKER_04:Oh, I think you got you're making me so happy to hear this. It's a very enlightened perspective because you know it's the it's it's my favorite quote from a uh uh federal court when um uh a young uh woman sued Brown University when she was told under Title IX that she couldn't uh have the, they didn't have the same amount of scholarships for women, they said, because there were so many more male athletes. And and the court said interest and ability rarely develop in a vacuum. They evolve from opportunity and experience. And and that's what was never given to women in surfing. So they just perpetuated, and even now WSL finally said we have equal money, but they don't have equal opportunity. They have like what, 16 women and 32 men, or I can't keep up with the numbers. I know it's not even yet, but opportunity and experience, you know. So I know you're based in Australia, and I'll tell you one theory I have. Australia didn't want to be on the first world tour for the women, just the men. Okay, and there was no internet back then. So the Aussies never saw us. We went to Africa, we went to Rio de Janeiro, and then there were like three, three or three contests in Hawaii, but not in Australia until the following year. And so there's this whole continent that like argues with me sometimes and says, no, you weren't on the first tour. And it's like, hello, over here we were, you weren't on the first tour, you know. And when the WSL did that founders' cup uh at the Kelly Slater Surf Ranch, they put a plaque up with eight men who they called the founders of pro surfing. And one of the men, it was like Fred and Randy, and then you know, Ian, who did ASP and then some world champions, and one of the men said to me, Oh no, we we talked about it, but you you weren't you we didn't include you because you weren't you weren't there and you weren't at our meetings. And I told him you weren't at my meetings, you know, you get what I said, but totally it's still up there, and then then a few years later they put up a second plaque for like when in the 80s when Debbie Beachum and they named Debbie Beachum and stuff, but I don't want a third plaque. I always say I want them to fix that first one, you know. It's like because when I spoke at, and you, you know, your friend Paige Alms, who's just oh awesome, you know, she's what we envisioned, you know. When I spoke at the Women's Magnitude Awards, Red Bull Magnitude Awards, those women had tears in their eyes because I showed our history and I had slides behind me of us surfing, and I had the horrible headlines that were written about us. But the fact is that they had no idea, and that's the reason I want the plaque, not for me, because there's other women who belong on it too, not just me. It's like they can't keep doing that, but you know, but it does sort of it gets it gets repeated and repeated and repeated, and then that's the history. So, you know, it's hard to change.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, that's what we're that's what we're trying to do with the podcast in our own small way. And also it's a huge part of the work that I've been trying to do over the last 10 or 15 years is to nice keep injecting women's stories to dispel the myth that we haven't been there all along. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:And to create when I told them that they were there on the first tour, the whole audience, what? And they were like, and they were coming to me with tears in their eyes. These are the leading women in the world. Angry, angry.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, because because there hasn't been a place for that history to live in an accessible and repeatable way. Exactly.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, I think I'm getting too passionate here. No, it's Granny. What happened uh a year ago was Fred and Randy were asked to speak at the Outrigger Canoe Club about, you know, they have this thing as dinner once a month where they talk about Hawaiian history and sometimes it's surfing. And they said, Well, well, can we bring Patty? You know? And they said, Who's Patty? So I spoke with them, but the crowd has, you know, they've seen Fred and Randy forever. They said, We want to hear from her. So the three of us were, you know, and Jodie Wilmot Young was interviewing us, you know, she was the commentator. And at the very end in the QA, and it's true, and these were older women, not surfers, you know, but and men, and they were they just wanted to know about that. And at the very end, uh Billy Pratt, who's on the Duke Honomoku Foundation, took the microphone and said, We we've honored, we've inducted Fred into the Hall of Fame, and we've inducted Randy. We had no idea there were women and Patty, your turn is next. And I thought, I just said, Thank you very much. And I thought, yeah, right, you know, and darned if they didn't do it last November. I got inducted into the Outreager, Duke Hanamoku, Hawaii Waterman and Water Woman Hall of Fame. And it was like, after all these decades, you know, it was yeah, pretty wild because I never sought it out. It just fell to me. Never too late to rectify mistakes. One must wait until the evening to see this how splendid the day has been. Socrates.
SPEAKER_00:Wow. It's so great to hear you speak, Patty. Do you feel that there are other cracks that are letting the light in happening in that way?
SPEAKER_04:What a good question. I if then I would say it's yes, women journalists, because they get it, and some men, the younger generation, too, of men, you know, or men who love women, who you know, have shared with them. And I I do because like after I gave that one keynote at Surfing Heritage and Culture Center, and I went when I sort of ripped into the surfing industry, and I also talked about surfing journalism, how they were calling, you know, Gabriel Medina the world champion, and Stephanie Gilt was the women's like an other, you know, uh like an afterthought. A very prominent journalist came up to me uh about two years ago and he said, you know, I've changed the way I write ever since then. And then WSL, Jody Wilmot, Young, she asked me to go to lunch with her, and I had just kind of met her, and she invited her boss, Graham Stapelberg. I only met him once, and he said, Yeah, they're pushing for equality, you know, equal pay. And and and we talked about all these things, you know, about why, you know, and and they've changed since then. And I don't think it's all me. I think, you know, they were getting hearing from a lot of different people, but I was glad to have been a voice. And he asked me, and I said, Well, you can either, in terms of the pay, you you're gonna lose if someone sues you using these county beaches, right? Because these are government beaches and you can't discriminate. So you can either get ahead of it and not get mowed down by it, and you can be the leader in it, you know. But I don't know, I don't think that I was my voice alone, you know, did that. You played an integral role. That's why I invited you to lunch, Patty, because I think you played an integral role.
SPEAKER_01:And of course, movement movement and change requires the hands and the hearts of many. And you were yes, you were an an an incredibly important part of building this movement and building this change.
SPEAKER_04:Um Well, I would best if you asked Graham Stapelberg, he probably wouldn't even remember the lunch.
unknown:You know.
SPEAKER_01:But it's interesting to note that professional surfing's hand was forced, essentially. It wasn't necessarily a change of goodwill, if we have to categorize it.
SPEAKER_04:It was. Threats of a lawsuit. It was. Not m not my threats, but I but I didn't treat gender, you know, was teaching gender and law at the time, and I I had had a very good chance of of you know, and I told him that, you know. He I explained, you know, why, you know, constitutionally and legally, yeah. Like a Title IX almost. If you're gonna use county beaches, yeah, you have to obey the the county laws about accessibility opportunity. Right.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Um, so we've alluded a little bit to the sort of shadowy, underbelly, sexist structures of that early professional surfing tour. What made it great? What made it fun? What made that tour and your experience memorable?
SPEAKER_04:That first world tour, 1976? Yeah. The first 1976 tour was great because we had never experienced it before. No one had paid attention to you to us. We had an expression session and no photographers showed up. You know, I mean, it was like that. And then we'd had this horrible press, you know, before we left and during, but it was just so fun, you know? And and the camaraderie with the women and the men on the tour. It was the first tour for everybody. We were like, wow, look at this, you know. It's really great.
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SPEAKER_04:That that which part that it's the sexualization. Oh. Yeah, that was left over from the 60s, the beach bunny era, you know? And I I guess it's still around, but I don't see it as much. It's true, they didn't know what box to put us in. They wanted us to be sexy. They they asked us to do wet t-shirt contests, you know, stuff like that. And and when and when we were in Africa, we were surfing and the men's was the Gunstan 500, and Chapstick was the women's half of that, and it was a different sponsor. And the Chapstick ad guys, being the brilliant ad men they were, when we arrived, they said, Well, we don't have the money for your prize money. So we're gonna hold a nationwide raffle, and the winner gets a date with whichever one of you he desires. And we have a wet t shirt contest too. So they saw us as, you know, and we said no, uh, but they saw us as being able to exploit us like that, you know. And it we kept saying, We're professional athletes. even though we were only had been so for a week at the time.
SPEAKER_01:Make it till you make it, huh?
SPEAKER_04:Yeah. We had so much fun, especially in Rio de Janeiro.
SPEAKER_01:Mm-hmm. When you look back, what were the unwritten rules about being a woman in the water?
SPEAKER_04:On the North Shore, I don't I don't know that I encountered unwritten rules. I think a lot of the guys assumed, like they do for men too, but it's maybe more so for women that if you're out there you probably don't know what you're gonna you're doing. And I've rescued guys, rescued guys at Lani Akea. One was the lifeguard from Florida and another, you know, so it's like yeah, these surfers that come to you know Hawaii, especially in the 70s and they're going, oh, who can surf here? And then they go, oh, what's a rip? So I just know that I better take off on a solid wave from my first wave and I'd better not wipe out on the takeoff or I won't you know be getting any more. But it was usually pretty friendly. And I surf with a lot of the local guys from Hale Eva and Wailua too. And that was always fun and good.
SPEAKER_00:Is there much of a change do you feel in lineups these days to early days for you in the dynamic between older and younger men and women in any way at all?
SPEAKER_04:I'm not in the lineups like today. You know what I mean? So I'm I'm usually paddling out on I always say I used to surf great big waves with little tiny boards and now I surf little tiny waves with great big boards. So I'm not out in the lineup but I can just tell that they're not going to disregard or disrespect a a good woman surfer at all. Look at how many there are you know I can just go sit on the beach and watch and you know. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Patty I'm really interested in your transition out of professional surfing and into being both a reporter and a law professor. Was there a moment in your surfing career where you thought oh this sort of bias, this discrimination against us as women trying to build professional surfing this is structural. This isn't personal this bias. And I'm wondering if that realization changed or informed how you approached gender equity in your reporting work and in in the law.
SPEAKER_04:Well when I went away to law school there were only 15% women in the law school because it was still pretty new for women to go to law school.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:But it didn't bother me I was so used to it but I'd been used to sort of pushing pushing pushing right and I felt like with all this new information I'm going to garner here being a lawyer I can really you know they can't disregard me anymore. And I had been you know I would write to contest sponsors and they would answer Fred and Randy you know it was that kind of stuff you know but I thought oh I I'm I can write to people as an attorney they're not gonna you know disregard what I'm saying as much. So I liked that I don't know if that truly answers the question. And you know and then I did encounter that a little bit in in TV news because you know you could be at a fire and doing a great job you know reporting and you know the your your boss if you're a woman would say you know your hair was messed up and you know or why do why were you wearing that penguin pin you know or you know it's just and and then the men uh like they would would tell my there's a was a woman at CNN uh they she was like a Capitol Hill correspondent and she was overweight a little bit and they told her if you don't lose weight we're not going to re-sign your contract and then Peter what's his face during the Gulf War I don't remember his last name my God this guy was bigger than her and they idolized him so it's like they used a different criteria for judging women on the air than men and I was very hip to that I was conscious of it but I think I just played along you know played along for a while you know what what attracted you to reporting the news and storytelling on air what was it about that job I finished law school and I took the bar in Hawaii and then I took the bar in California most people can't handle one. I did too one in uh in the summer and then the next of opportunity would be the winter bar in February in California. And during that time I was doing some work for some lawyers and I I just I hated it. I don't like arguing you know I just thought oh what have I done you know I made a little mistake and then it occurred to me and plus I had to wear nylons all day. I didn't like that. You don't have to do that now but it's like I had to sit down and think again and I thought if I have to do something for eight hours a day I better pick something that I really like because I'm not liking this job. I liked law school but uh I don't want to be part of this club. So I like teaching though I love that it's a whole different occupation you're just teaching law. So I said I think I'd like to be like those reporters that we met when we were on tour. Oh really yeah you know I saw how they had access and you know I didn't think the stuff they wrote was so great but I thought I kind of like that job. I like and I never liked it because seeing my face on TV that was that actually when people would recognize it would just make the hair in the back of my neck stand up. I liked the access that I could go to some senator and say why did you vote for that bill you know or you know I I could I would meet the day's newsmakers whether they were you know billionaires or lived in a tiny shanty you know homeless I could I could meet people from oh everywhere everywhere and and ask questions and I had a license to do that and I saw so much and if these eyes are any indication it's like probably more than I needed to because I saw a lot of shootings and I saw I was first on the scene at plane crashes but it's funny because I remember bringing my surf skills the go for it attitude into the reporting and there's this whole macho thing was like if you cover tough things, you know, civil unrest I I was in that got shot at you know it's like you surf big waves you know there's like a there was like a little crossover there that was interesting. Yeah I don't know if that's really answering your question.
SPEAKER_00:Um it certainly does yeah uh I I heard something back a little where I felt like it'd be interesting to look back at those absolutely terrible journalist experiences you had on that first year or tour where you know men were coming at you women and just having absolutely ridiculous questions for you or statements at you all. Was that at all a motivator for you to get into that world to try and like return that a little as well? So not only about being in those juicy parts of the world where things are really happening and you're on that you have access to all the things you were just speaking about but also writing it a little like correcting it because of how how terrible your experiences were when you're on the road with journalists?
SPEAKER_04:You know it would be really easy to say yes but honestly I never put that together. I never did I just wanted to cover the stories no matter what they were so it wasn't like I was on a mission to write you know to control the narrative. Yeah and then when you're you know you're a a TV news reporter or a correspondent if you're national like CNN you don't you don't necessarily get to pick your stories either. They give you this you walk in the door you don't know whether to wear you know a little pig suit or a or a a bulletproof vest you know it's like uh and you just go. What did you learn about the power of storytelling in that work, Patty? I learned to humanize it. I learned how to write a script I mean I didn't learn overnight I I interned at as a newswriter at a Los Angeles TV station got my first job in Santa Barbara as a not bad you know for a small market that's where I met my husband is like and I could surf there and um you know you and and then I worked in local news in LA and you're getting feedback all the time you know for your writing you know and then and and uh and then finally with CNN and the LA Bureau and you know your bureau chief or your assistant bureau chief they review your scripts that you write and you know you learn to you know if you're gonna write about a new law that's passed you don't sit and talk about the legislator who proposed it and what the law is you meet a human who's affected by it. In other words you bring it home with you know making people feel the passion of the story among other things you know that's what I learned about writing.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:Can you talk to us about how motherhood impacted your working life you know that could have been something that I could have answered that question with but it it was just one more thing then that that was when I really got angry you know um because when my first daughter was born our first daughter the um I had just been to Atlanta at you know CNN Center in Atlanta executive vice president at CNN had said Patty we love your reporting what would you think about being a justice reporter we'd bring you to Washington you'd cover the courts you'd cover the FBI everything justice you know and I was like bring it on you know I was ready to just move to you know Washington DC wow and um I went back and I guess I was like six weeks maybe eight weeks pregnant when I was talking to him I I didn't think I was supposed to say excuse me Ed my uh I didn't have a period last week you know it's like I'm not gonna tell him you know you don't really tell people till you're three or four months out right yeah so a few months later I was doing a live shot and friends of mine in the newsroom who work the assignment editors that work in the newsroom I was coming over the satellite feed to Atlanta and he said look at Panicha she's fat and that's what he said and uh and uh well my friend said to him she's not fat Ed she's pregnant and he said another good reporter down the drain you know and so this was all testified to and so uh I wrote him a really nice note thinking must have gotten some impression that I wasn't gonna you know dare you know blah blah blah just want you to know maybe he felt upset that I didn't tell him when I was talking with him I don't know yeah just want you to know I'll be back and blah blah blah so I come back and I'm not on the A team anymore. You could tell by the stories they send you out to you know and he wasn't always complimenting my stories anymore I was like B team two and a half years later two years later I got pregnant with my second daughter you know I've done it twice in my life and when I was on maternity leave they uh they said you know what that's okay we uh we thought you were just auditioning for your he they said all kinds of things that were were fake and they basically I they said we've replaced you with a man who doesn't have to worry about childcare I said I've never brought childcare to you what you know and they basically fired me and they put it in writing all of that and they sent me a memo that said maybe you should think about mommy dumb for a career. Oh my Lord among other things they said what was your response I tried for well first thing I did was start crying but that was my initial response but yeah I gotta be tough with those guys I tried I I I I I called a friend who worked in defending big companies against sex discrimination and other employee lawsuits and I said Pam tell me what lawyer's name do you see on the complaint that makes your side want to die and she said there was one firm that you know I got lawyer connections right who there was one firm that brought us to our knees and they said can you give me the name of that firm so I reached out and initially they weren't interested but there's a woman one woman in that firm and she said what are you guys crazy we're taking this case you know and I tried for a year you know we deposed people I tried to they they they tortured me with deposition five days straight I don't even think OJ went that long they were really awful they sent private detectives you know this was a different time yeah right and they were in a Georgia Georgia has you know in the United States is each state has its own set of laws. Some are more friendly to businesses some to employees Georgia had no pregnancy protection law but it didn't matter because I was in California and we did but these guys didn't know that and they were these guys from the deep south and you know they just it didn't it didn't go well for them.
SPEAKER_01:And it so then after about a year now I'm really pissed I'm just gonna we held a big news conference and um launched filed the case and and then it just turned in I turned into you know lunch for people you know I either walked on water or I was the she devil but uh um you know because a lot of men were angry oh who does she think she is suing them you know and the women were going yeah yay you know it was very divided was there something about your early experiences in forming professional surfing and your experiences being trained as a lawyer that gave you a view to the institutional to the structural that empowered you to pursue a lawsuit I feel like so many women who would have had a similar experience would not have had the understanding of the law the experience of seeing structural bias as you did in surfing and many women have just probably put their hands up and and walked away without being vindicated.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah and and God bless them because I'll tell you why they sought me out and as I talked to all of them and I never charged them I I didn't want to take their cases but I would refer them to different lawyers I knew. But everybody's different and and it let me tell you it gutted me what they did. I didn't act like it did but the stuff they were doing they were like spying on me and you know it was awful. So I I never told other women you need to sue I would say here's your rights but you know you have to make this decision because this is what it entails and you know a lot of times they would go I just don't want to make a stink I think I just want to see if I can get another job. You know and then they would get one and they would move on. And that's sad because it it took a lot it took a lot to do a high profile case and you're luckier if it's high profile because if it's not they would eat you alive. Yeah yeah but I ate them for lunch and was still hungry when all was said and done I was just they just pushed me so far they pushed me so far that I just got angry and I that's not like me but I just said all right done I've had enough I've waited a year because they sent out oh yeah there was this they sent out one of their lawyers and I had been friends with this guy because I knew more about First Amendment law than he did and sometimes they would ask him questions and he would call me in the bureau when I was on deadline and say hey what should I advise you know and so I was quietly giving him advice they sent him out to make me an offer to come back to CNN after my deposition after five days straight and I told my lawyer I'm going home. I I'm exhausted I've been here every day for eight hours. So my lawyer went out and he wrote me a memo he said when they went out for drinks after or dinner I don't know where they went that this lawyer had started to get friendly with them and told him about he how he was having sex with a producer and I knew the woman whose name he used while they were watching you know like the OJ Chase and you know or something like that. He was like and I'm thinking these guys don't learn and I so that was when I said no I'm not going to uh I'm not gonna settle with them and and if I they if I do take take their offer to come back they're gonna hurt me in ways I can't prove they just got smarter you know so and that's what I tell my law students when I teach employment discrimination I'm not teaching you this so that you can take get your employer out of whatever mess they've gotten them I'm teaching you so you know the law and if they've done something bad you settle that case don't use this information you're getting you know yeah but yeah.
SPEAKER_01:What role did surfing play in your life through this season through early motherhood and and obviously very busy career life?
SPEAKER_04:I was still surfing when I was in law school I chose pepperdine on the beach at Malibu. I was surfing the boo every morning before class I'd get to class I'd they say stand up and brief the next case and I'd lean over and all the salt water would come out of my nose and all the other law students would look at me like what a weird girl and I'd always blow into class with soaking wet hair because I'd surf to the max come home shower off you know take my wetsuit off in the shower and blast you know three three blocks away to the law school. But surfing always gave me confidence I think you know because I remember being in and I remember this so distinctly in law school you you get one grade from one exam at the end of the semester. There's no quizzes there's nothing pressed that's it one yeah it's like taking a mini bar in each class you know and so I was taking my very first exam and the whole class was like just like you know it was oh everybody was so stressed and including me and I sat there waiting for them to hand out the exam and I thought I closed my eyes and I thought wait a minute I'm not paddling out to big sunset uh if I don't do well I'm just gonna get a bad grade I'm not gonna drown if I screw up right and I opened my eyes and it was like big deal I didn't say that out loud and then it was like I'm a surfer you can't hurt me with this B I'm glad you brought up is that corny but it's true it's so true. I'm not gonna drown here today stop worrying.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah perspective I'm glad you brought up big sunset I'd love for you to talk us through that iconic image of you dropping in arms wide wind blowing through your hair at big sunset can you set that day up for us?
SPEAKER_04:You know I and I don't remember exactly when it was uh taken I think it was Russ Cayley's who shot it because I have another photo where I'm same thing, you know, but on a slightly smaller wave I think that it was probably one of the contests because you know because I can see I've got like a jersey on you know and it might have been the Smirnoff well in my heat I don't know if it was that day but that was a big sunset day I mean I've got a picture of me and Al Chapman on the beach and it's breaking on the outer reef you know but uh in my heat they you know Fred's idea we'll put one you want to be equal we'll put one woman with in each heat of men it's like thanks Fred you know um so in my heat was Eddie I cow Terry Fitzgerald Al Chapman Sammy Hawk and me I know I'm I'm really curious because there there are people who push for a definition of equality in which men and women are surfing together in professional heats do you subscribe to that definition of equality or is it something else? You know that's one of the things Fred and I always argue about because he said you want to be equal you get out there with the men you know but I always tell him my quote you know yeah opportunity and experience Fred when you give us that then we'll be able to compete against the men look at Moana Jones wong at Pipeline you know I mean look you know they weren't doing that then and if they had you know they they could have competed easily but they never you know we didn't get sponsors we didn't get anything we didn't even get well I tried to get wetsuits but I have to tell you this funny story can I about the wetsuits on the first tour absolutely yes okay I have to explain it enough so you understand but Tuzo Jurger I think well from O'Neill said we're gonna give all six women on the first tour wetsuits full length because you know five of us were from Hawaii we didn't even own a wetsuit let alone a full length so they say we want you all to take your measurements you know hips waist bust length all this stuff well we sent it in we sent them all in but you know surfer girls got right and under our arms we got these lats right so our chest measurements were really big compared to most women we you know so they get our measurements and the women that were sewing them I don't know they when they arrived we couldn't zip them up because they had made it really skinny here but they had these huge pokey boobs in them thinking we had those those chest measurements meant we had large boosts we couldn't zip them up because they they weren't big enough around under under the chest you know here where our muscles are so the last minute O'Neill sent you know the usual boys wetsuits for us. So but I'll never forget that we couldn't figure out why and it took me years until I Realized why did that happen? And it was so funny the way they poked out in front, empty, you know. And you couldn't zip them past about, you know, just below your chest, and then it they wouldn't zip up.
SPEAKER_01:You mentioned you mentioned not being able to get sponsors, and I guess maybe the the one exception to that was can you talk us well? Talk us through candy pants.
SPEAKER_04:Candy pants. Yeah, you know, we we asked for sponsors, and the article they ran said we were curiosities endowed with too many male hormones. Thank you, Honolulu Star Bulletin. And then we did get a call from one guy who owned candy pants. They were edible underwear, red cinnamon flavored. And then he wanted us to be in a Waikiki display, you know, uh wearing them. You know, and it was it was just funny more than anything else. Of course, we said no.
SPEAKER_01:It's good that you could take it that way.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, well, yeah. We were sad, but there was just something really funny about the whole thing. And we would joke, this is what we would say. Yeah, we we we were, I remember we were in my living room having a Hawaii women surfing hooey movie, and we were saying, Yeah, excuse me, Mr. Visitor from Iowa or wherever, hungry, you know, how would you how would you like some candy pants? You know, they kind of wanted us to do something like that.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, wow. Is this in s in the set in 76?
SPEAKER_04:76, yeah. I've got the I've got the clipping from all of this stuff. I still have them, all the clippings.
SPEAKER_00:I've really enjoyed this conversation's sort of revisiting the language theme where at the very beginning you mentioned s being on the pier at Huntington and looking at smooth water and creating your own words and then becoming this athlete and ambassador for other women in the beginning of professionalism with surfing, and you're encountering people that are that are lackluster with their language. Let's say that perhaps. And then you went into your you know, storytelling and journalism work where you're crafting language, being very specific with language there, and looking for the hu human in the story, and now you're teaching, and I'm sure a lot of that is based around wordage and the language we use and the power of words. Where are you at with that now? Where if you have an opportunity to speak to us and people younger than us entering the surfing community, the surfing organism, what are some of your like dreams for the words we use, key words that keep coming up in the surfing organism, how we can do better with our language?
SPEAKER_04:Oh, wow. You you both ask such introspective good questions. I don't know if I'm up up to that uh level. You know, uh I think that these days I think they get the words. You know, it's kind of like they what I tell my students too, that you don't I think they just know now how not to get caught. Not they they know they still have some of the same beliefs, but they just they're not stupid about it because they know you you know what I mean. I think I think you could be in a room without me there or any women and you'll hear that kind of locker room talk still. You know, I think it's still there. Dave, you'd know more than me, but but um some men, not all, not all, you know. So, you know, they've refined some of the the words. I mean, you know, Phil Jarrett used to send me crazy. He do you know what the stuff he would write about us and he'd call us the C-word, and you know, I don't I've never met him, never want to, but I don't understand how some people now can hold him up as you know being a a voice for surfing. Phil, if you're listening, nice to meet you, but I still don't get it, and you owe us an apology. Yeah, I don't know.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, Patty, you've you've said that history wears the face of those who write it. If you could amend any of the popular surfing narratives that we hold as truth in our culture today, which ones would you take your red red pen to and how would you change them?
SPEAKER_04:That the women were there the first year of the Pro Tour, not just the men, they were part of it too. Um and um that we didn't surf very well, you know, that was the narrative that they would give out. And uh the women who were here on the North Shore with me sure did. Um Becky Benson, Blanche Benson, you know, Dale Dahlin, Kimura, Dale Kimura Dollin, Sally, me. There were only a handful of us on the North Shore, but all the guys that came from California, we surfed better than them. You know, I thought. But you know, just in general, that the women didn't surf very well. And they'll still say that. They'll they still say that. And that's why I showed some photos at that magnitude award because I wanted them to see. So I think that that would be two things of the narrative. I that's such a good question. I I'd have to think a little more beyond those two things. And and also what I really want young women to know is that we're all just part of a continuum. No one person does it all. And and that they won't know that until they get older. You know, you go into surfing and it's your generation and you loom larger than everybody before you because nobody before you knew what they were doing. And then as you get older, you realize there were people behind you and there's people ahead of you, and we're just all part of this path, right? I want them to understand that. And I want them to un the young women to understand that there's people out there like me who just love them to death for doing what they're doing, you know? And and for being, and like Paige, you know, and and all those women at those big wave awards. I was going, yeah, this is so cool, you know. Nobody's calling them curiosities endowed with too many male hormones.
SPEAKER_01:No.
SPEAKER_04:You know? So wrong on so many levels.
SPEAKER_01:You've lived a big, rich life in so many ways. How do you reflect on surfing as a meaningful way of shaping a path through this time on the planet ocean?
SPEAKER_04:How do I reflect on surfing? You know what I mean? You mean making surfing meaningful?
SPEAKER_01:Well, I guess I just mean like what can you tell young surfers about why surfing is worth putting their time into or not?
SPEAKER_04:I see. You know, I I I think I was just having a conversation with you know who Matt Warshaw is yesterday, and I was saying, you know, I don't know if this is weird to say, maybe some people will hate me for it, but I said, Matt, I never did post about my uh other people did about my induction into the Hall of Fame. He said, why not? And I said, because at the time there was so much going on in our country, I thought it would feel shallow, you know, when people are getting, you know, there's a lot going on. And I didn't know, but then I remembered how much I escaped from the Vietnam War when all my friends were getting shot and killed. And to to the North Shore is like there's no there was no TV or radio here, and so you just become surfing and you don't see or hear or feel, you know. And I do I I don't think that it's I'm not saying that it's an escape, but it's a healthy thing to do. And that's part of who we are. And and Matt was that's what Matt was telling me, you know, it's a healthy thing to do, and it's it's for your soul, right? It's for my soul. And you know, you can't just be fighting all the time, you know, in this world. And you learn a lot. You learn how to keep your mouth shut in the lineup. You know how to, you know, you know how to maneuver the lineup and catch the wave you want. You learn how to, you know, just there's just a lot of social stuff that I think surfing is. It gives you confidence. It gave me confidence.
SPEAKER_01:Time is precious. Thanks for spending some of yours listening with us today. Our editor this season is the multi-talented Ben Jake Alexander. The soundtrack was composed by Shannon Soul Carroll, with additional tunes by Dave and Ben. We'll be continuing today's conversation on Instagram, where we're at Water PeoplePodcast. And you can subscribe to our very frequent newsletter to get book recommendations, questions for pondering behind the scenes courses, and for recording the podcast, and more via our website, waterpeoplepodcast.com.
