Promoting integrity, inclusion, and diversity in the water with the founders of Textured Wave

When Chelsea Woody, Danielle Black Lyons, and Martina Duran met online a few years ago, they had two things in common: they were all Black women, and they were all devoted to the sport of surfing. In this episode of Women on the Move, the three sit down with host Sam Saperstein to discuss their individual journeys toward surfing and how they all came together to found Textured Waves, a collective dedicated to promoting integrity, inclusion, and diversity in the water.

Finding their space in the surf world

Martine, Danielle, and Chelsea were all introduced to surfing as young adults, but they each had a different journey. Chelsea, a nurse, discovered surfing when she and her husband took a year off from their jobs in Seattle and traveled the world. During the trip, she learned to surf in Indonesia; once they returned home, they moved to California to more fully embrace the sport.

Danielle grew up in the bay area in a family of swimmers and water-lovers, but didn’t discover surfing until a college trip to Hawaii. Later she studied abroad in Costa Rica where she cemented her love for the sport.

Martina, from Florida, credits her parents enrolling her in a water-safety ocean program for her lifelong love of the water. She also didn’t surf until college, and took her first surfing lesson while studying abroad in Costa Rica.

In their 20s, the three pursued careers while each also embraced surfing. All three share that by then they had developed a deep emotional connection not just with surfing, but with the ocean and water itself. They also all shared a feeling of not quite belonging, as women of color, in a sport usually branded with a blond-haired, blue-eyed aesthetic.

“We all met each other online, just searching for our likeness,” Danielle recalls. “It’s hard to find other women of color in the water here in Southern California. Usually, I'm the only one who looks like me. So I think we were all looking for camaraderie and sisterhood and we found it in each other and on Instagram.”

Textured Waves

Once they met online, and eventually in person, the three women knew they wanted to share their experiences as women of color in surfing, and help other women feel more welcome in the surf community. Like the ocean, Black hair has both texture and waves, and so they settled on Textured Waves as the perfect name for their collective.

“We all felt like we can't be the only ones out here,” Chelsea adds. “And I think that was the drive to find other women that looked like us that had similar experiences, similar shared experiences, and then form a community. So others wouldn't have to navigate the space with such difficulty. We wanted to make it easier for the next generation and women, and for our age as well.”

The group is conscious of the history of the disadvantages experienced by the Black community and how segregation often kept Black Americans away from beaches and other water spaces. “I want to acknowledge that this is actually in our blood . . . when we came over from Africa we were coastal water people, and that has been lost through [racism and segregation],” Chelsea says. “There’s this stereotype that we aren't water people, and that's not true.”

Looking forward

In just a few years, Textured Waves has grown to be a force of change in the world of surfing. “I think the thing I'm most proud of is just when I see a Black woman or a Black girl enter the ocean for the first time and attempt surfing for the first time because they saw something on our page,” Martina says.

For the most part, they agree, the wider surfing community has been receptive to what they’re trying to do, especially after the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement. “I think what happened was a lot of people did some self-reflection of what it means to hold privilege in spaces and maybe how their privilege might unintentionally or intentionally have caused someone to be excluded,” Martina continues.

A partnership with Chase and Marriot Bonvoy Boundless credit card has helped Textured Waves to spread their message of inclusion to a wider audience—and it also allowed them to host their first retreat in Hawaii last year. This fall, the collective will head back to that surfers’ paradise to host a second retreat where they hope to introduce more women of color to the sport and continue normalizing their presence.

 

Full transcript here