So the last time I posted I had highlighted how all the lowrider women I have come in to contact with as well as myself have faced backlash from our male counterparts. I do stand by my statement because it is mine as well as these women’s very real first hand experience with male lowriders and males only car clubs. But since my last blog post I got feedback from a lowrider painter, Ralph Ascencio, who had taken the time to read through my post. He made me aware that women had been a large part of the lowrider community and the car world in general during the early years. Although things changed along the way when lowriding became more mainstream and the sexual appeal of having women alongside the cars as eye candy created a standstill in the realm of women lowriders. The more common it became to see highly sexualized women posing on cars, the more the women became a prop. So I believe because of this the resurgence of women lowrider seems so new. I knew this generation of women lowriders and myself couldn’t have possibly claimed to be the first women lowriders. And there’s proof that women ruled in this community gave men a run for their money in the early years. Ha, maybe that’s why we were pushed out. Anyways here’s some information I gathered from Ralph as well as pictures from these early years.
We’ll start off with the Lady Bugs CC. During the 70s this car club was an all-female club that proudly customized their VW bugs. And you guessed it this car club was cruising all the spots that their male counterparts were. The car club was made up of women from Sun Valley, Echo Park and East Los. The founder of the club, Stella Perez, spent her Sundays recruiting women VW owners at the famous Elysian Park AKA a fundamental lowrider location. From there she would cruise the blvd. She became friends with and recruited Ruby Alexandra Beloz, who would become Vice President of the Lady Bugs. At the time they were completely unaware that they were making lowrider history by creating the first ever all-chicana female car club.
For more information about this club you can read an article by lowrider magazine. Link below:
https://www.lowrider.com/lifestyle/1011-lrmp-lady-bugs-car-club/
Then there was the pride of the valley, Linda Reyes. She was the mother of Mario Gomez a world famous painter. Her son worked alongside Bill Carter, another famous painter, to paint a ‘65 Impala “Choosey Beggar” for his mother. They raced to finish it for a car show and although they didn’t win anything everyone was proud of this accomplishment. Linda acted as inspiration for many of the people within her community. These neighborhood men would later go on to pay homage to her and her son by painting “Summer Madness”.
When it comes to Hot Rods and Customs three women stick out the most: Veda Orr, Shirley Barris and Marcia Campbell . All of them built and competed alongside the best of the males. And they won. Veda built her own motors and she was also the first female member of SCTA. She also made sure that the troops during WWII were getting information about what was happening in the U.S. to build the soldiers moral. Shirley was the wife of George Barris, AKA a creator of krazy kustom cars (such as the Batmobile). She acted as George’s back bone and if not for her kustom cars would not be what they are today. She supported him in all his endeavors and was right there by his side through thick and thin. Marcia Campbell documented chops tops and even how to articles through the use of photography. They are still useful to this day. Even though she bowed out of the Hot Rod mainstream she continued on with her passion for cars through collecting, restoring and even racing.
For more information about each women you can click the links below:
https://kustomrama.com/wiki/Veda_Orr
http://www.barris.com/history.php
Last but not least we have Shirley Cha Cha Muldowney. She was known as the First Lady of drag racing. She beat the best of the best and to this day still holds records. She quickly gained a reputation within this community as someone who refused to back down from gender-related issues. She had been licensed by the National Hot Rod Association. And became the first woman to have been permitted the qualifications to compete in the professional level categories.
For more information about Shirley click on the link below:
https://www.muldowney.com/shirley.html
As you can see we’ve been down. Our earlier car women were forgotten along the way due to the mainstream aspect. So here we are building it up again and battling the idea that women only belong alongside cars and not driving them. As said before this generation clearly wasn’t the first and it won’t be the last. My hope is the my work brings these women and their stories to a forefront. Because we all too often get erased or forgotten in history. This is the perfect example. But by highlighting these women I can hopefully inspire younger girls who want lowriders to get their own car. We aren’t props and remember the car isn’t a prop either. It’s important to point out that the mainstream still effects the lowrider community and more and more people are simply getting these cars for their aesthetic and not for the love of lowriding. We’ll talk about that in a later blog post. Thanks for reading! Also keep an eye out for more information regarding the early years of lowriding the roles that women played.
Ralph Ascencio’s IG: @88mango
