Did you know there is a “Talking Heads” documentary that is incredibly funny, informative, and even thrilling? If you’re anything like me, you probably haven’t heard of one. So strap on your boardshorts and sunscreen, because I’m about to tell you about one of the most entertaining cinema experiences I have had in a long time. The film’s name is “Girls Can’t Surf.” If you’re struggling to figure the title out, don’t worry- the majority of the blokes might as well. The title is ironic. After sitting through its 108 minutes, I am positive you will change your mind and wholeheartedly believe that women can surf, unlike many within the surfing industry and pro-male professional surfers who were incredibly reluctant to let aspiring women surfers join the industry.
No need to worry, there are not just talking heads throughout the film. Alongside current interviews, footage from the movie’s stars and older interviews from the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s are shown. The film features early female surfing professionals basking in the ocean’s beauty while also showcasing terrible conditions for surfing like strong, windswept waves, giant waves, and almost impossible-to-ride waves. Other historical records like images from newspapers, crowd scenes, advertisements, and letters are included as well. While these surfers’ actions while surfing is captivating, astonishingly, the nuts of the film, and the badams and wits (the talking heads, themselves) give the movie its guts. The blokes, the bikini models, the waves, beaches, surfboards, and the action are hardly the supporting cast.
The movie’s primary aim is to explore the growth and development of women’s professional surfing focusing on the discrimination, misinformation, harassment, and awful wages and working conditions the early professionals faced. However, for me, the most impressive aspect of the movie is the character and quality of the women who form its central feature. It is almost hard to believe a more appealing set of characters has ever come from the history of a professional sport. Intelligent, brave, and graceful Jodie Cooper. The hilarious and blunt Smith twins (Jorja and Jolene). The wonderfully witty and truly brave Pauline Menczer. The sardonic, sharp-witted, and deeply funny Wendy Botha. The painfully candid, fierce, and gritty woman Pam Burridge. And then Lisa Anderson, Layne Beachley, Frieda Zamba, Rochelle Ballard and so many others. What a cast! Here are the good ones. The film also highlights some of the antagonists, which is not surprising. Most of them are men. Legends of Australian surfing such as Nat Young, Damien Hardman, and Rob Bain are guaranteed to be the bad guys in the film.
Nat’s considered judgment also suggested the best (male) surfers from any beach could beat any woman that I have encountered and that extends to Frieda or Jodie or any of them, which even managed to earn him a round of jeers from the spectators at the screening I went to.
One example of Jodie Cooper being unfortunate not to have won a world title is, (which she definitely earned one or two of). Her misfortune in her contests for the crown led her to say, (in response to the question of how she dealt with her fiercest opponent, Frieda Zamba), “With a big lump of wood!” Cooper also talked about the anguish and sense of worthlessness that she felt when, for some reason, she was given a tip that she was about to be dropped by her sponsor for being too gay.
While Pauline Menczer might have a world title to her name it greatly did in easing her long time suffered poverty.
Menczer gave the reason, I used to buy 25 pairs of Levi jeans. In America, you pay 25 dollars for them and in France, you sell them for 150. So that was the amount of money a nonsponsored world champion made in order to stay on the tour.
A man would get sponsorships from just winning a few heats. For a woman to get good sponsorship, she had to be conventional pretty, smile for the cameras and win more than a few heats. Winning world championships or being near it would help.
Sadly, Menczer does not fit the description that lots of the surf brands wanted. When she became a new world champion, she went to the states hoping to get sponsorships that would help pay for her travel expenses. To her surprise, all she got offered were sun glasses.
Pam Burridge’s fight to win the world title and the work she did to promote and develop women’s surfing as a professional sport almost cost her her life.
All you girls need to lose weight and then we could market the sport, is it any wonder that two years later I was an anorexic on the verge of death? A harsh reality from a leader in the surf industry made Burridge fall into a deep state of starvation and drug abuse.
Luckily for Burridge, she was able to break the cycle of self-doubt and health issues, thanks to her partner, Mark Rabbidge, and secure a World Championship title in 1990. The Australian sporting public, surfing fans, and fellow compatriots, including her chief rival, the ever-so grumpy, Wendy Botha, were ecstatic over her long anticipated success.
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