Gidget

Jessica's post reminds me of car trips I used to make coming back from a friend's farmhouse on long weekends.  Her mom made us watch old tv shows and movies as well and some of them certainly held up better than others through the test of time.  There was one movie in particular that I remember crying to because I was laughing so hard, however it wasn't what the writer had intended to be funny.  The movie was called Gidget and it was about a girl in the 1950's who lived near the beach and just wanted to surf with the boys.  Her nickname was Gidget because she was a short girl, or girl midget, and most of her frustration came from her not being able to do what the boys could do.     I remember her getting made fun of by a boy in a relatively harmless manner and her running home crying to her mother.  It was funny because it was such a dramatic and ridiculous reaction for such a minor incident.  The reflection of how girls close to my age at the time reacted to different things was funny because it was so seemingly weird and foreign to me.  Why didn't she just stand up for herself instead of wimping out?  Why did the boys openly think it was ok to call her Gidget? Why did the movie studio think that was an appropriate title?  The gap in time from then to now has shown what was once normal then is now so weird, it is funny.  (We also couldn't help but laugh at the terrible greenscreen effects of the surfing.  I'm sure at the time it was fine, but with all the realistic special effects we have today to compare it to it was laughable how fake it looked).