“I will swim!”
Trudy Ederle knew even before her feet first hit the water that she wanted to swim. Unfortunately, taking that first dive wasn’t so easy.
Trudy had had the measles. And while she survived, it permanently damaged her hearing. Swimming—or really any prolonged exposure to water—could further irritate her ears and cause her to go completely deaf.
In addition, girls in 1914 weren’t traditionally taught to swim. In fact, when Trudy’s mother declared that Trudy and her sister, Meg, would learn to swim, their father laughed, thinking it was a joke.
Well, it wasn’t a joke. And Trudy did learn to swim—taught by her father himself, actually.
But Trudy’s journey didn’t end there. As it turned out, she was fast—faster even than some men. She was invited to compete in the 1924 Paris Olympics on the first-ever female swim team for the United States. (An effort that ended in disaster after their coach refused to let them train during the three-week voyage across the Atlantic for fear they’d be taken advantage of by the men onboard.)
Once again, Trudy was told that she shouldn’t swim anymore—that women shouldn’t swim.
But Trudy had already declared her intentions: She would swim.
And so, she set out to do what no woman (and very few men) had ever done before—what everyone told her women not only shouldn’t but couldn’t do.
She decided to swim the English Channel.
Young Woman and the Sea is, at its core, a tale of endurance and perseverance in the face of adversity. Trudy is repeatedly told that women couldn’t and shouldn’t swim. She and many other women struggle to get sponsorship in the sport. One man tries to sabotage her efforts. And even Trudy’s sister, Meg, gives up on swimming.
But Trudy never does. She never takes “no” for an answer. And she inspires many other women to do the same.
Trudy isn’t the only inspiring woman here, though. Her mother, Gertrude, first declares that Trudy and Meg will learn to swim after learning that hundreds of women died on a burning boat because they couldn’t swim the 30 feet to shore—they didn’t know how. And even though Gertrude is personally scared of the water (her twin sister died in a drowning accident as a child), she encourages her daughters’ talent, negotiating a deal to get them in the women’s swimming association and sewing clothes to pay their membership fees.
Although Meg stops swimming, she still encourages Trudy. When Trudy struggles in the English Channel, and it seems as if she might fail, Meg jumps into the water to help. She puts herself at risk but gives Trudy the encouragement she needs to keep swimming.
A few good men help Trudy along the way, too. Benji, a fellow swimmer attempting to cross the English Channel, supports Trudy’s efforts. He recognizes that she’s not just trying to “outdo” the men, but rather attempting to show that women can also be strong and accomplish great feats.
Bill Burgess, one of the few men who has successfully completed the English Channel, is so amazed by Trudy’s strength and endurance that he volunteers to coach her after her first coach sabotages her efforts. Likewise, Trudy’s many accomplishments prompt other men change their minds about women in sports, too.
Then there’s Trudy’s father, Henry. Henry is a poor, German immigrant who runs a butcher shop. He wants to provide for and protect his family. And he thinks the way to do that is by arranging marriages for his girls and keeping them out of the water.
Meg eventually kowtows to this thinking and marries the man her father wishes instead of the man she loves. We never see whether her father was right about the guy she loved (he thought the man would abandon Meg because of her heritage), but it seems that Meg is at peace with this decision. She and her father seem to reconcile, too.
Trudy, however, refuses to be married off according to her father’s wishes, as she sees it. She just wants to swim. Henry is opposed to this at first, rolling his eyes and scoffing at Trudy’s achievements (when she breaks a world record and receives a blue ribbon, she’s compared to a cow at fair). But when push comes to shove, he realizes that he’s proud of Trudy. And he journeys to France to help Trudy as she takes on the English Channel.
As a young girl, a very sick Trudy lies in bed with the measles. A doctor tells her parents that she won’t survive the night. However, Trudy survives, and her family is overjoyed when she walks downstairs on her own a few hours later.
[Spoiler Warning] People rally behind Trudy in the final hours of her swim. And when they hear she’s lost in the “shallows” (a dangerous stretch of the English Channel that has claimed many lives), they gather on the English coast and light bonfires to help guide Trudy to shore.
Benji calls the “shallows” of the English Channel “hell on Earth.” He says that the current holds you there like the “hand of God,” and that it’s nearly impossible to break free.
Trudy and the other women on the Olympic swim team are chaperoned by nuns. A carving of a cross sits on a desk. Folks say they’re praying for Trudy to survive the English Channel.
We briefly see a man’s bare rear as he comes up out of the water. He had previously been wearing a jock-strap type garment but removed it since he “swims in the buff.” (We see the man in his makeshift garment in other scenes, too.) Women on shore scream when they see him in the buff, and he’s tackled and arrested by police for “public indecency.”
The swimsuits women wear here are modest by today’s standards. However, one woman is escorted away by police for showing too much leg. Trudy’s father is scandalized when she dons a two-piece suit that shows part of her stomach. (The one-piece she had been wearing was cutting into her skin because of its poor design and construction.)
Meg flirts with a boy as a teenager and voices a hope to marry him.
The English Channel is very dangerous to swim, full of potentially lethal hazards: strong currents, jellyfish swarms, predatory sharks and even unexploded mines leftover from World War I. These dangers are frequently cited throughout the film. We also hear about many men who drowned while attempting to swim the Channel.
When Burgess becomes Trudy’s coach, Trudy makes him promise not to take her out of the water, declaring that she will succeed or die trying. Burgess resists this request but eventually acquiesces. Later, when reporters nearly touch Trudy during her swim (which would disqualify her), he fires a gun at them as a warning to back off.
Trudy screams as she swims through a smack of jellyfish. Large welts cover her body where their stinging tentacles touched her skin. We see a shipwreck marking the “shallows” of the English Channel. And we hear many stories about swimmers who got lost and drowned there, since guide and rescue boats can’t traverse the waters to help them.
We see a boat burning in the distance, and we later learn that hundreds of people died in the accident—mostly women since they couldn’t swim. We hear about a 7-year-old girl who drowned. Several swimmers are rescued from drowning after failing to swim the English Channel. And we hear about more who weren’t so lucky.
When Trudy’s dad arranges a marriage for her, her mom tells her to “gut the chicken.” So, Trudy and Meg play a prank on Trudy’s betrothed by pretending to fall off a pier into the ocean. Not knowing how to swim (and not knowing the girls can), the man runs for help, terrified they’ll drown. And when he learns of the joke, he breaks the engagement.
A man throws a radio through a window in anger.
“A–” is used three times, and “h—” is used twice.” We hear the British expletive “bloody” a couple of times. Someone uses the Yiddish word for “imbecile,” and the Lord’s name is misused once in German.
Several people drink in honor of a man who died while trying to swim the English Channel. Someone drinks from a flask. People drink elsewhere. Meg is scolded when she arrives home late one night clearly inebriated and smelling of whiskey.
A man spikes Trudy’s drink with seasickness pills (which cause users to fall asleep) as she swims the Channel. She vomits and falls asleep in the water as a result, nearly drowning.
There are many sexist opinions about women’s sports voiced throughout this story. Namely, men fear that women are too weak to run, swim or compete in any way without their hearts exploding. Obviously, this is untrue. But Trudy and other women are forced to deal with sexist opinions of the press (who think Trudy should be baking in a kitchen) and sexist policies within the world of sports.
Women are restricted to a small corner of the pool where they can swim in tiny circles. And exceptions are only made for women “trained by professionals,” such as Trudy and Meg, during official competitions.
A man named Wolffe, the coach hired to train the women’s Olympic swim team, confines his athletes to their rooms under the guise of protecting them from the men onboard. However, he doesn’t want women to succeed in sports, so the confinement is to prevent the women for training during the three-week voyage to Paris for the Olympics. And his tactics work, since the women perform poorly after not training or even exercising for three weeks straight.
Later, Wolffe is hired again to coach Trudy on her journey across the English Channel. Not wanting to be outdone by a woman (he himself failed to swim the Channel), he sabotages Trudy. First, he starves Trudy, only allowing her to eat small pieces of fruit in order to maintain “her figure.” When Trudy points out that she’s supposed to be eating more food due to her training, he ignores her, and she embarrasses him to get him to back off and let her eat.
Wolffe also tells Trudy to swim the breaststroke (his own specialty and the only stroke he thinks women should be allowed to use). She ignores him and swims a stroke her female coach back home taught her instead. When she begins making great progress with that stroke, he attempts to disqualify her swim by touching her. And when that fails, he puts sleeping pills in her tea to make her pass out in the water (and thus allowing himself to look the hero by rescuing her).
People lie. Trudy’s mother runs her household with an iron fist, occasionally bullying her husband and other men to bend to her will. We hear about some discrimination against Germans and the Irish.
A few people vomit.
Knowing the story of Gertrude “Trudy” Ederle is one thing. Seeing it onscreen is another. And I gotta say, Young Woman and the Sea is quite the inspiring tale of courage and perseverance (with a couple of content concerns for families).
But I’ll start out with those concerns first so parents can be equipped to make that decision for themselves. A couple of profanities are used, and Trudy is shocked when her sister utters a curse. Folks perhaps imbibe too frequently.
A man’s bare rear briefly makes an appearance, since he reportedly likes to swim “in the buff.” But he’s also promptly arrested for public indecency. That scene may be the biggest potential concern for some families, though it’s mostly played for humor over the course of a couple seconds or so.
Have said that, we also witness a young woman conquer the English Channel against all odds.
As the child of a poor immigrant, Trudy couldn’t fund her own trip across the Atlantic to swim the English Channel. Even though she was an Olympic athlete, she still had to go above and beyond to prove her ability before she could get a sponsorship since she was a woman. Once in France, she butted heads with a coach who actively wanted her to fail—so much so that he sabotaged her efforts and nearly caused her to drown. And when she finally got into the water, she had the Channel itself to conquer, a grueling, 21-mile journey that tried to claim her life with every stroke she swam.
But what really sets this film apart is the sense of camaraderie you get just by watching it. You laugh, you cry (happy tears), and you find yourself rooting for Trudy alongside her family and the people listening to her trek on the radio worldwide.
And the payoff to all of that? Well, if you’ve heard Trudy’s story then you already know. But it’s certainly not going to leave you disappointed.
Emily studied film and writing when she was in college. And when she isn’t being way too competitive while playing board games, she enjoys food, sleep, and geeking out with her husband indulging in their “nerdoms,” which is the collective fan cultures of everything they love, such as Star Wars, Star Trek, Stargate and Lord of the Rings.
