With 'Surf Girls,' MTV chases the reality wave
By Michael Tsai
Advertiser Staff Writer
It's not every grown woman who will happily accept being called a girl. But when two giants of television and merchandising want to fly you and 13 other "girls" to the best surf spots in the world, why not go with the flow?
"Surf Girls," a joint production of MTV and Quiksilver subsidiary Roxy, makes its debut tonight (7:30 and 8 p.m. on MTV, Oceanic Channel 71), and continues every Monday for 13 episodes.
Vivian, Mary, Kula, Jenna and April compete for the cameras in a new reality-TV show about surfing. Vivian and Kula are from Hawai'i.
The series, which features three women with Hawai'i ties, seeks to combine the best elements of two major commercial waves: reality TV and surfing.
The premise is simple: Fourteen amateur female surfers train, travel and live together as they compete for a single spot in a professional surfing event. The women are evaluated based on surfing ability (60 percent), weekly physical fitness tests (20 percent) and positive attitude (20 percent) as they visit Australia, Tahiti, Samoa and Hawai'i.
The show was shot over six weeks in January and February.
The surfers are identified only by their first names: Kula, Jen and Vivian are from Hawai'i. A fourth island surfer, Aimee, dropped out early in the filming.
Surf Girls
Kula, we now know, is Kula Barbieto, a 19-year-old flight attendant from Kailua.
Barbieto, who grew up in Ka'u on the Big Island and attended
Lahainaluna High School on Maui, said all of the surfers got along well during filming — contrary to her expectations.
"It was 14 of us living together and competing against each other," she said. "You'd think it wouldn't be fun, but it really was. We were all different, some of us were exact opposites, but we all surf."
Barbieto said it was sometimes difficult to shift gears from being friends to being competitors. "Sometimes I forgot to compete," she said.
While everyone got along well, Barbieto said she felt awkward coming from such a different background.
Hawai'i surfer Kula Barbieto, 19, of Kailua is one of 14 women who lived and surfed together in MTV's new reality program.
"They thought I had a really bad accent," she said. "And I had different words for things. Like 'slippers' instead of 'sandals,' or 'ice box'
instead of 'refrigerator.' But by the end, I had them all saying 'slippers,' too."
To prepare for the filming, the surfers received intensive training from a team of professional surfers and watermen.
"It was really hard," Barbieto said. "We trained as a group how to work together and compete together because that's how it is on tour."
In true reality-TV style, the competitors submitted to round-the-clock surveillance and recording.
"We'd have to tell them when we wanted to go to the bathroom so they could shut off the mike," said Jen. "They took off the mikes when we showered or went to sleep, but as soon as we got up, it was on us again."
Jen (who isn't telling her last name, in keeping with the TV agreement) said she and the others eventually learned to live with the microphones, though the cameras were harder to ignore.
"Our best conversations were when the cameras weren't there," she said. "It's hard to have a decent conversation when you say something and the camera swoops in on you."
Jen, 24, grew up in Kailua (she played basketball and softball at Maryknoll) and now lives in California. She first auditioned for a spot last October in Orange County, and found out she had been accepted during a visit to Hawai'i in December.
Both Jen and Barbieto will be at today's premiere party in Los Angeles.
"I'm really excited," Jen said. "I think girls will see this and want to surf."
