Whip It

Living in small-town Bodeen Texas, 17-year-old Bliss Cavendar, who's working part-time at the Oink Joint diner with her best friend Pash while they finish school, is always in quiet rebellion against her mother, Brooke Cavendar, a former beauty queen about her making the unilateral decision to enter both her daughters--Bliss and adolescent Shania--in beauty pageants. Postal worker Brooke is exactly as she wishes her mother had been, in wanting her to have taken control of her pageant life as a stepping stone to bigger and better things in life. Conversely, Bliss sees beauty pageants as an outdated expression of female empowerment. Bliss knows she will get no support from her father, Earl Cavendar, in her battles against her mother: Brooke wears the proverbial pants in their family. Bliss stumbles onto the world of the five-team Texas Roller Derby League based in Austin, intrigued upon first seeing the league's flyer. Despite knowing nothing about roller derby, Bliss is encouraged to try-out by the captain of the Hurl Scouts, Maggie Mayhem. Finding that she's found something of passion for her life, Bliss trains, tries out, and makes the team with her natural skating speed most suited to the jammer position. As she doesn't have the natural aggression to check, she chooses the stage name Babe Ruthless. The Hurl Scouts, who become her second family, see the sport solely as fun and never listen to their coach Razor, so they have never won a bout and always finished last in the league. But Bliss catches the eye of Iron Maven, star jammer of the undefeated Holy Rollers--who sees Bliss as a potential threat to her star-jammer status. Bliss decides to hide her roller derby life from her family while she tries to balance this new passion against respecting the fact that her parents are her parents and are looking out for her best interest. That new life includes a relationship with a musician named Oliver, whose rock band often attends roller events.