Review: Tough Old Broads

The documentary features three trailblazing women

The other day I watched a documentary paying tribute to wise women, called Tough Old Broads. It was screened at VIFF and was it surprising that the entire audience make up was women, most of them seniors?

It's directed by Stacey Tenenbaum, and profiles three trailblazing women, Katherine Switzer, who was the first woman to officially run in the Boston Marathon in 1967, Siila "Sheila" Watt-Cloutier, an Inuk climate change activist, and Sharon Farmer, who was the first woman to run the White House Photography Office.

Switzer has promoted running since 1967

Switzer's story is very compelling and easy to relate to. She recalls when she ran the Boston Marathon, a few miles in, the race director was in a car with the media and caught up with her. He tried to pull off her bib number -- 261 -- and luckily Switzer's boyfriend who was running with her, pushed the race director off to the sidelines and told her to run like hell.

As a result of the media coverage, Switzer inspired other women to take up running, and she got companies like Avon to sponsor women-only marathon races. They were less intimidated and felt they were just running with the girls. 

These days Switzer, 79, gives inspiration speeches to young women and travels the world. In one scene she is in Germany with muslim women and goes running with them. Switzer is gracious in encouraging them, that they can do anything they want if they put their minds to it.

Watt-Cloutier's profile is the most complicated because a lot of her work involves making presentations and talks with diplomats, a lot of technical knowledge to explain how toxins were found in water up in the Canadian north, and how this affected mothers and children. She links this environmental issue with human rights.

Watt-Cloutier is worried about climate change

She says as a child her family was very close and lived on the land, but when she was 10 years old, she was sent to the south, to Nova Scotia and Manitoba to go to residential schools. Watt-Cloutier remembers she was given no warning this would happen to her, and as a result of this western schooling, she didn't learn much about her language and culture.

Today she continues to advocate for the Inuit and how global warming is affecting ice and snow in the Arctic. She was awarded an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2006, and nominated along with Al Gore for the Nobel Peace Prize and 180 other people.

Finally, tough old broad, definitely defines Farmer, and she has funny one-liners, like how gray hair is a badge of honour of what she has survived. At one point Farmer says a photo editor can tell the picture was taken by her without checking the caption which is very cool.

Originally she was into music and wanted to join the marching band, but was told it was for men only because it was tradition. Instead she turned to photography at a young age, and was very focused on capturing the lives of black people in America. One photograph she took was a black and white image of an older black woman swinging her hips with a hula hoop around her waist.

Farmer once worked in the White House

In the 1970s Farmer shot album covers, and in 1993 she was hired to cover US President Bill Clinton and First Lady Hillary Clinton; Farmer later was promoted to become director of White House Photography, the first woman and person of colour to do this job.

The documentary follows her in November 2024 when Donald Trump won his second term; Farmer goes out into the streets hoping to capture reaction from the election, but instead finds nothing, perhaps people were too shocked or depressed to even come out.

For Switzer and Watt-Cloutier, there was some archival footage in their stories, in the case of Farmer, there wasn't much to illustrate her story per se; going to her storage unit to dig out some old photos was the best director Tenenbaum could do.

Nevertheless these are three women we should be cheering about, and hopefully this could be an ongoing series of other accomplished women and what we can learn from them!

Tough Old Broads

Directed by Stacey Tenenbaum

89 minutes