迪扮演一个固执的小女孩，虽然身体有缺陷，可她仍然希望在原本只属于男孩的领土上冲浪。在穆恩·道吉（达伦饰）的鼓励下，搭乘这个男孩的冲浪板来到海上，她的双手伸开，做出了一个后来影片《泰坦尼克号》中最为著名的造型。当女孩喝下太多海水，已经灰心时，道吉将她带进他的海边小屋里，向她哼起了电影的主题歌，“Gidget是我的女孩。”

　　这是好莱坞第一部著名的冲浪题材电影。“冲浪也许不属于这个世界，你不能想象冲破巨浪时，所感受到的那种震撼。它超越了我曾经感受过的一切感情。”

Francis is desperate: her parents want to force her to come with them on vacation to Hawaii - just during the two weeks when her beloved "Moondoggy" is home from College. When he suggests her to go for it, she's even more in panic - doesn't he care to be with her? So she sets out for Hawaii in the worst mood. On the plane she meets the sociable Abby, who gives her the advice to forget about Jeff - and regrets it shortly after, when Francis follows the advice and steals her boyfriend Eddie, a famous dancer. But then Jeff discovers he's missing Francis...

Francis, now 17, is still in love with Moondoggy. She can persuade her parents to allow them a journey to Rome, together with two of her and two of his friends. However they have to take an adult with them, so they choose Peter's eccentric aunt. In Rome they get the beautiful guide Daniela, who's fascinating the guys and making especially Gidget jealous. She starts looking elsewhere herself.

After spending the last two years in Europe as an exchange student, Gidget returns home to California only to discover that things have changed. The letters she had been writing to her beloved "Moondoggie" to try to make him jealous have had the wrong effect. Disillusioned with love, and after hearing a speech on television, she decides to make a real difference in the world by going to New York to become a youth worker at the United Nations. While there she has a proposal of marriage from an extremely wealthy Arabian sheik, but instead she falls for a handsome but older Australian diplomat.

Gidget finally gets married and rebels against the social caste system in her new husband's company.

Former beach bunny/girl surfer Francine “Gidget” Lawrence is an adult and married to her long-term beau Jeff “Moondoggie” Griffin. She deals with a variety of marital spats, as well as running her own travel agency, running interferences with her teenage niece, and trying to arrange a reunion of her husband’s old surfing friends. Meanwhile, Jeff works as an architect and must fend off romantic advances from his beautiful and lascivious boss. Gidget’s niece wants to learn how to surf and gets too much when she sneaks out to see a suave, self-serving beach bum behind the back of her nerdy boyfriend.