Body Image, Roller Derby, and the F Word

Editor's note: Please welcome The GOREgon in her first guest blog. This is part one of a two part exploration of body image and the power of roller derby.

You may have noticed that most roller derby teams are populated by women (and as an aside, there are plenty of men's roller derby teams) and that these women train hard and slam into each other a lot.

What you may not notice at first is the incredible confidence and drive that roller derby has helped these women to achieve. Keep watching, though, because you will eventually see it. It only gets stronger in each player as the season goes on, no matter how many points they win or lose by.

Roller derby is also a very welcoming sport and offers a place for women and men (and junior players!) to become part of a team. No matter your age, race, body type, athleticism, sexuality, gender identity, religion, or class--roller derby is for you. In fact, if you never felt like you fit into team sports in school or always felt like you couldn't do it, you should try roller derby! As Bonnie Thunders, super-star derby player for the Gotham Girls Roller Derby, stated in an interview with the Huffington Post :

Bonnie Thunders of Gotham and Team USA

"[Roller derby is] kind of secondary to the more popular sports, which allows it to attract the people who didn't fit in in the primary sports.”

As a fat woman, roller derby has been the only thing in my life that has inspired me to become more physically fit and to increase my skill set to improve my team. For the first time, I feel like I am a part of something and not an outsider looking in. I have gotten teased and harassed for being big in weight and physique as well as for not being as fast or fit as others. Fear kept me from the gym and from team sports until the ripe old age of 31.

This is nothing new for derby 'girls' as any one of them can tell you. Contrary to popular belief, a lot of us wear clothing that is quite normal for a team sport! We need to move around so we wear tight shorts and leggings or tights and tank tops because boy, it gets hot when you work as hard as we do. We sweat, get disgusting, stink to high heaven...and love it. We build sisterhood with our team-mates (and often, the opposing team, too!) while we work on team strategy and toward building up each others’ strengths and weaknesses.

A lot of us, no matter our shape, size, height, race, etc., hate our bodies. We struggle to either accept ourselves or to fit into an idea of what we should look like. It doesn't help that everywhere we turn, we are bombarded with images and messages telling us how inadequate we really are. I have always had a hard time, still have a hard time, loving my self and my body. I thought roller derby would be a sport for fit, athletic women and that I would have a hard time keeping up. I thought that big girls wouldn't be welcome in any sport save power lifting and shot put.

Demanda Riot of B.A.D.

I was so wrong. Roller derby takes ALL kinds. Look at the stars of our sport like Demanda Riot, Jackie Daniels, Bonnie Thunders, Scald Eagle, Bork Bork Bork, Beyonslay, and on and on and on. My point is, women of every age range, weight, height, build, fitness level, ethnicity, religion, and race play roller derby. Will roller derby help you love yourself more? It did for me. Will roller derby help you lose weight? Maybe. I haven't lost a pound yet but I replaced a lot of fat with muscle. Some do and some don't. You can't join just to lose weight, though. Roller derby requires you to WANT it.

Bork Bork Bork of Windy City

 I see it as my job to lift up all of my derby sisters with me, letting them know when I notice them for any reason and trying to be as tactful as possible with criticism. When we have bad days, it helps to have a team full of inspiring women to look up to. No one has told me my ankles are too fat, as my childhood ballet instructor once told me, and no one has told me that I need to remain a certain size or shape to keep playing derby. I get positive reinforcement and constructive criticism, both things I have learned to crave from my coaches and teammates alike. The only thing roller derby requires of you is the dedication and fitness you are willing to put into it to get better.

A Way To Progress

(Editor's note: this is Klept-O's first contribution to our blog--welcome her!)

As a skater, you always wonder, “What can I do to make myself better?” First, don’t take extended breaks from skating. Don’t even take a week off. You would be surprised at how much it affects you. Trust me, I know from personal experience.

Seriously though, skate, a lot. Skate with your team, and skate with other teams. Find local teams who won’t mind the guest skaters, and go as often as you can. The Dire Skates are lucky. They have Gem City in Dayton, and A-Town in Anderson near by. While both are an hour drive or more, it is still well worth the drive to help better yourself as a skater.

Is there a scrimmage near by? Go. Grab as many of your team as you can and head there, asap. It goes back to the skating with others point, but it also brings more than JUST those near by people to you. Recently Em, Terahrizin, Dragon and myself (Klept-O) went to Cornfed Derby Dames scrimmage in Muncie. We met A-Towns GoldyBlox and Faye-Tality up there. It put some of us out of our element. It allowed us to do things we don’t normally do. It also allowed Dragon to put me on my butt once. (Be glad I love you, Wifey, or I would never admit that in writing.)

Watch derby, watch as much as you can. Take and bookmark Derby News Network, or subscribe to WFTDA’s youtube channel. Go to every bout that you can. See things that other people can do. That drill you didn’t understand before? Watching elite teams do it, without fail makes it click perfectly. You may not be able to do it as well, but at least you can go, “I know what it looks like, and I will do it myself.”

Finally, and this is something I fail at, cross train. Do some running, yoga, or maybe even some kick-boxing. Find whatever it is that will get that heart going, and do it. Keeping that endurance high will help in those long two minute jams. Especially when you have to do a few jams in a row.

There are probably many other things that can be done, but these are just a few things that come to mind. They also tend to be the more important things for a derby skater. Maybe that is just my opinion, though.

--- Klept-O-Matic

Derby Fashion: Socks

One of the first things one notices about derby is the clothing. There is a certain derby fashion sense that, in addition to the protective gear, usually involves some combination of socks, booty shorts, and glitter (and sometimes tutus). We each choose our clothing based on comfort, visual appeal, and, of course, the coolness factor.

I mean, could I be any cooler?!

Socks are a way for us as derby girls to both have fun and to express some part of our persona. Or maybe we just wear what we have clean at that moment. The world "clean" is probably even subjective.

Before I even tried out for the team, I went out and bout 10 new pairs of socks and as many tights and fishnets as I could find, because derby.

There are not enough pictures of cats in sock piles on the internet--get on that, guys!

But really, socks serve a purpose beyond the aesthetic ones listed above. As this blogger mentions, socks serve to protect the skater and to maintain a level of comfort.

We fall quite a bit and we usually skate on cement or a finished wooden floor. Sliding on either of these floors doesn't feel great no matter what, but this thin layer of tights and socks does protect us from burns that can occur (a quick search for roller derby bruises and you'll see they can be brutal...and yeah, socks won't do much to protect us in that regard).

Every girl has different sock standards. I wear tights, knee highs, and sport socks because that added padding helps me feel comfortable in my skates. Some girls just wear one pair of socks. And some girls, it smells like, have never heard of socks.

Socks, no matter why, or how they are worn, are an important part of derby. And an important part of awesome cat pictures.

Important.

New Recruits

Just last month Dire Skates officially voted on six new members (AB Fab Eddie, Bilbo Stabbins, Smack Widow, GOREgon, Jenocide, and a yet to be named teammate (who clearly needs to read this) though we had all been skating with the team for months. We all came in at different times, with different levels of ability and are still quite varied on our skating ability and gameplay, but here we are. Let me say this:

Joining roller derby can be complicated.

This is not to dissuade you from trying out!

Sean Bean wants you to try out. Will I be using Sean Bean often? The answer is yes. Emphatically, yes!

Every team has a different process for joining the respective team and sometimes actually JOINING is confusing. I am speaking only about my experience with Dire Skates, though you'll find that experiences with other teams are quite similar in this regard.

When you first tryout, you are called a "new recruit" (newbie) or "fresh meat," depending on the team--there are probably other terms, but these are the terms used here.

Be warned: searching Google images for "fresh meat" is less than appetizing.

There are certainly some negative connotations associated with the latter term, but it is a phrase commonly used in derby culture. And, honestly, after a good practice I definitely feel like a giant slab of meat that has been hung up and punched repeatedly. In a good way.

Being a new recruit means there is a sort of probationary period where you are invited to be on the team, but are not technically on the team.

During this time, the new recruits train and practice with the team. Some teams have a short training period or workshops with trainers from that derby team and then hold tryouts after (Naptown and Circle City do this--this seems to be a difference primarily between larger cities/teams vs. smaller cities/teams). Either way, there is time when you are sort of on the team and sort of not, or when you sort of play derby, but not exactly. Try explaining that quickly to someone.

Or you just receive blank stares.

Once the player has reached a certain physical level or has shown certain dedication to the team, and typically once they have passed all minimum skills requirements, (that list is seven pages long in case you didn't look. SEVEN. MINIMUM! GAH!) they are voted onto the team. One of those minimum skills is that we can do 27 laps in 5 minutes, by the way (this used to be 25), which feels insane.

Actually it feels something like this. Is that why Terahrizin wears cheetah print?!

At this point, once you are voted on, you are on the team and no longer a new recruit, though you may have been practicing with your new teammates for months prior. In this way, it is nice because you are all friends, sisters, and, now, teammates.

Not only is the phrase "new recruit" somewhat confusing, but shifting from this sort of complicating category of almost-derbyness (that's a real word, right?!) to an actual member of the team requires a great deal of work: sweat, tears, vomit, bruises, aches, pains, blood, and more sweat. You can celebrate this awesome feat by taking a nap, singing loudly despite protests from your derby sisters, or making someone rub your feet or whatever celebratory action you so choose.

So be sure to welcome all of us "new recruits" as we are newly shifting into our roles as teammates and be sure to look for the "Spotlight" features where you will be introduced to all of newbies.

--Bilbo Stabbins

Derby Stank

DJ Smear-O is a recidivist stinky gear offender

Derby is a rather sweaty sport. We sweat even when we are just standing around talking about our weeks and catching up with our derby sisters.

Add skating, jumping, weaving, jamming, blocking, falling, and whatever insane foot drills Emily KickNsum makes us do and we are sweating pretty dang hard by the time we are done.

We remove our sopping wet knee and elbow pads, wrist guards, and helmets and toss them into a bag. Some of us spray them with such fancy concoctions as Lysol (hey, it's pretty effective! And cheap!), though other girls have specialized sprays that get rid of bacteria and smell pretty good on top of that.

Toss all of that into the trunk of a vehicle and leave it there for a week. It's a science experiment. A stinky, stinky science experiment.

Dire Skates practice once a week during the off season and twice a week during the regular season, but even the 3-4 days has an impact.

Imagine bile plus garbage. Vomit in the hot sun. Poisonous Fritos (I stole this last descriptor from the linked blog below. It's too good not to re-use!).

This is what derby stank smells like.

This bacteria-laden gear is removed form said bag and the rancid scent wafts straight to the noses of nearby teammates.

"Ooh, my gear stinks today!"

We know, sister. We know.

The smell of sweat during a workout is fine. It's expected, but the smell of derby stank can reach such unbearable b.o. levels, that it can clear a room (ask Klept-O about that).

There are certain ways to go about cleaning one's gear as outlined here, but the derby stank is an inevitable part of roller derby.

This is just to warn you: if you can smell us before you see us, run. Run far away.