Friday 2 September 2011

Roller Derby Iconography: The League Logo


Copyright TORD
I'd like to blog today about one particular piece of visual derby culture, the league logo. A league's logo is often their first point of contact with the public. It goes on their t-shirts, it features on their website, it is in a very literal way, the league's face. More generally, the logo stands in for the league's players, telling potential supporters, skaters and opponents what to expect from that community of players.


Copyright Montreal Roller Derby

How do league logos represent the women and men who play the sport? Common themes include circular logos, skaters (often in pin-up poses), helmets, fists, wings skates and skulls, sometimes skulls with eyelashes (as can be seen here and here). Logos tend to incorporate themes of speed, violence and femininity, often coloured by the 'personality' of the city in which the team plays (i.e. the London Rollergirls). Our logos often speak in what is assumed to be the visual short-hand of derby: girls in skates, gorgeous gams, and potential gore. Because of this, logos that eschew a) a circular shape, b) a human figure and c) violent iconography often don't look like we tend to assume a league logo should. This is why, for example, Northwest Arkansas Roller Derby stands out from most league logos.

Copyright Northwest Arkansas Roller Derby


barcelona roller derby
Copyright Barcelona Roller Derby
Actually, I'd like to do a few shout-outs to leagues that, for whatever reason, choose to represent themselves without using human figures. These leagues stand out. In Canada, two of my favourite examples are the Forest City Derby Girls, who represent themselves with a flaming tree and the 709 Derby Girls, who have a damn straightforward logo. South of the border, the Silicon Valley Roller Girls' use of eye-catching text make them look iconic. Further afield from my laptop in London, Ontario, Canada, I find the Barcelona logo scary, which is kind of hot. Logos without human figures on them rather neatly sidestep the issue of how best to represent players (who have many different types of bodies) with one, static body.

Because one of the most common and fraught images on roller derby league logos really is that of a woman. Before I did my initial research for this post, I was hard-pressed to think of leagues that had logos featuring women who did not possess stereotypical 'pin-up' dimensions, featuring large breasts and hips and very small waists. For a sport that depends on women of all sizes, derby often tends to represent itself using only one body type. But I was very pleasantly surprised to be reminded that some leagues choose to represent themselves with logos featuring women of a more 'weighty'* size. One of my current favourite logos is that of the Rage City Rollergirls, basically because she looks a lot more like me that most derby logo girls do (I also have short hair and piercings, neither of which often crop up in derby logos, but that's beside the point).

Copyright Rage City Rollergirls
Of course, it needs to be recognized that derby logos are heavily influenced by Sailor Jerry-styled tattoo art and pin-ups more generally. Take a look at the WFTDA League page and you'll see a lot of anchors, wings, skulls, brass knuckles and girls drawn to look sexy by the conventions of SJ's heyday (that's not to say they aren't sexy now, but that the boundaries of sexy are much less narrow than this). This visual aesthetic is pretty solidly part of derby culture. That's not to say it can't be both appreciated and questioned.

One of the most telling differences between roller derby and, well, most other popular sports, most of which are played by men, can be read in a logo. How often do see male bodies in sports team logos? That's not to say that men's bodies are never depicted in these logos (see the MLB logo and the NBA logo), but it occurs less pervasively than the image of the female body does in derby, and is almost never sexualized to the same degree. (Sexy Toronto Bluejays, anyone? The fanart must exist.)

Is this a problem? I'm asking this question genuinely. I have friends who avoid derby specifically because of the sport's perceived sexism and friends who love derby because it is a real sport involving strong, sexy women and no mud-wrestling. I know players, myself included, for whom being on the track does make them feel sexy, for whom wearing fishnets and booty shorts is a reclaiming of their bodies in the face of a culture who would like them to wear these outfits only if they match a certain body type. How do we balance keeping roller derby empowering without resorting to slut-shaming a whole sport?

Personally, I'm not put off by a league's 'sexy' logo. I just wish derby had a broader definition of what sexy means. 


* A note on size: derby players and people more generally come in all shapes and sizes, ranging from the very slim to the very weighty. The purpose of this discussion is not to put slim players or those with 'hourglass' figures under erasure. I think derby logos should feature all different types of bodies!

2 comments:

  1. I really dislike GTAR's (Greater Toronto Area Rollergirls) logo. What does a naked girl and a guitar have to do with roller derby?? http://midnightmatineephotography.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/gtar-logo1.jpg

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