Glitter, Glitter, Gone (For Now): Brief Blog Hiatus

Hey readers,

Having recently survived a bout sign-making party, I am still getting glitter off of me, despite multiple showers and what I would describe as intense scrubbing. I must tender my apologies to Guelph's Royal City Rollergirls, as any terrible signs are mine. I considered blaming our Juniors, but they have more style than that.

I am going on a blog hiatus starting today until August  9th, whereupon the derby fun will recommence. During that break, I will be on a family vacation, madly studying for my comprehensive examinations.

In the mean time, read this amazing size-acceptance post by our league president Vansterdamn, who operates a great fat derby blog. It is a call to arms for every skater who has felt that roller derby and being a proud woman of size were incompatible. Vansterdamn herself is a wonderful proponent of size-acceptance and an inspiration for anyone who loves derby.

See you in August!

Fat Derby + Five Things You Can Do to Encourage It

What does it mean to be a fat roller derby player?

As discussed in a previous post, the face of derby is usually a very particular one: slim-waisted and large-breasted. Team logos and posters and other facets of the public persona of derby almost always feature slim women or stereotypical pin-up proportions. This is odd given that derby in actuality embraces lots of sizes. You do not have to be a size 4 (and a D cup to boot) to block, or even to jam, though smaller players are often assumed to be jammer material.  You can be a large player and still kick derby behind. It can be difficult, however, for players to speak and act the fat-acceptance the sport seems to encourage, while derby culture simultaneously places fat players under erasure.

(A side-note on language here: I am not using the word fat in a derogatory way. I am a believer in fat-acceptance and an enemy of body-shaming. Size is not a sure indicator of health. Fat-acceptance activists continue to work on reclaiming the word 'fat' and I'm going to respect their work enough to use it myself.)

by winterbutterfly81 on DeviantArt, quote from Julie Garwood

Derby needs players of all sizes. The greater our base of would-be players, the better our sport can be. That's not to say that we should overhaul roller derby for the masses and that we should rob the sport of what makes it wonderful, namely the DIY aesthetic, the focus on women working together, and the sport's ingrained humour. But we do need to look critically at how, regardless of our intentions, we actively encourage some women to play and discourage others.  As players and supporters of the sport, we have a hand in shaping it every time we play, every time we hang out with each other, every time we tack up a bout poster. Are you doing enough to encourage women of all sizes to join the roller derby family?

Some people might say that fatness is inherently at odds with being a good derby skater, that athleticism requires being slim and toned. I must call bull-shit on that one. A player's skill on the rink relates to their dedication, practice, endurance, speed, and a host of other things that are not necessarily dictated by a player's weight. Fitness is the key there, not weight. There are players in my league who are fatter than me but frequently skate circles around me.

Even more importantly, roller derby is not just a sport, it's a movement. It's one of the few women-focused areas we have that isn't solely defined by outmoded stereotypes of what women 'should' be. We have a duty to the women we play with to keep roller derby a positive space for women.

So how do we do this? How do we help roller derby progress? Here's five ideas.

1) We look more closely at how we brand our sport through logos, posters, and league websites. We make those representations of players more inclusive by featuring different sizes, by talking to the artists we work with.

2) We demand better from the companies we buy from. If their knee-pads only go up to an M/L and that's not big enough for you or some of your league-members, write to the company. Tell them they need to do better and they just might.

3) We demand more from the third-party companies who don't make merchandise, but do sell it. Ask where their fat models are. Offer to be one. Suggest merchandise with sizing and/or support for players of all sizes.

4) Eliminate body-shaming from your derby vocabulary. Stop saying "Oh, my thighs look awful in these short-shorts" when the player next to you, regardless of size,  might have thought she looked pretty fine in her hotpants right up until you said that.  Self-hatred has no place in roller derby. It catches. Judge yourself by your skill and dedication, not your size. Encourage your fellow players to do the same.

5) Talk. Organize. Educate yourself on the challenges fat players face. Look up fat derby bloggers and activists and get in touch with them. My league president has a fab fat derby blog at Vansterdamn XXX: True Adventures of a Big-Ass Derby Girl. Consider blogging yourself. We need more voices if we're going to have a good conversation.

In short, love your derby self and make damn sure you're encouraging your team-mates to do the same.

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

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!