They’re strong. They’re fierce. They’re sassy and fun. And – all over America – they’re expanding gender roles for sport. These are derby girls, and – when it comes to empowering women – they play to win.
by Alicia Lutz ’98
photography by Leslie McKellar
Right now, it’s not important that Kissa Death, Pistol Hips and ReVulva are mothers. No one’s thinking about MissTrust’s Kindergarten class while she’s out there flashing her fanny and flaunting her tats. And – just like SheRex breaks loose of her librarian day job to bark out intimidations and knock girls over – Lawnmower the lawyer is free to flounce around in a tutu, and Doozer the doctor can give a girl a bloody nose without apology.
This is roller derby – where women get to be what they’re not supposed to be and do what they’re not supposed to do. Just 70 years after women weren’t supposed to be lawyers or doctors – weren’t supposed to make their own living – roller derby has opened up gender roles for even broader exploration.
Of course, right now, these women aren’t thinking about gender roles. They’re sizing up the competition, getting their heads in the game, planning their next moves. They’ve got 43 pages (73, counting the appendices) of standardized rules they have to circumnavigate, 20-something penalties to skirt, countless loopholes to slip through – all while keeping an eye on their own jammer, the other team’s jammer, the other team’s pack … and all while going really, really fast.
This is roller derby – where women get to make all the rules, all the plays and all the calls. It’s the only sport started for women by women; the only sport where women’s leagues aren’t seen as second class, where women will always draw a bigger crowd and their strength, agility, endurance won’t draw comparison to male counterparts.
Kally McCormick ’02
Right now, sports reform isn’t what’s important. These women don’t train 8 to 30 hours a week to be activists. Their grueling drills of pushups-, planks- and squats-on-wheels aren’t exercises in feminism. They wouldn’t require strength and endurance conditioning, written and physical assessments or special insurance policies and mouth guards just to be role models.
This is roller derby – where women come to be athletes, to face off for two-minute jams in which each team’s jammer is trying to lap the other team’s pack. Between the strategy, agility and endurance it takes to maneuver around the track, the game requires players to give their mental and physical all.
Right now, they’re playing to win. And, right now, they’re on quite a roll.
As what’s been referred to as the fastest growing sport in America, contemporary roller derby started in 2000 with the grassroots revival of the roller derby of the 1970s. Within a year, the first women’s flat track roller derby league had been established; by 2005, there were 50 in the world. Today, there are more than 470 leagues across 11 countries – almost all of them scrapped together at the grassroots level by do-it-yourselfers with no previous derby experience.
“It’s really through utter determination that there are so many teams out there – it takes a lot of work, not just to get it going and to practice, but marketing, finding sponsorships, working with local charities,” says Stormy Seize, a.k.a. Skylar Renwick Bieraugel ’98, a new stay-at-home mom who held an information session last year “just to see if there was any interest” in starting a team in Crescent City, Calif., population 8,000. When 80 women showed up, Bieraugel knew she was onto something and immediately set about creating the Tsunami Sirens, now in its second season. “I’ve pretty much been eating and sleeping roller derby since then – and, I’ve got to say, I love it!”
It’s a familiar story among derby girls: They don’t just play roller derby – they live it, breathe it, love it. Their partners become “derby widows,” left alone while the derby girls give countless hours a week to their sport – not just practicing and playing, but working on the teams’ boards (most teams are nonprofit organizations), volunteering in the community and attending promotional events.
“It’s a labor of love – they do this because they want to, because they really, really care about it,” says Kiss M’Grits, a.k.a. Allison Munn ’96, an actor who played for the L.A. Derby Dolls during the writers’ strike of 2008 (which happened to coincide with Ellen Page and Drew Barrymore’s visits to observe the team for Barrymore’s 2009 Whip It, a fictional film about roller derby). “I love that it’s completely run by the players – they’re the ones out there waving handmade signs, handing out the tickets before a bout. It’s all about love of the sport. I just love that community aspect of it.”
With its roll-up-your-sleeves attitude and its underground aesthetic, the roller derby community – which includes some male nonskating officials (refs, penalty box timers, scorekeepers, etc.) – is a surprisingly supportive bunch, even between the different leagues.
Lynn Patterson ’92
“For the most part, leagues are really friendly toward each other – some host lock-ins for multiple leagues, and, if you’re traveling, you can practice with other leagues,” explains Turner Loose, a.k.a. Jennifer Turner ’06, a statistician who plays for the Columbia QuadSquad, the premier league in South Carolina. The secretary of the league and the co-captain of its B-team, Turner is proof that you can’t peg all derby girls as pierced punks or tattooed tarts. “As preppy as they come,” Turner warns that “stereotyping is definitely a downfall with roller derby. You learn pretty quickly that it takes all types.”
Indeed, roller derby is inclusive by nature – throwing women from all walks of life together and forcing them to have each other’s back and pick each other up when
they’re down.
“I can’t think of anywhere else you get to become friends with so many different kinds of people, from all different age groups and professions,” says Chic Flair, a.k.a. Celi Merchant, a junior majoring in business administration who has the honor of being the youngest member of Charleston’s local league, the Lowcountry Highrollers. “It’s neat for me, because before this I only knew college students in the area. Now I have this whole different group of women to go out with.”
Coached by Jeffrey “Duck” Reynolds ’06, the Lowcountry Highrollers is made up of two home teams and two travels teams with more than 65 players among them – including nine College alumnae and two students. And, as one of the original members of the team (founded in April 2008), Lucille Balls to the Wall, a.k.a. Shannon Magill ’00, has seen derby’s positive influence in players’ lives time and time again: “It gives women an outlet they don’t otherwise get,” says the flight attendant, makeup artist and a member of several of the Highrollers committees. “It shows them that they can be very professional in their professional life, but still have an outrageous, down-and-dirty extracurricular sport on the side. And, no matter where you come from or what you look like, it helps you find your identity, your strength, your power. It gives the girls more choices about who they can be, who they are.”
And, for the prim and proper, the shy and reserved, the choice to be bold and brash can certainly be liberating.
“It’s like an escape,” says Lyn DStruktable, a.k.a. Lynn Patterson ’92, a program coordinator at the Medical University of South Carolina. Still considered a “skater tot” (i.e., a newbie), Patterson recalls joining the Lowcountry Highrollers last season: “It was kind of a rebirth feeling – like I was 20 years old again. You get a little bit older, and you feel like you have to fit into this world, you have to be responsible and kind of reserved. You get into this mundane structured environment. But derby lets you break the mold a little. You can try out a different role.”
“It gives you a character to play – a different skill set to explore,” agrees Munn. “It’s a chance to be more assertive than you are in your everyday life. It’s a new way of empowering women.”
And, if fishnets and booty shorts aren’t your idea of women’s empowerment, take a look at who’s wearing the pants.
“This is something that is owned by women – they’re the ones saying they’re sexy, they’re defining that, they’re in charge of that,” says Alison Piepmeier, director of the College’s Women’s and Gender Studies Program, itself the beneficiary of a Lowcountry Highrollers bout this winter. “Roller derby is very characteristic of contemporary [third-wave] feminism, in which women are playing with these cultural stereotypes and having fun with them. Here, women are taking the power away from the men and deciding for themselves what sexy is.”
Monica Davis ’08
With the power to re-define sexy, roller derby girls can be girly, sultry, aggressive, creative and athletic all within this one, safe environment. And – while each team has its own vibe – how they do it is ultimately up to the girls themselves.
“Each girl comes out there doing what they want to do. They can express themselves however they want,” says Vixen Dickson, a.k.a. Lauren Dickson ’02, a first-grade teacher and member of the Lowcountry Highrollers. “It’s all about expressing ourselves. If I want to put on striped knee-highs and put my hair in pigtails, this is my chance to do it. It’s part of the fun.”
Admittedly, it’s also part of the appeal. Left over from the derby of yesteryear, the campy theatrics, burlesque costumes and suggestive names all play into the showmanship of the sport. But, by offsetting the exaggerated femininity with the players’ athleticism, roller derby calls for a whole new idea of what women should be.
“I think that’s what roller derby was started to do – to do something funky with sexiness. It’s asking, ‘What happens if we do sexy this way?’” says Piepmeier. “I think the costumes add to the playful activism that characterizes roller derby – it plays with the roller girl’s inclusive character, creating space to bring together sexiness and toughness … and that’s fun and exciting.”
Bieraugel agrees: “It’s empowering to see women sexy and aggressive at the same time. There’s a certain dichotomy between the two, and I think it’s an intriguing element.”
Besides, for most roller girls, the costumes are more about being intimidating than being enticing.
“It’s all about showing off my muscles,” says Vinyl Wrecker, a.k.a. Nora Van Leuvan ’09, who got her start on the Lowcountry Highrollers, but recently moved to Denver solely to play with the best league in the nation, the Rocky Mountain Roller Girls. “When I hit someone, I want her to see every muscle in my body so she knows what’s coming at her.”
And this is where gender roles really start to take a bruising. Hardcore athleticism and tough-as-nails ’tudes are one thing, but taking out competitors blow by blow is a real slap in the face to femininity.
“It goes against everything we’ve been taught,” says Van Leuvan, whose artist’s sensibility made it hard for her to be aggressive at first. “We go through life thinking we’re supposed to be this cutesy flower in a pot – but once you understand that this is somewhere where you’re supposed to knock girls down, it gets a lot easier.”
And – in a world where powerful, aggressive women who do what they must to get ahead are seen as unsexy, unfeminine and somehow even threatening – it’s not every day that you see women outwardly displaying their aggression and strength.
“It’s not what people are used to seeing, so it gives them different ideas to explore,” says Munn, who reluctantly gave up derby when, upon getting the role of Lauren on the CW’s One Tree Hill, the wardrobe department complained that she had too many bruises to cover up. When at her final practice with the L.A. Derby Dolls, a teammate’s two front teeth were knocked out, she knew she’d made the right decision. “I miss it every day, but you do get super, super banged up.”
graduate student Jennifer Bennett
But all the broken bones, concussions and torn muscles in the world aren’t enough to keep most hardcore roller girls off the track, and no injury warrants holding a grudge.
“It’s the only place I can think of where you can knock a girl to the floor – really light her up – and she’ll turn around and give you a high five for it,” says Bieraugel.
“When you hit, you do it for a reason,” explains Magill. “That’s why Rule No. 1 is don’t apologize. Be true to yourself. Do what you have to do, be who you have to be.”
It is, in a word, empowering – and not just to knock someone down, but to get knocked down, as well.
“When you think about it, we all need to know how to throw a hit and be unapologetically strong – but we all need to learn how to fall, too,” says Van Leuvan. “Everybody gets knocked down, and we all need to know how to get back on our feet and not dwell on it or get angry about it.”
It’s largely about confidence – in oneself, in one’s actions and in one’s intentions. And, in a culture that many times fails both to build women’s confidence and to teach women how to stand up for themselves, that can be a very powerful message.
“I think it’s great for young girls to be exposed to roller derby, because when they see a woman get knocked down, get bruised, get back up and keep on going – that’s a big deal,” says Piepmeier. “That can really change what they think they’re capable of, and that’s really cool – and really very radical.”
Not all derby girls are comfortable with being role models, but – recognizing that the sport itself takes on a personal responsibility to the next generation – more and more leagues are developing junior roller derby programs for young girls.
“My favorite thing is when little girls come and see us, and they’re so amazed by it, they ask for our autographs,” beams Dickson. “I think it’s cool that I’ve helped them want to be this awesome powerful woman when they grow up.”
That’s not to say grownups can’t learn a thing or two from the derby girls, too.
“Everyone can identify with at least one of us on wheels. There’s something for everyone,” says Van Leuvan. “And, even if you don’t aspire to make changes in your life, maybe you’ll learn a new way of looking at yourself – or at least you’ll see that gender stereotypes are useless these days.”
Piepmeier couldn’t agree more: “Culturally what we’re seeing here is a challenge to the inappropriate and harmful stereotypes that have always surrounded the female gender – of the sexy girl, the aggressive woman, the conniving, catty woman. Here we see women recognizing these stereotypes and mashing them together to see what comes out.”
Lauren Dickson ’02
And that, says Bieraugel, is “an all-around shout-out to women.”
And, if roller derby the sport celebrates everything that women can be, everything they can do, then the roller girl herself embodies it.
“Roller derby girls get to be it all – they’re every woman, all wrapped up into one,” says Bieraugel. “They’re the closest things to superheroes that I know of.”
