The New York Times Blogs About Roller Derby… In a Not-So-Nice Way.

This lovely little tidbit of info was passed along to me today. This comes from a New York Times blog called "The Moment", which focuses on "Fashion and Design". How they have come to write about roller derby is beyond me.

The post Kitsch of the Day - Roller Derby, by Ben Widdicombe, just shows how little people know about modern roller derby. The blockquoted material is the article, everything else is my own commentary.

While designers toy with retro motifs that playfully conjure female empowerment - like pointy, metallic shoulder pads that Linda Evans might have worn had she been in Kiss - off the catwalk, some sisters are doing it for themselves.

Jesus, if you halt the resurgence of shoulder pads, especially pointy, metallic ones, I promise that I will go to church. Look, I'm not even crossing my fingers!

Women's roller derby is enjoying a revival recently noted by outlets including the L.A. Times, New York Times, and CNN. With their sharp elbows

Nope, elbows are illegal.

and lacy bras, athletes with nommes-de-guerre like Paris Kilton and Sandra Day O'Clobber are competing in a revitalized Women's Flat Track Derby Association that lists almost 80 teams nationwide. But all the mainstream media coverage seems to ignore one glaring point about the sport.

That is: Roller derby is a lesbian art form. Seriously. Describing the history of roller derby and leaving out lesbians is like writing a guide to Little Italy and not mentioning Italians.

Wait... How did we make that jump in logic?

A corrective can be found in the short documentary "High Heels on Wheels," a ten-minute film that aired on the Logo network and can be viewed on its Web site. The women interviewed, who competed in roller derby between the '40s and '80s, leave no doubt as to what was going on during those high-speed collisions. "Let's put it this way, my team except for one lady was gay," says one old duck, who looks about 75, sitting on her porch. "It was a freedom that I hadn't experienced before," says another veteran. "It was thrilling to be in an atmosphere where other people were out of the closet."

Let's see... The Logo network says that "the LGBT world has a place all its own with Logo, the new lesbian & gay network from MTV Networks". Is it really all that surprising that their documentary would be looking at the sport from that angle? I won't deny that lesbians were prevalent in the sport fifty years ago. I won't deny that they are prevalent in the sport today. But we are an extremely diverse group. There is no such thing as the "typical rollergirl", we're all so different.

Things have changed a lot in fifty years. The game has changed. Society has changed. I'm proud to be a part of an organization where everybody feels perfectly free to be themselves: gay, straight, or whatever. But to call rollerderby a "lesbian art form" is insulting to the many, many straight and bisexual women who have contributed greatly to the sport.

It's not a "lesbian art form". I don't even want to call it a "female art form" because there are men's leagues popping up all over the country, and they are just as valid as the women's leagues. I want to call it a "sport". One simple little word that seems to ruffle the feathers of every person who is ignorant about roller derby. Anybody who as witnessed the pure athleticism of a bout can't argue that roller derby is indeed a sport, but many people, drawing on stereotypes of the past, never having seen a modern bout, will argue that we don't deserve to be called athletes.

Drawing upon stereotypes instead of personal experience is called ignorance.

The article ends like this:

The rough-and-tumble of roller derby seems a long way from the 80s cocktail hour evoked by the kitschy glamour of the runway. But anyone who remembers the glory days of Linda Evans and Joan Collins will know that they did their best work dressed for a party.

After that is a lovely YouTube montage of Dynasty catfights (you can go to the original article for that. I'm not posting it here). Why? I'm so confused by this article. They're trying to compare the 1950s and 1970s to now? And somehow we're not as *fabulous* as Joan Collins?

Once again, ignorance. I would really like to invite Mr. Widdicombe to go to a local roller derby bout. If he lives in New York he should go see the national champions, the Gotham Girls Roller Derby on July 11th. I have faith that they will change his mind.