Daphne Does Derby

“You should eat brown rice,” said our coach yesterday.

What nonsense, was my first thought. Brown rice? Who does he think I am? Some sort of healthy eating, sensible person? Some kind of…athlete?

Rewind 18 months, right at the conception of my roller derby career. I was torn between the desire to strap on some skates and be part of this vibrant, incredible culture, and terrified by the idea of commitment. Everything I heard about roller derby pointed to the same thing: you might start for fun, but pretty soon it takes over your entire life.

I’ll just keep it casual, was my mantra when I went to my first session. I’ll just go once a week to keep fit and skate a bit. I won’t worry about getting new equipment or bouting or boot camps.

But as so many of us know, that’s not the nature of the beast. One practice becomes two, you’re seduced by the promise of new wheels and suddenly the unthinkable happens: you start doing exercise outside of derby.

Roller derby is probably the only sport resembling such a slippery slope. It’s probably the only thing resembling such a slippery slope outside of hard drugs. At the bottom of the slope, is brown rice.

So now I’m an athlete, or something. I feel like I’ve been tricked. This wasn’t supposed to be about commitment. I’m like a playboy that finds that my latest fling has cleared out two drawers for her things and has marked on the calendar when we’re going to lunch with her mother.

The solution is to stop. To throw my girlfriend’s clothes out the window. To sell my wheels on ebay. To eat bowl upon bowl of starchy, over-processed white rice.

But it just wouldn’t work. Like it or not, playing derby casually just isn’t enough for me anymore. The girlfriend - with her subtle trickery and black magic - has won. Now I can’t imagine my life without her.

And since I can’t get rid of her, I might as well work on making our relationship even more awesome. Might as well give the whole set of drawers and make the best thing that’s happened to me become the best thing ever, because if I’ve learned anything during my time with roller derby, it’s that what you put in is what you get out.

I’ll start by switching to brown rice.

Being very small and wearing a lot of clothes, my derby pads don’t get very sweaty, so I’ve never had to worry about yucky pads.

However, my hired hand wristguards, though excellent protection, are letting down the side. They are a glove style that is quite tight, so no room to wear something absorbent underneath.

I decided to wash them.

BUT HOW. They’re made of leather and suede, so cannot be tossed into a pillowcase and washing machine’d. The internet had all sorts of opinions, and said to use various different products. To this end, I have created a playful cocktail of agents to ensure maximum cleanage.

-bicarbonate of soda

-vinegar

-shampoo

-hot water

-washing up liquid

-cold water

-liquid soap

Having combined these together in a bucket, I left my wristguards in it for an hour, stirring periodically with a butter knife. The water turned a concerning black colour, but I figured it couldn’t be any worse than the time I dropped my wristguard in a sink full of water and then had to wear it for a bout. That was the worst.

I left them to dry stuffed with paper towels, and they look no worse for wear. Apparently I should rub aqueous cream into the leather to keep it supple, which seems mentaloid, but I have a lot of aqueous cream lying around, so why not.

Daphne’s Opinion:

as expected, combining several cleaning products only makes things cleaner. will write to the newspapers immediately.

“I’ve been thinking about Gin Atomic’s skirt,” I said to Nico on the way back from practice.

“I know,” Nico says. “Half the bout writeup was dedicated to it, and you didn’t even put the score in.”

Not everything can go in the writeup. You have to pick and choose the most important information.

Breaking news on Gin Atomic’s skirt. Apparently the skirt belongs to President Garfield who loaned the skirt to Gin Atomic. I have been informed on good account that the small amount of fabric the skirt consisted of was actually ripped during the bout, and returned to President Garfield in that state.

If anyone has extra information on the skirt, please let me know. I will update on any further developments, so watch this space.

So someone asked me about this recently. “What do you think about roller derby and feminism?” I don’t really think anything about them. I said “er.” Then I said “feminism is equal rights, right?” then I said “what do you think?”

I told my ex-roommate this and she said “Daphne you are such a moron,” several times. She said there was tonnes to discuss and that if she had been asked a question like that, she’d have gone on for ages. Just for the record, I’ve never heard her say a word about feminism. She mainly said stuff like “yeah, I’ll do it in twenty minutes” and “*** I’m late” or “did you set the toast on fire again?”

But nevermind that.

I don’t really know anything about feminism. I know I’m a feminist, but as far as I  know, all that entails is wanting equal rights and opportunities for women. I mean that’s pretty legit. Who wouldn’t be a feminist?

I’ve been talking to my derby sisters about it. Mimey says to understand feminism, you have to see the subtle sexism that underpins our society. I’m so bad at that. I never see prejudice or discrimination.

i couldn’t even see the racism in this picture. I was just like, what the hell, why is that woman taking away the chicken!? What’s that about? It just made me want to eat KFC, which is weird because I don’t even like KFC.     

Anyway, my point is, that I have a poor understanding of feminism.

What I do think, though, is that roller derby is one of the few spaces where women can be whatever they want, and they can do it for themselves. We make the decision to go to derby because it improves us, challenges us, and makes us feel good. We choose what we wear, how we act and even what people call us. We don’t have to fit our personalities into premade moulds of what women should or shouldn’t be like. You might think derby just creates a new mould, where women have to be aggressive and mouthy, but you’d be dead wrong. There is a space for every single type of woman in derby. The quietest, most mild-mannered, confrontation-avoider to the dreadlock, pierced and tattoo’d.

There is a freedom and equality in derby that is rarely seen anywhere else. The only thing that matters, the only thing you will be judged on, is whether you bring it on the track.

Today I bought a red skirt.

It’s a nice skirt. A good, solid red colour, ends above the knee and has a pleated style for extra flounce. But it’s not just a skirt. With this skirt, another piece of my boutfit is complete and another part of my derby persona falls into place.

When I started really getting into derby, I realised some time and effort needed to go into the outfit. As different as the finished product is, I think all rollergirls look for the same things with their outfits. Trying to find a balance between aesthetic and ease of movement, with a consideration for team colours.

I think what I wear looks kind of weird, but in fact, all roller girls look kind of weird, especially out of context. I think the most important thing is we look how we want to look.

So now my outfit is complete. Except my trousers aren’t quite the right shade of khaki, and my headscarf (which I ‘made’ myself, you know) is a bit small.

But aside from that, perfect.

You might think that ice skating isn’t so different from roller skating. I mean they both have ‘skating’ in the name, right? Today I decided to go ice skating. I’ve been before and I sucked, but I thought, hey, a year of roller skating must have improved something, right?

Wrong!

My main problem was moving in a forwards direction, instead of in a downwards direction which I was quite proficient in. (Reversing that motion was somewhat harder, though.)

While I was focussing all my will power on not flailing - because if it’s an annoyance in derby, it’s suicide when ice skating - I also had to navigate between ten and eleven year olds that were apparently born in the ice rink with skates as a permanent fixture, if their skating skills were anything to go by.

It made me think about newer skaters that are just starting to learn and how frustrating, painful and terrifying the experience can be. I think all derby players should do similarly dangerous activities that they have no talent in to recapture the fear of their early days and help them to empathise with the newer skaters.

It was fun watching the skaters who obviously dedicate a lot of their time to the sport. They used the free skating time to practice elaborate spins or tear through the crowds at a terrifying speed. They all had specially bought outfits and their own skates that I can easily imagine the personal value of. 

Beneath the superficial differences I could appreciate the passion and focus of the competitive skaters. They understand the pleasure that comes from working hard at something and gaining confidence in your own abilities, just like any other athlete.

The only difference is we skate on eight wheels and wear mandatory protection, whereas they skate on thin blades wearing nothing but tights, a skating dress and a smile.

Kinda makes us seem like the wusses…

My aims at the beginning of practice: stay focussed and pay attention to tactics.

My aims during the warmup: get lower and practice transitions.

My aims during scrimmaging: stick to the inside line and hit from the hips.

My aims at the end of practice: try to get home without throwing up.

The problem with taking a break from derby, is it’s always the times that you are forced to take a break, that you could really do with going to practice.

It’s when you’re stressed out of your mind that it would be really nice to hit someone, or when you’ve got a deadline hanging over you that it’d be great to skate ‘til you can’t think about anything except the way your mouth tastes like blood.

Normally I would extol the virtues of adding half a dozen roller girls as facebook friends, because they brighten up your feed like nothing else. Right now, I hate everyone who is able to update their status to tell me they have a killer bruise or they’re thinking of buying new wheels, simply because I am so jealous.

I want to be skating and improving and hitting and posting about it on facebook. Instead I’m stuck staring at spreadsheets and binding curves and begging my supervisors for an extension and hyperventilating into a tissue when it all gets too much because I didn’t have a paper bag.

My stress levels are through the roof.

I’d feel a lot better if I could skate.