MSc Marketing

Masters Dissertation

SESSION 2011/12

TITLE

Roller Derby and the F-Word – Marketing Feminism, Alternative Femininity or

False Consciousness?

AUTHOR

Ursula Martha Burger 40071575

Supervisor: Dr. Elaine Thomson

Roller Derby and the F-Word – Marketing Feminism, Alternative Femininity or False

Consciousness?

by

Ursula Martha Burger

September, 2012

Thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the Degree of Master of Science in

Marketing

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Declaration I declare that the work undertaken for this MSc Dissertation has been undertaken by myself and the final Dissertation produced by me. The work has not been submitted in part or in whole in regard to any other academic qualification. Title of Dissertation: Roller Derby and the F-Word – Marketing Feminism, Alternative Femininity or False Consciousness? Name (Print): ______________________________________________ Signature: ______________________________________________ Date: ______________________________________________

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Abstract

Roller derby is an emerging female full-contact grassroots sport that has found its way from the United States to the UK, and media attention often lies on the

seductive outfits of its players. This dissertation aims to consider roller derby and its marketing to discover whether roller derby as a new ‘unfeminine’ sport portrays

and markets genuine feminism, offering a space to alternative femininities, or whether roller derby is merely feigning false consciousness and partaking in commodity feminism. This will be achieved through audience questionnaires, content analysis of posters, as well as in-depth interviews with members of

Edinburgh’s roller derby league.

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Acknowledgments Skateloads of thanks to my supervisor Dr. Elaine Thomson whose knowledge and support was a tremendous inspiration for this project. The greatest appreciation to

my family – Alice, Christine, and Franziska – who supported me with indispensable pep talk and patience. And lastly, much derby love to ARRG’s Mary

T-Stoppins, Saucy Sausage, Lady Arachne, Tender Tenterhooks, Suzy Creamcheese, and Sway for being amazing and stimulating interviwees.

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Contents Declaration ....................................................................................................... i Abstract ........................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgments .......................................................................................... iii List of Tables and Figures .............................................................................. vi 1. Introduction..................................................................................................1

1.1 Roller Derby – What Is It and Who Can Do It ...................................1 1.2 Aims and Objectives .........................................................................2

2. Literature Review – Feminism, Advertising, and Roller Derby ....................4

2.1 Feminism and Marketing ..................................................................4 2.1.1 Suffragettes to Riot Grrrls ........................................................4 2.1.2 Dichotomies.............................................................................5 2.1.3 Gender vs. Sex .......................................................................6 2.1.4 Commodity Feminism..............................................................7 2.1.5 Third Wave Feminism and Riot Grrrl .......................................8

2.2 Advertising Femininities or Feminism? ...........................................10 2.2.1 Gender-Specific Analysis.......................................................10 2.2.2 Retro-Sexism.........................................................................12 2.2.3 Postmodernist Advertising and Tribes...................................13 2.3.4 The Perfect Non-Sexist Advertisement..................................14

2.3 Roller Derby ....................................................................................14 2.3.1 Negotiating Femininity ...........................................................15 2.3.2 Celebrating Female Corporeity..............................................17 2.3.3 Commodity Subversion..........................................................18 2.3.4 Roller Derby and Marketing...................................................19

2.4 Conclusion ......................................................................................21 3. Method ......................................................................................................22

3.1 Research Philosophy ......................................................................22 3.2 Interpretivist Research Techniques ................................................23 3.3 Sample............................................................................................24 3.4 Questions........................................................................................25 3.5 Limitations and Reliability ...............................................................25

4. Data Analysis.............................................................................................27 4.1 Questionnaires................................................................................27 4.2 ARRG Bout Posters .......................................................................31

4.2.1 Non-Sexist Advertising ..........................................................32 4.3 Interviews with ARRG Roller Derby Players ...................................37

4.3.1 The Interviewees ...................................................................37 4.3.2 First Contact with Derby ........................................................37 4.3.3 Empowerment Through Derby?.............................................38 4.3.4 External Perception of Derby.................................................41 4.3.5 Marketing From Within...........................................................42 4.3.6 What’s In a Derby Name?......................................................43 4.3.7 Marketing ARRG....................................................................44

4.4 Summary.........................................................................................46

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5. Conclusions and Recommendations ........................................................47 References ....................................................................................................51 Appendix I – Audience Questionnaire ........................................................... vii Appendix II – Interview Questions ................................................................ viii Appendix III – Transcripts of Interviews...........................................................x

Transcript I – Respondent 1....................................................................x Transcript II – Respondent 2...............................................................xviii Transcript III – Respondent 3............................................................... xxi Transcript IV – Respondent 4 ...........................................................xxxiii Transcript V – Respondent 5 ............................................................ xxxv Transcript IV – Respondent 6 .............................................................. xlii

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List of Tables and Figures

Fig. 4.1.1 – Genders of questionnaire respondents ................................29 Fig. 4.1.2 – Ages of questionnaire respondents......................................29 Fig. 4.1.3 – How many ARRG (home) bouts have you attended

this year? .............................................................................29 Fig. 4.1.4 – Do you usually support a different league, or is this the first

bout you have ever attended? ............................................29 Fig. 4.1.5 – How did you first hear about roller derby? ...........................29 Fig. 4.1.6 – If you ticked ‘other’ in the question how you first heard

about roller derby, please specify. ......................................29 Fig. 4.1.7 – Do you think of derby as a real sport? ................................30 Fig. 4.1.8 – What is your opinion on boutfits? ........................................30 Fig. 4.1.9 – What is your opinion on skaters’ derby names? ..................30 Fig. 4.1.10 – Do you know who designs the flyers and posters for

ARRG bouts? ......................................................................30 Fig. 4.1.11 – Do you think that members of ARRG are paid to be part

of the intra-league committees or for their skating?.............30 Fig. 4.1.12 – In what way do you think roller derby is a feminine sport? 30 Fig. 4.2.1 – Table comparing five ARRG bout posters............................31 Fig. 4.2.2 – Poster for Crashablanca (2010) ...........................................34 Fig. 4.2.3 – Poster for Scary Blocker and The Prisoner of Azkaslam

(2010)...................................................................................34 Fig. 4.2.4 – Poster for Blockenspiel (2010) .............................................35 Fig. 4.2.5 – Poster for ARRG vs. London Roller Girls (2011) .................36 Fig. 4.2.6 – Poster for Edinburgh Fringe Bouts (2012) ...........................36 Fig. 4.3.7.1 – Original ARRG Logo .........................................................44 Fig. 4.3.7.2 – ARRG Ship Logo...............................................................45 Fig. 4.3.7.3 – ARRG Rope Fist ...............................................................45 Fig. 4.3.7.4 – Current ARRG Logo..........................................................46

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1. Introduction 1.1 Roller Derby – What Is It and Who Can Do It? “’Derby allows you to do things girls aren’t conventionally allowed to do,’

explains Daisy Disease. ‘We get to be aggressive, competitive, athletic – but

there’s nothing unfeminine about us. It’s just not to do with pandering to

expectation” (Hickson, 2009). What Daisy Disease, real-life name Madeline

Breeze, is talking about is a new sports phenomenon that originated in Austin,

Texas, in the early 2000s, but has since found its way to the UK. Edinburgh’s own

roller derby league, the Auld Reekie Roller Girls (ARRG) established in 2008

(Hickson, 2009), counts around 80 members in 2012.

Roller Derby “is a full-contact women’s team sport played on roller skates

upon oval flat tracks in sports centres, church halls, warehouses and car parks

across the United Kingdom and North America” (Breeze, 2010: 121). The game

features two teams, each consisting of five members. There are eight “Blockers” in

total in every game, who form a “Pack”, and whose task it is to keep the opposing

“Jammer” from scoring points. Each team has a jammer who wears a helmet-

panty with a star, and who are the only players who are allowed to score points by

skating around the oval track. To keep the jammers from scoring blockers can

“use hip, shoulder, and full body checks to hinder the opposing Jammer’s progress

and to assist their Jammer through the Pack (Breeze, 2010: 121).

The leagues are not owned by anyone but the skaters, and answer to

Women’s Flat Track Derby Association (WFTDA) as “the international governing

body for the sport of women’s flat track roller derby and a membership

organization for leagues to collaborate and network” (WFTDA, 2012). The WFTDA

further “sets standards for rules, seasons, and safety, and determines guidelines

for the national and international athletic competitions of member leagues”

(WFTDA, 2012). The WFTDA’s tagline “Real. Strong. Athletic. Revolutionary” is a

clear and good indication of roller derby’s mission both in sport and as a social

comment. In roller derby, fans and players alike experience the realness and

athleticism of the sport in every game played, delivered by strong women who

want to revolutionise the mainstream patriarchal perception of athletic and

dedicated females. Beat Monkey, a roller derby player from the Hulls Angels Roller

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Dames, wrote an article on feminism in derby in issue three of Inside Line, and

introduced it hence:

“If you’re involved in roller derby then you’ve probably heard the F-word at some point. That word is ‘feminism’. It’s one that has many negative connotations and many men appear bemused when I say I am one, but chances are you’re a feminist too – you just don’t know it.”

(Inside Line, 2012: 11)

This contextualises the rationale for my dissertation: the proposed aim of my

dissertation is to explore how roller derby presents itself and its players in terms of

feminism in its marketing communications (i.e. posters and promotional materials).

One underlying, but vital, question poses itself in the feminist message is

communicated by roller derby: is it ‘real’ feminism or what Goldmann (1992)

termed ‘commodity feminism’? In other words, is roller derby invested in feminism

and its politics, or are the players colluding in their own oppression?

The rationale for choosing this topic is the author’s personal interest in

feminism and advertising, as well as her personal involvement in roller derby. The

research project is important because roller derby is a new way for women to

accept their corporeality as well as their athletic capabilities in a sport widely

characterised as ‘unfeminine’ (see Breeze, 2010; Finley, 2010; Peluso, 2011). It

also offers interesting insight into the fully democratic Do-It-Yourself attitude of a

new and emerging grassroots sports that finds its origins in the Riot Grrrl

Movement of the early 1990s and presents the mainstream audience with a new

kind of female advertising.

Since the scope for this project needs to be limited according to the

prerequisites of a Masters dissertation, the referenced literature is predominately

concerned with roller derby in the United States, but is also applicable to the UK

and Europe. Furthermore the collection of research data will only focus on the

Auld Reekie Roller Girls.

1.2 Aim and Objectives With the help of marketing communications from ARRG as a derby

example league, the aim of this dissertation is to discover whether roller derby’s

performance and portrayal of femininity is indeed genuine feminism, offering a

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space to alternative femininities, or whether roller derby is merely feigning false

consciousness and partaking in commodity feminism.

As mentioned in the introduction and as it will become clear in the

literature review, roller derby is a very special sport in terms of the challenge it

poses to gender norms. Data for understanding the phenomenon that derby

constitutes will be collected by investigating the perceptions of a sample including

connoisseurs of the sport as well as laypeople through qualitative research

methods.

Translated into objectives, the dissertation will aim:

• To explore the meaning of feminism in relation to sport and

marketing, and to analyse the significance of ‘commodity feminism.

• To analyse and describe the role of advertising.

• To review the relationship of marketing and feminism.

• To provide a detailed description of the social and cultural rise and

significance of roller derby in the UK, and to present a detailed

context of ARRG.

• To conduct primary research with audiences and team members of

roller derby in Edinburgh in the form of survey and in-depth

interviews, as well as through a content analysis of randomly

chosen ARRG bout posters.

The research conducted shall be threefold: in a first instance, five chosen

posters from ARRG bouts (what matches are called) are analysed to see whether

common themes emerge about what the Auld Reekie Roller Girls consider derby

girls to be like. This analysis as well as the literature review will be used to draw up

a questionnaire for the audience, and which will be made accessible to them

online as well as in print. In a last instance semi-structured interviews with active

members of ARRG shall be conducted. In a concluding step, the research results

will be combined and compared to gauge whether ARRG as an example of a roller

derby league forms a feminist space, a safe space for alternative femininities, or

whether roller derby feigns false consciousness by partaking in commodity

feminism.

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2. Literature Review – Feminism, Advertising, and Roller Derby This literature shall lay the foundation for the research part of this dissertation by

reviewing feminism in context of marketing and advertising, as well as roller derby

and its definitions of femininity. Hence, first this chapter illuminates what feminism

is and how it stands in regard to marketing. This part then extends into an analysis

of the relationship between feminism and advertising. In a third and final part, this

chapter describes the relationship between roller derby and femininities. This also

entails a short study of femininity and the female body in sport.

2.1. Feminism and Marketing 2.1.1 Suffragettes to Riot Grrrls

Feminism can be partitioned in different ways; on the one hand, it can be

parted into ‘feminisms’ since there are different feminist philosophical positions

(Catterall et al., 2000). On the other hand, feminism as a term includes three

historical waves of feminism, which, especially in literary studies, is the prevalent

one. The journey of modern feminist waves reaches from the 19th to the 21st

century. First-wave feminism is the social movement that “arose in the context of

industrial society and liberal politics” and is connected to the liberal women’s right

movement in both Europe and the United States (Krolokke & Scott Sorensen,

2005). Its concerns were access and equal opportunities for women (Krolokke &

Scott Sorensen, 2005), as seen for example in the Suffragettes movement. The

second wave “emerged in the 1960s and 1970s in post-war Western welfare

societies, when other ‘oppressed’ groups such as Blacks and homosexuals were

being defined and the New Left was on the rise” (Krolokke & Scott Sorensen,

2005: 1). Second wave feminism was more radical to achieve empowerment and

equal rights, and also split up into different groups during the 1980s, which was

partly initiated by “women of color and third-world women” (Krolokke & Scott

Sorensen, 2005: 1). Third wave feminism dates to the mid-1990s and is based on

the “emergence of a new postcolonial and postsocialist world order, in the context

of information society and neoliberal, global politics” (Krolokke & Scott Sorensen,

2005: 1):

“Third-wave feminism manifests itself in ‘grrrl’ rhetoric, which seeks to overcome the theoretical question of equity or difference and the political question of evolution or

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revolution, while it challenges the notion of ‘universal womanhood’ and embraces ambiguity, diversity, and multiplicity in transversal theory and politics.”

(Krolokke & Scott Sorensen, 2005: 2)

In other words, third-wave feminists “are motivated by the need to develop a

feminist theory and politics that honor contradictory experiences and deconstruct

categorical thinking” (Krolokke & Scott Sorensen, 2005: 16). These factors are

also symptomatic of postmodernism, which entails the fragmentation of self as well

as society as an alienating space (Simmons, 2008). Krolokke and Scott Sorensen

position the 21st century under the philosophy of “transversity” (2005: 22), a

system of transversal theory and the politics of diversity as well as multiplicity, and

which was inspired by third-wave feminism. Marketing theory can positively be

identified to have been influenced by all three waves, but the actual execution of

marketing thought and feminist theory together in one place, as will be seen later

in this chapter, is a particularly delicate one.

2.1.2 Dichotomies

Catterall et al. (2000: 1) introduce the amalgamation of marketing and

feminism as a “potentially explosive combination” since feminists have been

accusing marketing of promoting a system for exploiting women for decades.

Feminism itself is the involvement in a mixture of social criticism and social action,

with the goal of improving women’s positions (Catterall et al., 2000). The social

criticism is based on categories of dichotomies that have been established and

sustained by philosophers and linguists over centuries (Catterall et al., 2000).

Examples for these dichotomous categories are: public/private, mind/body,

human/nature, and male/female. Feminists argue here that “these dichotomies

operate in a way that privileges one of each pair” (Catterall et al., 2000). Public,

mind, human and male are rendered superior to their pair partners. Indeed, the

dichotomies are categorised such that the latter in each pair can only be defined in

relation to the former “as befits its inferior status” (Catterall et al., 2000: 4). It is

these dichotomies that are predominately highlighted in advertising, which is one

major aspect of marketing.

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2.1.3 Gender vs. Sex

Another important aspect to feminism is that there is a distinction between

sex – the biological indicators of a person – and gender, which is culturally created

and sustained (Butler, 1990). This means that since gender is culturally

concepted, and gender differences are pervasive in (mainstream) culture, these

gender differences are not immutable (Catterall et al., 2000). Postmodernists have

gone so far as to argue that “gender is one of those universalities and unhelpful

binaries that typify modern Western thought” (Catterall et al., 2000: 5). Jacqueline

J. Kacen elaborates on the postmodern aspect of gender, and points out that “[our

various conceptualizations and constructions of gender identity get expressed,

signified (in a Saussurean sense), and conventionalized through role appropriate

behaviors, associated physical characteristics, occupations, and personality traits”

(2000: 346). It is physical appearance in particular that plays a significant role in

gender construction: “How we look is an extremely prominent cue for gender

definition and social reaction/interaction” (Kacen, 2000: 346). It is based on gender

‘signifiers’ that a person becomes a “’worthy’” member of one gender or the other

(Kacen, 2000: 346). This dogma is so ingrained in the consumer mind that even if

a person does not, or refuses to, identify with “appropriate gender-typed traits” or

is rejecting traditional role definitions, they still learn the gender behaviour that is

socially expected from them congruent to their biological sex (Kacen, 2000).

Modern marketing practices (and subliminally supports) the view that

men’s sphere was outside the home in a “technologically modern workplace” while

women’s “proper and natural place came to be associated with the home, beauty,

and domesticity” (Kacen, 2000: 347). Modern marketers hence considered the

ideal consumer to be female, but had a disdainful attitude towards the female

clientele (Kacen, 2000). With the beginning of postmodernity however, men have

been drawn into marketing appeals as well, since you now are what you consume

(Kacen, 2000). “Marketers encourage and promote gender-blurring through

advertising campaigns and the development and promotion of new products that

ignore and consciously subvert traditional gender notions” (Kacen, 2000: 350).

Despite these “innovations” however, it is questionable whether the role of woman

has changed. Have women been liberated by marketing (instead of feminism),

since the postmodern consumer is obsessed with appearance and consumption

and is labelled a member of “a culture that feminizes men” (Kacen, 2000: 350)?

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2.1.4 Commodity Feminism

In Reading Ads Socially (1996), Robert Goldman addresses gender

relations and the dialectics of appearance in advertisements. He notes that in the

1980s more and more ads depicted women and men in “relations of formal equity”

(Goldman, 1996: 107). Indeed, women in advertisements had become mythic

superwomen figures (Goldman, 1996: 107): the ads showed sexy, slender women,

completely in control of their appearance. Women were shown assuming control

over their lives and relationships “through their commodified articulation of

feminine appearance” (Goldman, 1996: 108), which reveals that gender power

was now “partially lived out at the level of appearances” (ibid). Through analysing

different advertisements in women’s magazines, Goldman found that

advertisements encourage women to increase their social power and value by

engaging in “self-fetishization” (1996: 113). Far from being liberated and strong,

the women in the ads are often arranged like women in works of art, “set up as

objects for the admiration and exploitation of the spectator-owner” (Goldman,

1996: 115). Indeed, woman’s desirability and power is based on her appearance:

“the more a woman is able to elicit desire via presentation of self as a valued

commodity – valued by her rareness/availability – the more powerful she feels”

(Goldman, 1996: 124; emphasis added).

Goldman describes mass media advertising to women as a potentially

oppositional feminism – oppositional to post-feminism (1996: 130). He defines

post-feminism as “a generation of young women who take for granted the rights

gained through the struggles of feminists” (Goldman, 1996: 148) – which appears

identical neither with Krolokke and Scott Sorensen’s second nor third wave

feminism. In other words, mass media advertising is taking advantage of young

women’s belief of emancipation, while in reality the media undermine feminist

liberation by feeding women seemingly feminist products. Commodity feminism

means that “[f]eminist values including self-definition, equal treatment in labor

markets, control over one’s body and personal freedom have been semiotically

transformed into what signifies attractiveness to men” (Goldman, 1996: 32f.). Even

further, “[t]he culture industry now carefully tracks the demographic paths and

attitudes of women as a method of positioning products to target audiences”

(Goldman, 1996: 133). Advertisers tried to bridge the distance between feminism

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and femininity, but what they achieved was that women now cannot but choose to

be regarded as sexual objects for this coheres with their “’liberated’ interests”

(Goldman, 1996: 33):

“[p]aradoxically, the female body has become the mediating element between the constructed domains of femininity and feminism – the domestic sphere and the world of work. Commodity feminism declares that control and ownership of one’s body/face/self, accomplished through the right acquisitions, can maximize one’s value at both work and home. As far as corporate marketers are now concerned, this new ‘freedom’ has become essential to the accumulation of capital – to reproducing the commodity form.”

(Goldman, 1996: 153; author’s emphasis)

Bluntly put, the female consumer must play along in this game and is deluded

into believing that she has a choice, while indeed the only choice she has it to

either partake in commodity feminism, or disembark the consumption train

and lose her feminine capital. What second wave feminists fought for –

liberation, sexual freedom – has been turned against them through marketing

practices that twist the feminist message into a new, hardly recognisable,

female oppression. Consequently, one essential question for this research is

whether Goldman’s assessment of commodity feminism is also the case in

roller derby’s marketing portrayal to the outside – are roller girls lead to

believe they are emancipated and free, while merely partaking in commodity

feminism?

2.1.5 Third Wave Feminism and Riot Grrrl

“Marketing has always been about consumption; gender has always been

about differences,” Kacen writes in “Girrrl power and boyyy natures” (2000: 345).

In the modern era, this attitude led to men being the producing and women the

consuming side of the economy coin (Kacen, 2000). In the postmodern era,

however, the “culture of consumption” has seemingly annihilated the differences

by making everyone a consumer (Kacen, 2000). Distinction is based on symbolic

differentiation, i.e. consumption, and plays a central role in the formation of

consumer identities (Kacen, 2000). The Riot Grrrl movement was demarcated by

its “persistent opposition to the mainstream media and its call for women and girls

to publicly express themselves” (Dunn & Summer Farnsworth, 2012: 140), and

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was the feminist step away from the consumer to the producer. Riot Grrrls formed

bands playing aggressive punk rock with a feminist agenda, accentuated gender

issues, and produced their own zines (Dunn & Farnsworth, 2012).

Riot Grrrl originates in the punk movement of the late 1980s. While punk

was considered a diverse movement in the beginning, – a bricolage of males,

females, transgendered people, homosexuals and straights, – towards the end of

the 1980s, it “began to assume a conspicuously masculine identity” (Dunn &

Farnsworth, 2012: 137), which compelled Allison Wolfe, Molly Neuman and Jen

Smith to inaugurate the feminist ‘zine Riot Grrrl (Dunn & Summer Farnsworth,

2012). The underlying ideology for Riot Grrrl’s independent efforts to produce their

own ‘zines and bands was the “rejection of ‘inauthentic’ mass-produced consumer

culture in favor of an ‘authentic’ folk culture, … and most important, the desire for

individual control over cultural production” (Beaver, 2012: 29). In other words, Riot

Grrrls are not fundamentally motivated by commercial success, but by the thrill of

non-alienated self-creativity and activity (Beaver, 2012).

Essentially, third wave feminists carry the privileges that the first and

second wave had fought for as their capital, and see themselves as “capable,

strong, and assertive social agents” (Krolokke & Scott Sorensen, 2005: 15). The

movement has been criticising sexist language, appropriating derogatory

appellations for women and girls, and invented new “self-celebrating words”,

motivated by a need to “develop a feminist theory and politics that honor

contradictory experiences and deconstruct categorical thinking” (Krolokke & Scott

Sorensen, 2005: 16). To bridge the movement of third wave feminism to

advertising, it needs to be noted that third wavers are locally, nationally and

internationally active in the areas of violence against women, trafficking, body

issues, self-harm, and the overall pornofication of the media (Krolokke & Scott

Sorensen, 2005), which are all issues that can be connected back to the

representation of only one type of woman (the pristine, hairless, slim, and mostly

heterosexual Caucasian beauty) in advertising. Third wave feminism, and Riot

Grrrls as a part of it, offer criticism to earlier feminist waves for representing and

defining womanhood as a universal sentiment and static identity (Krolokke & Scott

Sorensen, 2005).

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2.2 Advertising Femininities or Feminism?

Advertisements, particularly print or online advertisements, are hardly

noticed by consumers, at least not actively. Even if they are, there are disruptions

that occur while decoding the ads, particularly cultural and linguistic background.

As mentioned above, Goldman elaborated on commodity feminism in advertising

with advertisers presenting the female consumer with products intended to

emphasise her female independence, strength and so on, by buying a product that

will make her feel strong and beautiful. It can be argued that commodity feminism

does not take into consideration all the different types of women; rather it focuses

on what Rosalind Gill refers to as “power femininity,” the “’postfeminist’ moment, in

which women are invited to purchase everything from bras to coffee as signs of

their power and independence (from men)” (2008: 36). The discourse of

empowerment employed in combination with ubiquitous consumption makes third

wave feminism appear to fight a futile battle.

2.2.1 Gender-Specific Analysis

Advertisements offer different ways of analysis: non-textual and textual

analysis, and the classification of ads (Dyer, 1982). Text does encompass all the

elements of the actual advertisement: text, headings, pictures, small print. The

non-textual analysis assumes the “producer’s-meaning” approach and surmises

that an advertisement can only have one meaning, namely the correct one

intended by the author (Dyer, 1982: 69). Another approach is to assume that the

meaning of a text “can be the identification of meaning with the

consumer/receiver’s experience of it” (Dyer, 1982: 69). The textual analysis,

meanwhile, assumes the meaning ascribed to a text by the consumer, or an

analyst with particular expertise (Dyer, 1982). Finally, classifying ads is “to look at

their functions and techniques ranging along an axis from the purely informational

to those that exhort or command” (Dyer, 1982: 70). Barbara Stern (2000) and

Stephanie O’Donohoe (2000) demonstrated ways to read advertising texts

separately from each other, but both referred to gynocentric and androcentric

advertising texts. This distinction was first made by Elaine Showalter (1977), and

refers to texts written by men as androtexts, and texts written by women as

gynotexts (O’Donohoe, 2000). However, it is crucial to realise “that an ad for

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women, even if produced in part by women, still may not be in our interests”

(O’Donohoe, 2000: 80).

There is a further difference between the different genders reading

advertisements. O’Donohoe found that female interpreters “expressed more

concern about stereotyped portrayals in advertising than men” (2000: 88). Also

female readers were found to generally empathise and participate more in the

advertising texts, while men’s focus was on learning something from the

advertisements (O’Donohoe, 2000; Stern, 2000). Indeed, the majority of

consumers talking or attempting to analyse advertisements assume they are

vehicles for the communication of hyperbolized publicity (Dyer, 1982).

Advertisements, in other words, are not real, and hence do not mirror reality. In her

research, Gill (2008) discovered three types of women portrayed in contemporary

advertising: the midriff, a feisty, up-for-it female; the woman looking for revenge on

her partner; and finally, the hot lesbian who shows the male observer what he

cannot have. What is important to note is that regardless of the creator’s gender,

the actual advertisements were constructed from within a heteronormative system,

in relation to men and the male gaze. Particularly interesting about the three types

is that they represent a notion “of making oneself into a commodity to be rationed”

(Gill, 2008: 52), with the intention that men do not deserve these women. It could

be said that these three figures open up “a new mode of representing women”

(Gill, 2008: 52): it is a move away from passive, silent, unintelligent sex objects to

active, strong, beautiful, smart, and powerful sex subjects (Gill, 2008). This change

could be interpreted as positive, as “offering modernized representations of

femininity that allow women power and agency” (Gill 2008: 52) without restricting

the female sexuality to a heterosexual one. However, it also offers a “bleak and

hostile vision of gender relation” (Gill, 2008: 53): the vengeful woman humiliates

and attacks men, but the audience is supposed to consider this as empowering for

women (Gill, 2008). However, regardless of the reader’s gender, Gill (2008)

suggests that this demonstration of female ‘empowerment’ shows a distortion of

feminism that suggests that men are disadvantaged if women are successful and

empowered:

“What is striking is the way in which advertisers have managed in these three figures to recuperate and commodify a particular kind of feminist consciousness and

12

offer it back to women shorn of its political critique of gender relations and heteronormativity.”

(Gill, 2008: 54)

2.2.2 Retro-Sexism

Plakoyiannaki and Zotos (2008: 1413) describe the media’s use of

showing the female body as the use of “retro-sexist” tropes. Contemporary

advertising also draws on gender stereotypes as general beliefs about how a

person’s traits, roles, and behaviour is linked to their sex (Plakoyiannaki & Zotos,

2008). Retro-sexism is a result of first and second wave feminist activities in the

1960s and 1970s, as well as the view of third wave feminism that “notions of

feminism and sexism” were considered outdated (Plakoyiannaki & Zotos, 2008)

since equality was considered established:

“Retro-sexism differs from earlier sexual representations of women in the 1960s and 1970s inasmuch as it has assimilated feminist criticism against sexist advertising to promote ‘commercial femininities’ in the service of commodity consumption.”

(Plakoyiannaki & Zotos, 2008: 1413f.)

Women are still portrayed in conservative roles, and consequently female role

portrayals have not changed to reflect the evolution of women’s role in society

(Plakoyiannaki & Zotos, 2008). Plakoyiannaki and Zotos’s research discovered

that the women in their advertisement samples were “predominately shown as

concerned about their physical attractiveness, housewives and objects of sexual

gratification” (2008: 1414).

However, as the above-described Riot Grrrl movement shows, not all

women are satisfied with being pressured into the role of the object but strife to be

the active subject or their image as well as their actions. This dissertation would

like to argue that women portrayed in advertisements for ARRG roller derby bouts

are neither of a decorative nature nor are they sexual objects. Rather, it can be

said that these women have gathered in a group that aims to redress the

postmodern consumer’s constant search for the creation of their identities based

on mainstream advertising’s gender images.

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2.2.3 Postmodernist Advertising and Tribes

Cova and Cova (2002) argue that society is now in the era of the ordinary

individual, and the individual must take action to produce and show one’s

existence, and show one’s personal difference. This happens through

consumption as a means of creating an acceptable identity. Marketing has

adjusted to this postmodern fragmentary-induced need for identity-creation,

especially on a virtual level. However, technology easily increases the isolation

already felt by the consumer, since computers now affect all areas of our daily

lives (Simmons, 2008). The 21st century so far has been characterised as a period

“of severe social dissolution and extreme individualism” (Simmons, 2008: 596).

Another movement towards re-socialisation has emerged as a counter-trend to

this dystopian view. On this quest to re-forming their social universe, these

individuals often tend to gather in tribes. Maffesoli defined society as “resembling a

network of societal micro-groups, in which individuals share strong emotional links,

a common subculture, a vision of life” (Maffessoli, 1996, cf. in Simmons, 2008:

599). Each person belongs to several tribes in order to satisfy the need for a

community, and belonging to a tribe becomes more crucial than belonging to a

social class (Simmons, 2008). Roller derby in this sense is a tribe, one of many,

that women searching for a different femininity gather around. It is not a

subculture, or a brand community, because it is not solely focused around

consumption:

“a tribe is defined as a network of heterogeneous persons – in terms of age, sex, income, etc. – who are linked by a shared passion or emotion; a tribe is capable collective action, its members are not simple consumers, they are also advocates.”

(Simmons, 2008: 602; author’s emphasis)

Connecting back to the Riot Grrrl process of creating ‘zines and setting up bands,

roller derby girls indeed are not simple consumers, they also advocate derby by

managing their own leagues, creating their own marketing communications,

organising their own bouts. They are consumers of roller derby products (skates,

protective gear, helmets, apparel), but they also create their own contribution in

their athletic and creative output, which shall be further described below.

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2.2.4 The Perfect Non-Sexist Ad

Truly feminist advertising would entail a depiction of women in a non-

sexist way, as well as presenting the consumers with positive role models. Stern

(2000) lays down four criteria that non-sexist advertising would meet as follows:

Firstly, non-sexist advertising would only present the authentic female experience,

and exclude “denigrative sex-role stereotypes (‘sex kitten,’ ‘brainless housewife’)”

(Stern, 2000: 71), but show realistic depictions of women who are not a reflection

of the male perception of women. Secondly, it would show positive female role

models, not only for adults but also for children: “Only when young children

become socialised by seeing women who are ‘self-actualising, and whose

identities are not dependent on men’ (Register 1975: 67) can they be expected to

develop a positive sense of feminine identity and high self-esteem” (Stern, 2000:

71). Thirdly, non-sexist advertising would reflect the co-operation among women,

and not show them as competitors for male competition: “If women are repeatedly

shown as rivals for male attention, their self-worth is eroded and their self-

actualising goals are implicitly derogated” (Stern, 2000: 71). If all these properties

are met, non-sexist advertising would, fourth, represent a new humanity: “The

advertising goal is to depict the humanisation of both sexes, so that values such

as nurturance, kindness and co-operation can be given a chance to change the

world for the better” (Stern, 2000: 71). It shall be seen whether ARRG’s advertising

can actually live up to these four requirements and could indeed be considered a

specimen of non-sexist advertising, despite Stern’s above-mentioned claim that

there is no such thing as of yet.

2.3 Roller Derby Roller derby is a relatively new phenomenon in its latest reincarnation and

hence has not been extensively covered by academic research. The sport has its

origin in the United States of the 1930s where Leo Steltzer envisioned a track

upon which men and women on wheels would compete “in a race of stamina and

speed” (Mabe, 2007: 21). Eventually a points system was introduced and roller

derby had its heyday when World War II started (Mabe, 2007). During and after

the war, it started being televised nationally (Mabe, 2007). The movement began

to ebb down until it revived fully in the 1970s, with more leagues competing

against each other (Mabe, 2007) – only to eventually peter out again. In 1999, yet

15

another attempt at resurrection was made, this time on inline skates under the

name of Roller Jam, which was televised on TNN (Mabe, 2007). However, viewer

numbers could not be sustained and Roller Jam was cancelled. In 2000, Austin

became the birthplace of roller derby in its contemporary shape (Mabe, 2007).

What was new this time: men were no longer allowed on track (Mabe, 2007).

“Sexy uniforms, skater alter egos, and new-school rules combined with

unparalleled athleticism and fearlessness” (Mabe, 2007: 61) – the new breed of

roller derby, focused on being recognised as a ‘real’ sport, had been born. Today,

men are allowed in referee or coaching positions, but the roller derby itself is only

played by female skaters. There has, however, been a move towards creating

male derby leagues, and it remains to be seen how male roller derby will develop

over time, and whether it might affect female roller derby. In 2005, a group of

skaters established the WFTDA as the official organ for laying down rules as well

as practice regulations (WFTDA, 2012; Breeze, 2010).

2.3.1 Negotiating Femininity

In “There’s No Balls in Derby”, Breeze’s concern lies with the “doing”

(Butler, 1990, cf. Breeze, 2010: 121) of gender and sexuality, and particularly

“femininity” in roller derby. She argues that “the ‘doing’ of both ‘masculinity’ and

‘femininity’ as they are variously defined and operationalised in existing empirical

work, and the visible celebration of queer sexualities, can be identified in roller

derby culture and practice” (Breeze 2010: 122). Her suggestion is that roller derby

skaters do what has been described as “hegemonic masculinities” and

“emphasised femininities” (Connell, 1987, cf. in Breeze, 2010: 122), which gives

potential cause for roller derby to problematise existing gender theory. Roller

derby “evidently presents a unique and emergent sports context in which to

analyse how the women who play it negotiate femininity” (Breeze, 2010: 122).

Nancy J. Finley (2010), too, examined hegemonic and alternative

femininities and the construction of alternative femininities in roller derby, and how

these can be challenging the prevalent hegemonic gender relations in sports. Like

Breeze, she defines hegemonic masculinity quoting Connell and Messerschmidt

(2005) as the “form that has social dominance, achieved through cultural

practices, discursive centrality, and marginalization of alternatives” (Finley 2010:

360). “Emphasised femininity” refers to “the form of femininity that supports the

16

dominance of men. It is a handmaiden to hegemonic masculinity” (Finley, 2010:

361), and hence is ‘superior’ to other femininities. Roller derby players, Finley

argues, “disrupt hegemonic gender relations as they engage with conventional

definitions of femininity while simultaneously mocking them” (2010: 360) as they

engage in “alternative femininities” (2010: 362). Essentially, alternative femininities

disrupt hegemonic masculinity by engaging in a collective effort to “negotiate

actively the meaning and rules of gender to redefine the hegemonic relationship

between masculinity and femininity” in a normative, mainstream environment

(Finley, 2010: 362).

While “feminisation, sexualisation and trivialisation of women in sport have

been well documented” (Breeze, 2010: 125), women’s sporting abilities and

achievements are devalued to lessen any potential threat to “masculine

dominance” (Theberge, 1993: 311, cf. in Breeze, 2010: 125), and female athletes

sacrifice their athletic prowess to maintain that balance, for example by

emphasising their femininity with make up outside their athletic environment

(Brace-Govan, 2010). This does not apply to roller derby players who have “a

somewhat notorious reputation for wearing skimpy, provocative, risqué or explicitly

sexualised uniforms or outfits when they compete” (Breeze, 2010: 126) – and

could be interpreted as mocking stereotyped femininities as laid out by Finley and

Brave-Govan above. Breeze agrees and states that

“It is this supposedly sexualised dress that could be classified as a display of emphasised femininity, and thus as a doing of gender that rearticulates essential assumptions about men and women and, again, ultimately as sustaining conditions of hegemonic masculinity and gender inequality.”

(Breeze, 2010: 126)

However, Breeze further adds that the application of this theoretical framework

leaves hardly any room to consider a skater’s intent, or the “agentic elements” this

particular style of apparel has in roller derby:

“For example, in my experience, many skaters reject the idea that they dress in a feminine or sexy manner when they play and practice roller derby. Instead, they assert the functionality of their outfits and especially reject the idea that they dress in any particular way for a, real or imagined, male audience.”

(Breeze, 2010: 126)

17

It is important to note here that roller derby often presents a queer-positive public

image and recognises and even celebrates marginalised sexualities and same-sex

relationships (Breeze, 2010) which do not depend on the male gaze or male

appreciation. Essentially, the outfits should be interpreted in different ways by

different observers (Stern, 2000).

2.3.2 Celebration of Female Corporeity

Natalie M. Peluso’s research (2011: 37) shows “that flat track roller derby

itself creates a safe space in sport for marginalized and transgressive bodies”.

Furthermore Peluso recognises skaters’ subversion of attire and adornment norms

(congruent with Breeze and Finley), and furthermore stresses the

reconceptualisation of corporeality by celebrating injuries as “physical and

subcultural capital” (Peluso, 2011: 37). She, too, perceives roller derby to be

challenging gendered power relations. However, she goes a step further and

actively involves feminism into this challenging, by referring to “sport feminism”

presenting itself as a “useful theoretical approach to the study of women’s

(embodied) experience in sport” (Peluso, 2011: 39). Roller derby is not a ‘typical’

sport for women for its incompatibility with stereotypes regarding beauty, grace,

and female attractiveness (Peluso, 2011). Roller derby is sweaty and aggressive,

and bruises are not generally considered attractive in mainstream culture

(marketing included). However, to some women the participation in sports that are

deemed inappropriate is a way of challenging hegemonic gender norms (Peluso,

2011) – which could definitely be considered a characteristic of all feminist waves.

Peluso closes her argument by pointing out that in roller derby, the female body is

not considered weak but capable of achieving athletic success, and that injuries

become valued trophies in the celebration of the female body:

“In my research, I found that skaters reconceptualised the physical body in radically new ways. First, bumps, lumps, bruises, and breaks were all considered forms of physical capital as expressed by Shilling (1993), who says, ‘When social fields (art, fashion, sport, etc.) bestow value directly on a specific bodily form, activity or performance, they are effectively creating a category of physical capital’.“

(Peluso, 2011: 44)

The skaters are aware of the risk and are prepared for injuries, and the women are

“far from withdrawing from this risk of injury” (Storms, 2008: 82). Roller derby

18

provides women with “an activity that leads to new modes of acquiring knowledge

of their bodies” (Storms, 2008: 84), and has contributed to realising a female

identity that is resistant to the “restrictive standards of hegemonic male culture”

(Storms, 2008: 84). Storms even goes so far as to say that “[b]y providing an

alternate way of experience their bodies in [a] gender atypical, highly disciplined

way, roller skating has been a manifestation of feminism in America” (2008: 84).

The same can be argued for happening the United Kingdom at the moment, and it

has partly been made visible in promotional roller derby posters, flyers, and bout

programmes.

2.3.3 Commodity Subversion

Nevertheless, in concordance with Goldman’s commodity feminism, the

question still remains whether roller derby really does resist heteronormative

femininities. After all, Brace-Govan states that “[p]ublic representations of

physically active women remain limited and heterosexist” (2010: 389). Even

though some voices, especially the popular press, argue that women have

achieved equality, there are other opinions that suggest that is it not in fact a

reality (Brave-Govan, 2010). Jennifer Carlson states that when surveying media

coverage of roller derby, the women partaking in the sport are only rendered

“subversive to the extent that it [roller derby] is integrated into a multiplicitous

femininity” (2011: 86). What the media tend to highlight is that derby skaters can

be considered “a secret gang of superheroes: librarians, retailers, lawyers,

students and moms by day, by night these women are transformed into ‘bad-ass’

skaters” (Carlson, 2011: 86). This means that even though derby offers quite

considerable room to manoeuvre gender agency, it remains unclear whether the

“crossing boundaries of feminine norms into masculine-market territories (as derby skaters clearly do) constitutes any resistance of femininity per se. Rather than lauded for their ability to dedicate their lives to athleticism (a singular pursuit which I would argue would be much more subversive of femininity), skaters are applauded for being able to pull-off ‘subversion’ while still maintaining jobs and families.”

(Carlson, 2011: 86f)

Referring to Judith Butler, Carlson postulates that the boundary crossings are

actually indicative of gender subversion, and hence the skaters’ superhero

persona rather constitutes than undermines femininity (Carlson, 2011). And yet, it

19

can be argued that even though derby skaters may adhere to femininities, they

also undermine it by mocking it (Breeze, 2010; Finley, 2010; Peluso, 2011).

Following Carlson’s argument thus shows that what roller derby players actually

perform is not necessarily commodity feminism, but can be considered

“commodity subversion”.

2.3.4 Roller Derby and Marketing

To connect roller derby as a product and producer to marketing, it needs

to be specified it holds “a strong narrative history of a Do-It-Yourself (DIY)

organisational ethos” (Breeze, 2010: 122), which means that roller derby in the UK

(and the US) “is not incorporated into any pre-existing institution, but has been

built from the bottom up by the women who play the sport” (Breeze, 2010: 122).

Derby has not been professionalised, and is women owned and women led

(Breeze, 2010). While it incorporates athletic values like competition, athleticism,

official rules and rankings, roller derby is democratic and skater-owned (Breeze,

2010), and decisions are made in-league. The general research consensus is that

it is important to the skaters that they own their own athletic product as well as

their team, and are involved in all the business transactions and decisions that

need to be made to market the league to an audience (Breeze, 2010; Finley, 2010;

Peluso, 2011; Beaver, 2012; Pavlidis, 2012). Consequently derby needs to be

seen as a subculture that provides space for “alternative ways of thinking and

being that challenge the dominant culture” (Beaver, 2012: 30). The DIY ethic is an

example of this, and needs to be considered as a “self-conscious political act”

(Beaver, 2012: 30). This implies that the advertising created by derby leagues

originates from this alternative space, but the question whether derby and

consequently the posters as a presentation thereof constitute resistance through

satirical portrayals of the feminine needs to answered with ‘no’ according to

Carlson (2011: 86):

“A quick survey of the cliché’d headlines of news commentary on derby suggests no; at least in terms of its media coverage, roller derby is often rendered subversive to the extent that it is integrated into a multiplicitous femininity. Typical coverage tends to figure derby skaters as a secret gang of superheroes: librarians, retailers, lawyers, students and moms by day, by night these women are transformed into ‘bad-ass’ skaters.”

20

Breeze connects the media’s fascination with skaters as “a secret gang of

superheroes” with the explicitly feminine and sexualised boutfits1 that often occur

in roller derby on the track, as well as in “promotional posters, flyers, photo-shoots

and calendars” (2010: 126). Obviously these are the visual elements that are seen

by the outside world, and it is these “that could be interpreted as displays of

emphasised femininity” (Breeze, 2010: 126), and consequently attract most media

attention purely based on the fact that sex sells as has been mentioned above in

chapter 2.2. What might be particularly interesting is that women here may be

portrayed in sexy poses, but the arguably violent and athletic backdrop of roller

derby is not a conventional female habitat (Plakoyiannaki & Zotos, 2008). This can

be related to Carlson’s (2011) view that the roller derby players perform

‘commodity subversion’, since the feminism shown is one based on the ability to

juggle derby, families, and jobs. This does not necessarily mean that roller derby’s

potrayal in the media and self-published materials shows commodity feminism, but

rather that feminism is taking a backseat.

Another explanation might be that the marketing – the derby names, the

boutfits, the team names, the bout names – are humorous and ironic:

„The humor is used to express rebellion but also to soften the rebellion. Earnestly trying sports is risky so skaters test the waters with a mockery of legitimate sports; as the team gets more skilled the high jinks seem to diminish. The humor serves the multiple functions of challenging hegemonic femininity and softening the criticisms from boyfriends and others that might ridicule team sports.“

(Finley, 2010: 376)

In this respect roller derby can be said to be marketing alternative feminism, but

also a false consciousness of subversion the players deem necessary to avoid

derision. Interestingly enough Finley argues that this rebellion based on sexy,

alternative appearance diminishes as the leagues become more experienced and

gain greater athletic self-esteem.

Finally, in true DIY spirit, leagues are their own marketers as well as

marketers of the sport. The sport has an alternative grassroots background, which

will always draw a similar crowd of women. Essentially being in a league is an

1 Outfits worn by skaters at bouts.

21

unpaid part-time job and skaters themselves are the advocates (Beaver, 2012).

What they advocate however depends on their own self-conception.

2.4 Conclusion The literature on roller derby stipulates that the performance of femininity

and masculinity (Breeze, 2010) express a subversive space for women (Carlson,

2010) who do not adhere to mainstream advertising’s depictions of ‘proper’

women. In regards to advertising theory, roller derby bout posters are of an

informational nature (Dyer, 1992). Since derby is a queer and alternative

femininities friendly space it can be argued to be problematising existing gender

theory (Breeze, 2010) that aims to inform about the sport through promotional

marketing materials. As a unique sports context derby is incompatible with

mainstream stereotypes regarding beauty and female attractiveness (Peluso,

2011), especially since the marketing communications are not produced with the

male gaze in mind (Dyer, 1992; Breeze, 2010). It could be said that roller derby

players have gathered in a group – a tribe (Simmons, 2008) – to readdress and

adjust the postmodern consumer’s incessant quest to create identities base on

gender images advertised in mainstream marketing communications. The leagues

themselves produce the posters and flyers, and have hence graduated from

consumers to producers, as its alternative sister the Riot Grrrl movement initiated.

It is however unclear whether these marketing productions are of a genuine

feminist nature, or whether they employ Goldman’s concept of commodity

feminism.

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3. Method The aim for this dissertation is to answer the question of whether roller derby’s

own marketing promotes feminism or feigns false consciousness by displaying

what Goldman (1992) termed commodity feminism. The research methods chosen

to answer this question consisted of collecting primary data in the form of

qualitative interviews with ARRG roller derby players, audience questionnaires,

and the content analysis of posters, according to the interpretivist paradigm.

3.1 Research Philosophy ‘Positivist’ and ‘interpretive’ must be considered summary labels to

“general research approaches that differ in their philosophical assumptions and

goals” (Anderson Hudson & Ozanne, 1988: 509). Positivism adapts the paradigm

of the natural scientist (Saunders et al., 2009) and upholds that “[r]eality exists as

a structure composed of relationships among its parts. This reality is divisible and

fragmentable; therefore, precise, accurate measurements and observations of this

world are possible” (Anderson Hudson & Ozanne, 1988: 509). Interpretivism on

the other hand argues that the “social world of business and management is far

too complex to lend itself to theorizing by definite ‘laws’ in the same way as the

physical sciences” (Saunders et al., 2009: 115f.), and consequently is interested

not in finding ‘accurate and true’ laws, but to understand the differences between

humans as social actors (Saunders et al., 2009). Collis and Hussey (2003: 49)

term the two main paradigms quantitative and qualitative research; in quantitative

research, reality is “objective and singular”, whereas reality is “subjective and

multiple as seen by participants in a study” in qualitative research.

The research philosophy chosen for this research is the interpretivist

paradigm for in order to answer the research questions, the researcher had to

interact with “that being researched” (Collis & Hussey, 2003: 49), i.e. roller derby

players and their audience. Furthermore, on an axiological level, feminism and

marketing, and especially feminism as its own theory, is laden with values and

bias (Collis & Hussey, 2003), and hence cannot be evaluated using a positivist

approach.

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3.2 Interpretivist Research Techniques

Despite the temptation to assume that positivistic research results in

quantitative data, and interpretivist research in qualitative, this is not necessarily

true since both research paradigms can produce either output (Collis & Hussey,

2003; Anderson Hudson & Ozanne, 1988). However, since this dissertation is

interested in opinions rather than figures, the choice fell on a qualitative research

approach. The broadest element of that approach is the “research interview”

(Saunders et al.: 318), which is in fact a general terminus for several different

kinds of interview. Structured interviews would deliver quantitative data, whereas

semi-structured interviews generally are based on a list of questions and themes

(Saunders et al., 2009). The questions and sub-themes can vary from interview to

interview, depending on the flow of the conversations (Saunders et al., 2009).

Non-standardised, i.e. semi-structured or non-structured, interviews are to be

chosen when the research at hand is of an exploratory nature, and it is necessary

for the research to understand the reasons behind the opinions and decisions

(Saunders et al., 2009). Hence it was decided to use semi-structured interviews for

the roller derby players, using open-ended questions to gather in-depth answers

and reasons behind them (Saunders et al., 2009).

Other possibilities would have been focus groups or observations. Focus

groups were dismissed because the interviewees might bias weaker participants

with their opinions. Observation was unsuitable, since the dissertation is less

interested in behaviour than opinions (Collis & Hussey, 2003). In order to facilitate

transcription the interviews were recorded, recordings ranging from eight minutes

to 46. The interviews were recorded with the interviewee’s consent, to facilitate the

transcription process, and to enable re-listening for clarification purposes during

the transcription (Saunders et al., 2009).

To gather a glimpse into the audience’s perception, questionnaires were

designed to be handed on out digitally and in printed form. The questions posed

were mostly closed questions, but also featured some open-ended questions, and

the answers were multiple choice options based on knowledge gathered from the

literature review. The questions were tested on roller derby acquaintances, and no

problems were found.

24

In order to gather background knowledge, a content analysis of ARRG

bout posters was conducted, focussing on re-emerging themes and tendencies.

The time frame of the posters ranges from 2010 to 2012.

It needs to be made clear that the focus of the research lies with the views

of roller derby players, while the audience questionnaires and poster content

analysis serve to undermine or question the roller girls’ outlooks.

3.3 Sample The audience questionnaires were handed out on 4 August 2012 at the

first Edinburgh Fringe bout of the season. The target audience was attendees of

the bouts, regardless of age, gender, or regularity of attendance. The bout was

held at Meadowbank Stadium, Edinburgh. Initially the aim was to get 50

responses; the achieved number, however, was thirteen questionnaires short at

37. The reason for a medium-sized sample is to gather a greater overview of

audience opinions, in order to be comparable to the in-depth interview results

gained from the interviews with roller derby players. This led to an extension of the

question for respondents through the author’s Facebook page. Eventually fourteen

additional responses could be gathered. However, questions nine and eleven were

adjusted following the responses gathered during the Fringe bout. The questions

are based on the literature review, and ought to present the audience’s point of

view of roller derby as a sport and a female domain.

The face-to-face interviews were held over a period of three weeks in July

and August, at the interviewee’s discretion. The sample consists of six roller derby

players of ARRG – Respondent 5Creamchesse, Respondent 1, Respondent 2,

Respondent 6, Respondent 3, Respondent 4 –, chosen with the judgemental

sampling method (Hollis & Hussey, 2003), where the participants are chosen

based “on the strength of their experience of the phenomenon under study” (Hollis

& Hussey, 2003: 158). Saunders et al. refer to this sampling method also as

purposive sampling (2009: 234). In accordance with the interpretivist qualitative

approach, the interview sample size was kept small in order to guarantee in-depth

investigations (Saunders et al., 2009). The characteristics of the participants would

include knowledge of roller derby and/or knowledge of feminism, as well as being

members of ARRG. The interviewees were chosen in two ways: the first one was

through posting on the ARRG forum for volunteers, which received two answers

25

but only one interview could happen for time reasons. The others were chosen

based on league involvement and time spent skating. The interview questions

were very similar to the questionnaires, also based on the findings of the literature

review, but differ in some aspects, particularly since being aimed at derby players

and not the audience. The nature of semi-structured interviews allows for more

depth and extended questions when necessary.

The posters for the content analysis were gathered from the Auld Reekie

Roller Girls Facebook page where posters for several bouts that took place over

the years are collected. They were chosen at random.

3.4 Questions The questions of both the interviews and the questionnaires were grouped

into demographic information, number of bouts attended or time of active skating

respectively, and opinions on the derby names, boutfits, and the gender of the

sport. The questionnaires focused on whether roller derby is perceived as a ‘real’

sport by the audience, and whether they consider it to be a feminine or rather

masculine activity. The interviews aimed at investigating ideas of femininity that

derby portrays according to the players, and whether outsiders and the audience

might have a wrong idea of the sport, based on marketing communications from

derby leagues themselves. A facsimile of the questionnaire can be found in

Appendix I, while the interview questions are in Appendix II.

3.5 Limitations and Reliability Problems the interviewing process can pose are that, for one, interviews

and the transcribing and analysing afterwards can be very time consuming (Hollis

& Hussey, 2003). Furthermore, there is an issue of confidentiality if there is more

than one interviewee present for questioning (Hollis & Hussey, 2003) – which

fortunately was not the case. In order to be repeatable, all the interviews need to

be conducted in the same manner (Saunders et al., 2009); this means that not

only do the questions have to be the same in every interview, the researcher must

also ensure that every respondent will understand the questions asked in the

same way (Hollis & Hussey, 2003). However, Saunders et al. (2009) argue that

qualitative interviews not necessarily need to be repeatable since they are

situation-based. Furthermore, interviewees might have certain expectations about

26

the interview, and might therefore respond in a way the researcher might consider

correct or acceptable (Hollis & Hussey, 2003).

The validity of the data comes from the “ability to question and clarify

answers in non-standardised interviews” (Saunders et al., 2009: 327). A problem

linked to validity is the degree of preparation for the interview, particularly how the

interviewer establishes credibility (Saunders et al., 2009). Fortunately this was not

an issue since the author is a member and skater of ARRG herself. However, this

does not mean that there was any kind of a conflict of interest throughout the

conduction of the interviews and questionnaires, or the compilation of this

dissertation.

Predominantly, problems encountered during the face-to-face interviewing

process were the sound recording not being of as good a quality as expected due

to background noise disturbances. None of the interviewees refused to answer

any questions, and no concrete misunderstandings occurred. Obviously the limited

sample size is not representative and cannot give any exhaustive answers that are

valid for all UK derby leagues; the results are ARRG specific, but are likely to be

mirrored in similar shapes in other UK leagues.

27

4. Data Analysis 4.1 Questionnaires The printed questionnaire, handed out on 4 August, received 37 answers.

Twenty-eight of the respondents were female, while nine were male. The online

questionnaire received 14 responses, with three respondents being male and

eleven female. Figure 4.1.1 shows the diagram for the gender percentages. The

age range from the bout respondents ranges from under 20 (two respondents) to

over 50 (one respondent), with the majority ranging in the 26 to 30 range; the age

range in the online questionnaires ranged between 20 to 40, with the majority in

the 26 to 30 range too (Fig. 4.1.2). Compared with the 2012 WFTDA Roller Derby

Demographics (WFTDA, 2012), the average age range is lower at 26 to 30 years

than the international average which positions the 35 to 45 year olds at 45%, while

the 25 to 34 year old demographic consists of 38%.

It was the first ARRG bout that took place Edinburgh for 18 respondents at

the bout itself (Fig. 4.1.3), with it being the first derby bout ever for eight

respondents, while nine others usually support another league (Fig. 4.1.4). One

person decided not to specify this question. In the online questionnaires most

respondents had attended more than five ARRG home bouts, which means that

they are regular ARRG supporters (Fig. 4.1.3).

The way of discovery for the majority of people online and at the bout was

through means other than posters or flyers, film2, TV, magazines, or the Internet

(Fig. 4.1.5). It seems that the most effective way for derby to become known by a

broader audience is through word of mouth or the involvement of friends and

family (Fig. 4.1.6). This is congruent with the WFTDA Demographics (WFTDA,

2012) which state that roller derby “is still very much a grassroots sport in terms of

attracting new fans” (WFTDA, 2012: 2): word of mouth attracts the greatest

number of friends.

Once involved, though, it could be argued that the majority of respondents

are aware that ARRG produce and publish their own posters and flyers (Fig.

4.1.10). The majority of the respondents again are aware that ARRG members are

not paid for their involvement; only one person, in the online survey, thought that

2 ‘Film’ predominately refers to feature films such as Whip It! (2009) or documentaries about derby.

28

they are paid for their participation in intra-league committees or even their skating

(Fig. 4.1.11).

Since Breeze (2010) argues that derby presents a unique sports context,

and roller derby’s own efforts to be considered a sport (Mabe, 2007), it was

interesting to see that there was still, or only, one person who does not think of

derby as a sport (Fig. 4.1.7). This might be connected to the fact there were

voices, even though a minority, that argued that boutfits are silly and detract from

sport (Fig. 4.1.8) and that skaters should skate under their real names (Fig. 4.1.9).

The majority decreed that boutfits are fun and add to the experience, but they are

not a vital part of roller derby (Fig. 4.1.8). The opinions on derby names are

similar: in total 33 out of 51 think that derby names are great. As can be seen

below, there are mixed opinions amongst the skaters also regarding derby names.

The most controversial question appeared to be the gender of the sport

(Fig. 4.1.12): about the question “In what way do you think roller derby is a

feminine sport?”, 20 bout respondents and nine online respondents think that it is

both feminine and masculine, since the outfits are quite feminine whereas the

athletic aspect is rather masculine. No one thought it was a masculine sport. In

total six people said that it was none of the definitions given by the questionnaire.

One person stated that the question makes no sense. Someone else did not like

the assumptions made about masculinity and femininity. One respondent stated

that there is no gender in sport, which is in crass contrast to Finley (2010) and

Breeze’s (2010) argumentations on how female derby players negotiate their

femininities in the sport. One response was that derby as a sport is not gender

specific but the fact that women claimed it makes it feminine. Another respondent

abstained because they do not like the usual definitions of femininity, while a last

person argued that gender does not matter as long as you work hard.

29

Fig. 4.1.6 – If you ticked ‘other’ in the question how you first heard about roller derby, please specify.

Fig. 4.1.1 – Genders of questionnaire respondents

Fig. 4.1.5 – How did you first hear about roller derby?

Fig. 4.1.3 – How many ARRG (home) bouts have you attended this year?

Fig. 4.1.4 – Do you usually support a different league, or is this the first bout you have ever attended?

Fig. 4.1.2 – Ages of questionnaire respondents

30

Fig. 4.1.9 – What is your opinion on skaters’ derby names?

Fig. 4.1.8 – What is your opinion on boutfits?

Fig. 4.1.12 – In what way do you think roller derby is a feminine sport?

Fig. 4.1.11 – Do you think that members of ARRG are paid to be part of the intra-league committees or for their skating?

Fig. 4.1.10 – Do you know who designs the flyers and posters for ARRG bouts?

Fig. 4.1.7 – Do you think of derby as a real sport?

31

4.2 ARRG Bout Posters

The posters chosen date from 2010 to 2012, and were taken from ARRG’s

Facebook page. Knowing that the posters and flyers are designed by ARRG

themselves, they can be classed as genuine gynocentric texts (Stern, 2000;

O’Donohoe, 2000), and as produced by women for women with feminist interests

(O’Donohoe, 2000): the posters arguably are not ‘sexy’, and they all show real real

women, not sexualised images or drawing. Figure 4.2.1 is a table comparing the

different aspects and contents of the five posters. Textual analysis was chosen to

analysis the posters, which means that the meaning is ascribed to the text by the

consumer/viewer, and not considered pre-determined and universalised by the

creator (Dyer, 1982).

Fig. 4.2.1 – Table comparing five ARRG bout posters

32

Crashablanca (Fig. 4.2.2) and Scary Blocker and The Prisoner of

Azkaslam (Fig. 4.2.3) are puns on popular films (Casablanca (1942), Harry Potter

and The Prisoner of Azkaban (2004)), used to express rebellion against the

mainstream culture (Finley, 2010). The third poster, Blockenspiel (Fig. 4.2.4), is a

pun as well, but it could be considered more sophisticated. The posters from 2011

(Fig. 4.2.5) and from 2012 (Fig. 4.2.6) have no pun for titles, they merely list the

teams playing against each other, highlighting the athletic side. This is congruent

with Finley’s (2010) argument that the humour and mockery of mainstream culture

seem to disappear with a team’s athletic progress. A further indicator that ARRG

want their athleticism to be recognised is the brandishing of the WFTDA logo,

showing that ARRG is in fact a WFTDA member league and consequently serious

about derby. The WFTDA logo can be found in all posters except for The Prisoner

of Azkaslam, but the reason for it missing there might lie in the fact that this was a

Fringe poster and hence wanted to attract all kinds of audience. Another

important thing to note is that all posters have a line announcing it as “live roller

derby” (“live, all female roller derby” on The Prisoner of Azkaslam), pointing out

that this is real roller derby and not staged 1970s roller derby (Mabe, 2007).

4.2.1 Non-sexist Advertising

In order to determine whether these posters are showing commodified

representations of females, they will briefly be analysed with Stern’s (2000)

definition of non-sexist advertisements.

Firstly, non-sexist advertising only ought to present the authentic female

experience, without showing disparaging sex-role stereotypes (Stern, 2000). The

posters do not show any of the skaters in titillating, sexy poses, and they show the

authentic derby female experience: Athleticism, female bonding, creative

expression.

Secondly, non-sexist ads ought to show positive female role models, also

for children (Stern, 2000). All the posters advertise that “under 14s go free”,

enabling families access to derby, and showing the children that women can be

amazing athletes.

Thirdly, a non-sexist advertisement should reflect the cooperation among

women and not show them as competitors for male attention (Stern, 2000). The

posters show confident, focused women, not artificially posed for male titillation.

33

Furthermore, the posters are created in a universal ARRG effort, which is a

reflection of the cooperation amongst women in a derby league.

Fourthly, non-sexist advertisements should represent a new humanity, i.e.

show the humanisation of both sexes (Stern, 2000). There are no males shown in

the posters, but this does not necessarily exclude the humanisation of both sexes.

As it happens, the fact that the derby players are not posed for the male gaze

adds to the argument that women can cooperate without vying for male attention.

The implication is that men are allowed to participate as refs, coaches, medical

stuff, but it also says that it is a space for women where women can be

themselves and do not have to conform to socially regulated versions of femininity.

Conclusively it can be argued that the ARRG posters do meet at least the

first three criteria of non-sexist advertisements. However, this only happens for an

audience with knowledge of roller derby. It is tribal marketing in the way that the

reader of the ad needs to be part of the tribe to understand it (Simmons, 2008). In

this respect it could be argued that the posters show a commodification of

feminism to non-tribe members, and could hence be interpreted as advertising

commodity feminism or false consciousness.

34

Fig. 4.2.3 – Poster for Scary Blocker and The Prisoner of Azkaslam (Auld Reekie Roller Girls, 2012)

Fig. 4.2.2 – Poster for Crashablanca (Auld Reekie Roller Girls, 2012)

35

Fig. 4.2.4 – Poster for Blockenspiel (Auld Reekie Roller Girls, 2012)

36

Fig. 4.2.5 – Poster for ARRG vs. London Roller Girls (Auld Reekie Roller Girls, 2012)

F

Fig. 4.2.6 –Poster for Edinburgh Fringe Bouts (Auld Reekie Roller Girls, 2012)

37

4.3 Interviews with ARRG Roller Derby Players 4.3.1 The Interviewees

In order to guarantee the interviewees’ anonymity, they were renamed

“respondents” and giving a number according to the turn in the interviewing

process. Respondent 1 is 25 years old and has actively been doing derby as a

skater since April 2011, but had been volunteering for ARRG since September

2010 after the first Edinburgh Fringe Bout (see Fig. 4.2.3). Respondent 2 is 31 and

has been skating since March 2012. She is married and the only one who has

children. Respondent 3 is 36 and has been skating for two years and eight

months, and is originally American, however she has never skated in America.

Respondent 4 is 41 and started skating in May 2009. Respondent 5 is 27 and

started skating in 2008, as one of the original formative members of ARRG. She

stopped skating two years ago, but stayed involved in the league for a year after

that, and has completely quit in 2012. And the sixth interviewee, Respondent 6, is

38 and started skating on 14 September 2008. She is originally from Canada but

has only ever skated for ARRG.

4.3.2 First Contact with Derby

Respondent 1 first heard about roller derby through Whip It! (2009), a film

produced by Drew Barrymore, depicting a coming-of-age story of a girl who falls in

love with roller derby, and which also served as a popular introduction to roller

derby. After doing some research she found there was a team in Edinburgh, and

attended their 2010 Fringe Bout, which encouraged her to become active as well.

Respondent 2 however says that she “was just trawling the Internet …

And I saw snippets and bits like that. And then I saw Whip It!”. After deciding that

derby definitely seemed like something she would like to do, she research UK

derby and discovered ARRG.

Respondent 3 “was vaguely aware there was a team in Edinburgh. … I

had seen some flyers” but did not know there was a new movement in roller derby

since she was familiar with the old-fashioned 1970s derby. She got introduced to

ARRG through a friend who encouraged her to join the league together with her.

Respondent 4 had been unaware of roller derby in general, but discovered

a flyer in a changing room in a shop, “and asked the helpful lady that was in the

38

shop … and she obviously was really enthusiastic and made me like come along

to a practice so I came along, had a look, and I was hooked”.

Respondent 5, too, learnt about roller derby through a friend who had

spotted a Glasgow Roller Girls poster in the Black Bull in Edinburgh, and who

persuaded her to start their own league, together with five to twenty other people

who attended the first meeting.

Respondent 6 had discovered derby through a friend in Canada who was

participating in the sport, and did some research online, only to find the ARRG

Myspace page, and simply went along to a practice: “And so I just sat there and

thought ‘yeah that’s what I’m gonna do’”.

What is interesting here and comparable to the data gained from the

audience surveys is the fact that there was no concrete and easily noticeable

ARRG marketing that initially raised the interviewees’ awareness. Some of the

interviewees learnt about ARRG and derby at the same time, whereas others were

aware of roller derby, but found ARRG through Internet research. Word of mouth

seems the prevalent way for players as well as the audience to learn about the

sport. The reason for this lies in the fact that roller derby comes from an alternative

background, and the promotion of the sport accordingly happens through

grassroots efforts (Beaver, 2012; Breeze, 2010) not very dissimilar to the Riot Grrrl

Movement’s way of contributing ‘zines and information (Dunn & Farnsworth,

2012).

4.3.3 Empowerment Through Derby?

Asked how roller derby makes them feel, Respondent 6 said that “[i]t

makes me feel like I have no worries outside of roller derby”. Respondent 5 feels

“really happy and hopeful and inspired”, while derby makes Respondent 4 feel

“lots of things. Makes me feel fit. Makes me feel happy. Excited. Proud.”

Respondent 3 feels “powerful and independent and strong, and proud that I can

make my body do this incredible thing”. For Respondent 2, derby “makes me feel

good about myself. ... makes me feel like a person, like I’m my own person, and it

gives me my time”, referring to her family life. Respondent 1 also agrees that it

makes her feel good, but that derby is omnipresent in her life now: “It’s kinda hard

to say because it’s so my life that I don’t really know how I feel while I do it,

because I don’t have any time that I’m not doing it”.

39

The connections the interviewees feel to derby is a positive one, but no

one answered right away that it makes them feel ‘empowered’. When asked

whether it makes her feel better as a woman, Respondent 4 states: “Does it make

me feel better as a woman? I don’t often think about it. In that kind of terms. I’ll be

honest.” Respondent 6, contrary to Respondent 4 says that “I like ARRG cause it’s

mostly all female, you know, and that kind of feeling that you get of just hanging

out with a bunch of people”. She expands on her sense of female empowerment

based on clothing and how it positively affects your sense of self-esteem: to start

with, people often do not know what apparel to choose, but since it is a movement

involving so much movement, they often end up wearing little shorts and tights, or

athletic leggings:

“[I]t makes you feel so much more confident about your body which is quite interesting. You get confidence not only doing, but having a voice.”

(Respondent 6)

Respondent 5 shares this sentiment, particularly highlighting the clothes for a

changed perception of one’s femininity:

“… I think I got a lot more comfortable and confident and just giving less of a shit about my body … so over that period of time I stopped shaving my armpits and shaving my pubic hair and things like that. I think stuff like that is maybe to do with derby, like just feeling a bit more confident to be like ‘actually, fuck you, I don't care if you're looking at my armpit hair’. And I think it's all to do with spending three to eight hours a week in, whether it's fishnets and hot pants, or athletic leggings, clothes … you'd never normally wear ... I guess you get to see your body in a different way, … use your body for different things.”

Even though Respondent 5 does not assert the functionality of the clothing as

pointed out by Breeze (2010), it is implied. The fact that she stopped shaving her

armpits points towards Peluso’s argument that derby “creates a safe space in

sport for marginalized and transgressive bodies” (2011: 37). Respondent 3,

Respondent 2, and Respondent 1 do not explicitly word it like that but appreciate

the space it creates for women to be amongst themselves and be active and

creative.

40

Respondent 6 even goes a step further and points out how derby can help

with girls with serious body issues, who have been indoctrinated by the media and

advertising that they are women but are not supposed to like their bodies.

“[So they're taught to want to be skinny, to have the body like a model, which is kind of like the body of an adolescent boy. Girls don't want hips. But that's what you need to have to be a girl.”

In Respondent 6’s eyes, roller derby gives these girls the opportunity to rediscover

their bodies away from mainstream media and advertising, and to realise through

doing the sport, that their body shape does not matter. In other words, roller derby

gives girls and women the opportunity to negotiate their femininity (Breeze, 2010),

which has been distorted through marketing’s mainstream advertising’s praise

commodity feminism (Goldman, 1992), representing only one type of woman –

namely the Caucasian, slim, hairless, and predominately heterosexual woman

(Krolokke & Scott Sorensen, 2005). According to Respondent 6 and Respondent

5, derby offers a space for and of criticism of a static and universal womanhood

(Krolokke & Scott Sorensen, 2005) and creates a space for women of all shapes,

sizes, sexual orientation, or skin colour.

However, there is also a counter-argument against making derby the

‘perfect’ feminist place, says Respondent 5:

“… I think that derby definitely has the potential to be a space where lots of women can like feel more comfortable or happier or proud or not give a shit about whether you're fat or thin, or … all the things that you basically get indoctrinated to give a shit about. But I think as well there's probably potential for it to be a space where you feel like ‘maybe I'm not strong enough’, or ‘If I were thinner I'd be faster’ … that kind of thing. So I guess, it's not a perfect space that's completely immune to everything that happens in the world.”

This concession of derby not being immune to influences from the outside shows

that members of ARRG are actively aware of the prevalent female stereotype in

advertising (Gill, 2008), but they have decided to not partake in this commodity

feminism anymore. Essentially ARRG is not a accumulation of homogenous

women with the same life experiences, but of women joined by a shared emotion

(Simmons, 2008), namely that femininity as defined by mainstream media and

advertising are not acceptable to them.

41

4.3.4 External Perception of Derby

Upon being asked about how, in their opinion, people outside of derby see

roller girls, a general theme became visible. Respondent 1 thinks there the

opinions are two camps:

“There’s the people that understand the athletic ability involved in derby and how much we train. … And then there's another camp who just think, it's kind of like a ridiculous thing for women to do, … – they just watch it to see women on skates hitting each other. … And it doesn't seem that serious to some people. They wouldn't see it as a sport.“

The other five respondents did not express it in such a clear dichotomy, and

tended to ignore the supporters of derby in favour of the scoffers. The emerging

image is one of confusion as to what kind of women derby actually attracts

according to outsiders’ opinions.

For example, respondent 2 states that many people are prejudiced into

thinking that roller derby is only for butch women – who do not respond to

femininity marketed in the media, and that these people are surprised accordingly

to find that the image they had is not true. Respondent 5 pointed out that there are

“quite a lot of popular perceptions that are like ‘there’s loads of rockabilly girls’ or

‘it’s loads of punk girls’ or ‘it’s loads of really butch girls” – which all count as

alternative femininities (Breeze, 2010) –, but that the stereotypes were changing

since derby has been moving towards a more athletic image. Respondent 6

agreed that there is a stereotype around derby girls, but that on the other hand

derby as a sport is now also attracting women from different athletic backgrounds.

Respondent 4, too, said that there seems to be a stereotypical view of what a

roller derby player is, a pierced, tattooed woman with funny hair, but that in truth

“… lots of different people do it. So I don’t think there is a typical roller derby girl.

But that seems to be the thing that people zone in on”.

Respondent 3 points out that it is usually people who are not acquainted

with any women involved in roller derby who associate the sport with these

stereotypes. What all the stereotypes have in common, though, is that they are all

expressions of alternative femininity and are generally ignored in mainstream

advertising (Kacen, 2000). According to Breeze (2010) derby needs to be

recognised as a space that is not aimed at the male gaze but as an alternative

and queer-endorsing space for reciprocal female appreciation and admiration.

42

4.3.5 Marketing From Within

Respondent 1 thinks that the second camp, who see derby as a space of

sexy girls in fishnets, are influenced by the way that derby is oftentimes advertised

by some leagues themselves:

“I sometimes get annoyed with league’s, logos, and stuff. Like a lot of leagues choose their logos to be sexy women, like, riding a pair of skates. ... I mean that just doesn't represent derby to me at all.”

Respondent 3 agrees with respondent 1’s opinion and argues that even if those

particular leagues in question do not preconceive the stereotypes they support it

with their marketing material, it is still damaging to the sport since it confirms the

prejudice already existent in people’s minds:

“I think, even if it's not initiating the impression I think, leagues maybe don't think hard enough about what their promotional marketing materials reinforce, what images they reinforce, when they put – say, a girl in fishnets in a suggestive pose on their poster: is that just confirming in people's minds what the image is that they have preconceived?”

This stance towards derby marketing materials is rather similar to the advertising

images Gill (2008) describes. These derby league logos seem to feature the

vengeful women who attacks me, a marketing image the (female) audience ought

to find empowering (Gill, 2008). However, it appears that regardless of the

designer’s gender, these logos are constructed from a heteronormative stance,

which relates all things female to men and the male gaze (Gill, 2008).

Respondent 4 adds that it is the media who predominantly propel this

image because all they pay attention to is the roller players’ outer appearance and

not their athletic performance. While respondent 6 requests that the media stop

focusing on skaters’ appearance to eradicate roller derby girls stereotypes,

respondent 5 is unsure whether it is the leagues that are to be blamed, or the

media, or anyone at all. Her argument is that in her “derby utopia” leagues

“wouldn't bother with engaging with the mainstream media. Or with media that was

outside our control. Or with media that wasn't sympathetic to a feminist or a queer

cause” (Respondent 5), since the producers of advertisements cannot predict how

each consumer will interpret the ad, which relates to Dyer’s (1982) theory of the

textual analysis where the meaning of an advertisement is created by the

43

consumer, and is hence dependent on cultural background and knowledge. This

cultural background and knowledge is a heteronormative one for the majority of

recipients, and even if a derby logo is produced as gynocentric text (O’Donohoe,

2000), it will still be read in a heteronormative way.

However, this should not hinder leagues to produce logos and flyers with

sexy skaters, cause this is what a skater is or what roller derby is to the producers

(Respondent 5): “and if you put that out in the world you cannot control how

people are gonna interpret it or use it, or what they're gonna think about. So yeah,

I would be really hesitant to say there's anything wrong with leagues doing that”

(Respondent 5). Respondent 3 agrees with the notion that league cannot be

responsible for how an audience will conceive or misconceive an advertisement.

Essentially, Respondent 5’s opinion reflects the problem of the dichotomisation of

the world into right and wrong, feminist and sexist, sport and non-sport, serious

female and sexy female, female and male (Catterall et al., 2000):

“I guess you hear that a lot, but like that kind of representation or presentation of roller derby takes away from the focus of it as a sport. But there's absolutely no reason why you can't be like sexy in anyway you choose, and wear whatever you want. I think the problem is with a narrow classification of what counts as sport rather than what anyone is wearing or what anyone's flyers look like.”

(Respondent 5)

This position is congruent with the Riot Grrrl movement’s philosophy to address

gender stereotypes, by playing with them, and creating something as a group for

the outside world to see (Dunn & Farnsworth, 2012; Beaver, 2012). It also draws

attention to recipients’ inability to read gynocentric ads outside the

heteronormative space, because roller derby as a sport does not ascribe to strict

gender roles (Breeze, 2010), which is also visible in boutfits and derby names.

4.3.6 What’s In a Derby Name?

Finley (2010) argues that derby names and boutfits are means to ‘soften’

the rebellion, and make the transgressiveness of derby ironic and non-threatening.

The interviewees were in two minds about the names. Respondent 1 said that the

media put a lot of emphasis on the derby names in a “jovial kind of way”.

Respondent 3 considers the derby name situation a struggle between the roots of

derby of an alternative counterculture and the thriving to athletic recognition. But

44

she also sees them as a mask for the players, in the fashion of commodity

subversion, where the players take on a persona on track. For Respondent 5,

derby names express a different side to the women: a side that is not feminine

because derby names consists of puns and sexual allusions. She refers to a blog

entry by Ginger Snap (2011) who orders the derby nation to get rid of ‘icky’ names

like Clittler or Clit Eastwood:

“Take responsibility for your sport, your audience and yourselves. No matter who the sport is for – our current derby family or a bigger, future sporting incarnation, you make the rest of us look bad with your icky names. That’s the dirtiest, filthiest truth of all – no matter what you name it.”

(Ginger Snap, 2011)

Respondent 5 thinks that there is something “powerful and subversive about being

called Clit Eastwood and Cunty McCunterson, or just like

having words for vaginas in like everyday talk”, and this adds

to Breeze’s argument of gender subversion (2010), which is

employed by leagues for marketing purposes, the marketing

of the gender subversion, but at the same time can be

misinterpreted and derided by heteronormative media.

4.3.7 Marketing ARRG

ARRG has gone through a range of logos throughout

the years, as pointed out by all six interviewees. The original

logo (Fig. 4.3.7.1) was a green zombie fist with “stinky flies”

(Respondent 6), which was followed by the ship logo (Fig. 4.3.7.2). This was then

replaced by the knotty fist logo (Fig. 4.3.7.3) that was more legible than the original

fist (Respondent 6). The current logo only consists of the name of the league in a

retro font (Fig. 4.3.7.4). All six interviewees unanimously agreed that the new

ARRG logo is “brilliant” (Respondent 3) and appropriate for ARRG’s current

identity. In accordance with Riot Grrrl’s requirement of non-alienated self-creativity

and activity (Beaver, 2012), the decision for the logo changes were made jointly

with the whole league to signal a change: “I think that the new logo is a big

departure for ARRG, and I think maybe did signal a change in how we portray

ourselves to the rest of the UK derby community and the world” (Respondent 3). It

Fig. 4.3.7.1 – Original ARRG Logo (Auld Reekie Roller Girls, 2012)

45

is possible that the departure from the fist logo also meant a departure from the

stereotypical poster-depiction of derby girls for ARRG.

Several interviewees pointed out that the

posters feature action posts, as can be seen in the

figures above, but that they disposed of puns as bout

titles in ARRG’s nearest past (Respondent 3). When

asked whether the photos for the posters are chosen

based on particular characteristics, Respondent 6

referred to the ARRG Design

Committee guidelines: “[W]e have

guidelines of what we need to have

on the poster, like matching of two

fonts, always has to say ‘Live Roller

Derby’ really big. Has to have a skater on it in roller skates, but

sometimes doesn't, depends on the situation”. However, there

are no guidelines for the pose of the skater, or whether it ought to

be an action shot, which means that ARRG create persistent

opposition to the mainstream media’s titillation and the use of

female bodies for the male gaze (Dunn & Summer Farnsworth,

2012). In Riot Grrrl terms, creating their own marketing publications means that

ARRG made the step away from consumer to producer (Beaver, 2012; Dunn &

Farnsworth; 2012).

Respondent 1 referred to current ARRG posters as “real” and how they

“want derby to be represented”. Respondent 2 concurs and adds that the posters

and flyers “show someone in a sporting stance, looking athletic”. The ARRG

advertising publications present derby very well according to Respondent 3: “It’s

about athleticism, it’s about the sport, and the fact that we don’t have named bouts

anymore,” and furthermore helps to get the sport taken more seriously. ARRG

marketing communications rebel against the sexualisation and trivialisation of

women in sport (Breeze, 2010), and arguably create advertisements that are

contributing to feminist efforts of equality from a gynocentric stance for a

heteronormative space (O’Donohoe, 2000).

Fig. 4.3.7.2 – ARRG Ship Logo (Auld Reekie Roller Girls, 2012)

Fig. 4.3.7.3 – ARRG Rope Fist Logo (Auld Reekie Roller Girls, 2012)

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4.4 Summary

Connecting the results from the audience questionnaires with the

interviewees’ responses, it seems that both skaters and audience are uncertain

about whether derby constitutes a truly feminist space, or whether it is a place for

alternative femininities. For outsiders, some marketing communications do indeed

advertise the false consciousness of commodity feminism, but when delving into

the roller derby tribe of ARRG (Simmons, 2008), the messages change because

the tribe members are familiar with the discourse around derby as well as

feminism. The reason for this might be that ARRG constitutes a non-

heteronormative space, where queer and alternative femininities are welcome and

equal, and where marketing communications are created as gynocentric texts for a

heteronormative audience.

Of course, some of the interviewees are dissatisfied with outsiders

identifying derby with promiscuity, but they are still advocates of the sport and

determined to change popular perception, which does not mean they need to label

their output as ‘feminist’ and advertise using said label. The interviewees

recognise the imperfection of derby as an answer to female exploitation in

advertising but realise that ARRG does try to address them with their marketing

communications:

“You know derby doesn't solve all the like discrimination against women … or marginalisation or trivialisation of women sport, it doesn't solve that. But like it addresses it in a way that like very few other things do I think.”

(Respondent 5)

Fig. 4.3.7.4 – Current ARRG Logo (Auld Reekie Roller Girls, 2012)

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5. Conclusion The aim of this dissertation was to discover whether roller derby’s performance of

femininity is indeed genuine feminism, and offers a safe space for alternative

femininities, or whether roller derby is merely feigning false consciousness and

partaking in commodity feminism as it is defined by Goldman (1992). This was

achieved through five objectives. The first step was to explore the meaning of

feminism in relation to sport and marketing, and to analyse the significance of

commodity feminism. This was followed by an analysis and description of the role

of advertising, and a review of the relationship of marketing and feminism.

Subsequently this dissertation provided a detailed description of the social and

cultural rise and significance of roller derby in the UK, and hence presented a

detailed context of the Auld Reekie Roller Girls. These steps were all summarised

in the literature review. To investigate the theories in a real environment, primary

research was conducted by interviewing audience and team members of ARRG in

the form of a survey and in-depth interviews, as well as conducting a content

analysis of a random selection of ARRG bout posters.

The research method was of a qualitative nature and consisted of an

advertising publication content analysis, audience questionnaires, and face-to-face

in-depth interviews with skaters of ARRG (Saunders et al., 2009; Collis & Hussey,

2003; Anderson Hudson & Ozanne, 1988). This interpretivist paradigm was

chosen for the interest of this research was not to find accurate and true laws, but

to gain an understanding of the differences between humans as social factors

(Saunders et al., 2009). The audience questionnaires were first distributed in

printed form at an ARRG Fringe bout on 4 August 2012, and were then extended

to an online questionnaire to generate a bigger sample. Any bout attendee was

eligible. The face-to-face interview sample consisted of six members of ARRG,

who were interviewed on a one-to-one basis. The interviewees were chosen with

the judgemental sampling method. Finally, the content analysis sample of bout

posters consisted of five ARRG posters which were randomly chosen from the

ARRG Facebook page.

The findings of the audience questionnaires showed that the majority of

ARRG audience are familiar with the DIY nature of roller derby, and strongly agree

that it is indeed a sport. It emerged, though, that none of the respondents first

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heard about roller derby through the league’s posters or other league marketing

communications, but that the majority learnt about derby through word-of-mouth,

either from friends or family members. One can hence assume that these

respondents do not think of roller derby as a ‘sexy’ past-time activity, and that they

have not been prejudiced by media reports focusing on the titillating posters and

logos of some leagues –which could be considered a misrepresentation of the

greater field of roller derby.

A content analysis of ARRG bout posters showed that the media

preconception of roller derby girls as sexy females is false, at least in the case of

ARRG. The posters also dispelled the notion that the posters are created as

titillation of the male gaze, but that they originate in a gynocentric area, and are

hence to be read as gynocentric (Stern, 2000; O’Donohoe, 2000), feminist and

queer-friendly advertising texts. Indeed, arguing with Stern’s (2000) four

characteristics of non-sexist advertisements, ARRG posters meet at least three of

these characteristics.

The interviews provided interesting insight into the different opinions and

ideologies that co-exist in one roller derby league. The questions aimed to

discover how roller derby made the interviewees feel about themselves, and

whether the saw any feminist or empowering value in the sport. Furthermore they

aimed to explore the opinions about ARRG marketing communications and

whether they were congruent with the media’s presentation (Finley, 2010) or

conveyed different messages. What emerged was that at least three respondents

(Respondent 6, Respondent 3, Respondent 5) identified roller derby with

feminism, whereas the others had clearly made subconscious connections with it.

It became clear that these women consider roller derby as a way to test their own

physical and mental limits, as well as giving them a space that welcomes their

physical differences as well as different backgrounds and ideologies. With their

sport and their intra-league commitment to advocate derby, these women have

gathered in a group that aims to redress the postmodern consumer’s constant

search for the creation of their identities based on mainstream advertising’s

gender images (Dyer, 1982; Gill, 2008). Throughout the analysis it became clear

that ARRG as a league has changed the way it thinks of itself, as is mirrored in

changes of logos, and that they have moved towards a more sport-oriented image,

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and reject the use of seductive skaters in favour of action shots of real derby

skaters for their league marketing.

In regards to the aim of dissertation, it can be said that the question

whether roller derby and its surrounding cultural production of femininity is indeed

genuine feminism, and offers a safe space for alternative femininities, or whether

derby merely materialises commodity feminism, can be answered with yes, from

the point of view of the ARRG respondents. In the eyes of roller derby players and

the audience is indeed genuine feminism. This finding is congruent with the

academic analyses of derby by Breeze (2010), Finley (2010), Peluso (2011) and

Pavlidis (2012). This research also shows that not all roller derby marketing is of a

sexual nature, but that ARRG put the athletic aspect in the foreground.

Furthermore, it proves that gynocentric advertising does not necessarily harm the

image of women (Stern, 2000). Rather ARRG advertising highlights athletic

achievement and female camaraderie in a non-heteronormative space, and hence

creates a gynocentric text with genuine female intention for a mainly

heteronormative audience.

However, Carlson’s (2011) postulation that the crossing of boundaries in

derby by being a derby player by night and a nurse, teacher, or mother by day and

hence assuming a ‘superhero person’ rather constitutes than undermines

conventional notions of femininity. This means that even though roller derby forms

a feminist space, the skaters’ multi-tasking lifestyles can also be argued to be a

form of commodity subversion, and hence these women are not different from

‘normal’ women. Respondent 5 addressed the issue that derby is not a perfect

space, but that it addresses problems of gender and femininity.

Hence it can be said that the dissertation’s aim has been met, but that

roller derby is not as perfect a space for women as was initially assumed. The

findings are limited through the requirements and dimension of a Master’s thesis,

and consequently cannot easily be applied to other derby leagues. The actual

conduction of the research was met with limitations: some answers raised new

questions that could not be answered in this place. For example, it would have

been interesting to further investigate the DIY aspect of roller derby and how

players perceive the value of their involvement in intra-league committees. It would

also have been interesting to conduct further interviews with more ARRG

members to be able to grasp all the different opinions and point of views, and to

50

maybe gain a more conclusive picture of ARRG and its marketing of its very own

sense of femininity, feminism and sport. Nevertheless, the research conducted for

this dissertation is still an important contribution to understanding roller derby as a

social and cultural phenomenon in Edinburgh, and its findings can be extended to

other leagues and countries, albeit with some adjustments.

Further research in this area could focus closer on the DIY aspect of roller

derby leagues, and the implications of queer-embracing and female-led

organisations in terms of business and marketing for non-profit organisations.

Another aspect deserving of closer attention is a broader collection and

comparison of roller derby bout posters. Particularly the difference between

American and European marketing of roller derby would be interesting, since

American derby is older and more established. All these subjects would add

valuable contributions to feminist marketing, and possibly be able to adjust the

false and oftentimes misogynist images of women in contemporary advertising to

express actual female experiences in a heteronormative space.

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Appendix I – Audience Questionnaire

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Appendix II – Interview Questions 1. Name: 2. Age: 3. How long have you been doing derby? 4. How did you hear about it? 5. How did you hear about ARRG? 6. Which words would you associate with derby? (e.g. empowering, feminist,

athletic(ism)) 7. How does doing derby make you feel? 8. Has the way you relate to your body changed? 9. How do you think people outside derby see roller girls? 10. Do you think the way it is advertised and reported about in the media influences

the way outsiders perceive the sport? 11. Have you ever had to put up with any prejudice against the sport?

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Appendix III – Interview Transcripts Bold = interviewer and author Normal = interviewed roller derby players Transcript I – Respondent 1 Date and place: 6 August 2012, Leith, Edinburgh Name: Respondent 1 Age: 25 „I've never looked sexy doing it, ever.“ How long have you been doing derby? Um, I started - when was it? - April last year? So it's just like over a year. It's not that long. Just over a year. I just like to think of you as always having been there. Well I've been with ARRG for more than two years, cause I hung with them before I actually started skating. And like, have been volunteering since - I think the first bout was the Fringe bout not last year but the year before. I think. And um, then the next bout straight away I was volunteering, so I've been with them for a long time. So it kinda feels like I've been doing it forever but I haven't. And then like, I was meant to start skating but I got shingles, so, that stopped me for a bit. (laughs) So, how did you hear about ARRG? Because of the Fringe? Yeah, cause, ah, the glorious Fringe. Cause [my friend] took me to see Whip It! on my birthday, and, like, it was like 'OMG this amazing thing' cause I knew nothing about it at that time and had never really heard about roller derby, and um, it just looked like fun, plus they had women in hot tubs in the film, so I was like. … I love Whip It! But if you watch it now the rules are wrong. Yeah, no I watch it and like "this is shit". Yeah, you're not allowed to do that, but it's still quite nice to just watch it as, you know, for the spirit of derby, and not for the actual execution of it. As a coming of age film it's quite good, but it's not a good film to represent derby. So, we went, we saw that at the cinema, and then we found out that there is a team in Edinburgh, and then we went to the Fringe, and I loved it. And we both wanted to do it. I think it's been a competition ever since about who's better. Even though we're like completely different players, like she's a jammer and I'm a blocker, and we're just completely different, but we do have competition with each other. Like whenever she broke her leg, I had to obviously do it better. … But we don't really have like a - we're not really trying to out-do each other or anything. Just, I think, we support each other. But in a kind of competitive way. Ah I think you need to have someone like that. It's good. I like it. So did ----start skating before you? Yeah, by about six, eight months, something like that. But it's - now we're gonna be on the same kind of level after this, cause obviously.

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It's evened out! It's evened out. But yeah, so she started before me. She's pretty good, and she's getting better. ... I can understand entirely, like I've seen people being injured before and it's really hard to get back on the skates, but that's what you need to do. Like it doesn't really matter if you go and do a whole practice, or whether you do lots of drills. You just, basically, need to be on them, that's it. … There's nothing you can do, there's nothing you can do to help her. The day after she broke, the day after the practice where she broke her leg, and I was doing a closed bout against Fierce Valley, and like, I was so scared, I basically for the hour before – because we were doing it in the second hour of practice – I just sat in the middle of the track and cried, for pretty much an hour, cause I was so scared after – Like, I didn't even see her break her leg, but it was just - It was the first time that I had properly known that you could really hurt yourself. Obviously you know you can hurt yourself, but – But you probably don't really like realise it. You don't acknowledge it really. I mean you just kind of brush it off, like “Yeah, it can happen”, but it was the first time that it was like a realistic possibility and it was scary. I think it's kind of like car accidents, I think if you would acknowledge what could happen to you if you just step outside the flat, no one would step outside their flats anymore. I think when you do derby it's more immediate in a way. Yeah, like, I think it's gonna be really hard coming back from this, but I'm just downplaying it at the moment. Like, I'm just telling people “I'll be fine” and stuff like that, but I know it's gonna be really really fucking scary. But I don't really have any other option apart from skating again. Or you could like not skate again. Well, I could but how ridiculous is that. You know, I just – I couldn't, I couldn't. What else would I do? Sit on the sofa all day watching fat people TV. Skate or die! Yeah! Well, I don't think there's any other thing I could do. Just do it!! So, you heard about ARRG after the film Whip It! basically. Yeah, yeah. And then got involved. … So, which words would you associate with derby? Oh, I hate word questions! Sorry! Why do you have to be so annoying? I don't know, because I am? That's just me. Hard! That's derby, not you. Or maybe you are, I don't know. (laughs) Hard. I don't know. Ummmmmm - I'm rubbish with words. I have an English degree, you know. -- (laughs) -- I liked one of them that you put down, like, athleticism or something, but I would say it's athletic. And it's quite good as well. Most people on the questionnaire said fun. Yes. It's fun. Fun and awesome, that was like the - Someone said expensive. Only one person. Oh fuck off! Course it's expensive, and so is everything in this life. Geezus. Except dying. That's expensive for the ones who have to burry you. That's very true. Fuck them! No, yeah, fun, hard, athletic, sweaty. It's very sweaty.

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Whenever I first started I wanted my name to be Jack The Dripper. (laughs) … I just dripped everywhere! I actually got like - just doing a few rounds I actually sweat like a pig already. Yes! I put my skates on and without doing anything I'm sweating. It's like an automatic reaction from my body. It's really weird. It was one time, Crazy was doing – was uh taking a practice, and, um, she was showing the way that you shoulder block like against here, and we're both shoulders against each other like facing? I'm not sure we've done that yet. I'll demonstrate it with the cat (cat meows). Like this. And I decided there was no way I could win so I just kind of dripped on her. It was like 'I dripped on you!'. … So, how does derby make you feel, when you like do it, when you're on your skates and off skates basically? Um, pretty good, I would say. I don't really – It's kinda hard to say because it's like, it's so my life that I don't really know how I feel while I do it, because I don't have any time that I'm not doing it. Well, apart from now. Yeah, but still, you still do derby! You write emails and you're involved. Well, involved, they could never get rid of me, basically. You should be like full-time secretary or something. I should be. But yeah, it makes me feel really good. I like it. Before, like I've always – well, I've not always been active but in the last like four years I've been quite active. But before derby it was just, like, going to the gym, misplaced kind of no goals activity. like, I didn't really know what I was doing. I was just kind of standing on a treadmill for an hour, like, it was nothing. … And whenever I did derby it was like getting fit but with a purpose of getting better at doing something. Like, it just made being active so much more fun. And like, you're never gonna be really good at roller derby, there's always gonna be improvement to be made. It's like you've always got scope to get better. It's not like you reach a certain point and that's it. Yeah, okay, I'm the greatest, now I can just stop. You can always make yourself better. So I quite like it, quite like making myself better. I get that with weightlifting. At some point you can't just go on. What if you've lifted like the Empire State building, you can't go further than that. That's what it makes me feel. (laughs) Yeah yeah, I know what you mean, cause I do weightlifting as well, and you have to be constantly upping your weight but, I mean, I could keep upping my weight but as a woman I can never really go that far. Like, not that far, not as far as a guy I don't think. And like, I get the point where I'm like I can bench-press 55 kilos, and it's like, but I can't - how much further can I go? Can I go to 100? I mean, there HAS to be a cut off point! There can't just be like, it's not like derby where you just go on and on and on, you can't just - and then what when you get to the point where you can't lift any more, I mean, do you just stop? I know, what happens? Cause your muscles won't improve any more, they'll just stay the same, so what would you do? Do you just - I don't know, do you press 'reset'? I don't know!!! That's what I mean, I do weightlifting as well, I go to the gym, it's like, dude, what do you once you've reached – you know when you look at the machines, what do you once you hit the bottom? Don't know. I don't know!!

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With derby I got the feeling that the sport is changing as we do it. It does! Cause it's so young as well. Well it's older in the States, but it's pretty young over all really. Like, it's changing all the time. Like, football and rugby, they're set. They have been going for hundreds of years, like. Their rules are set, the game is set. They can still get better at it. … Definitely. But the sport of roller derby is constantly like evolving and changing as well. As well as like the demands of it are kinda changing. Like it's gone from being a hitting game, like a really really hit based game, to like more tactical and smart. And like, I don't really hit anymore, um, even though it's like my favourite thing to do ever. Don't really do it anymore. Like, I'd be more inclined to, like, make someone die inside by pushing them out and making them run back all the time, rather than just hit. … Sometimes it takes a lot to just keep going. Like, cause, I'm a really shit jammer, and you can't hit me out, so what – but you can like, you can push me out quite easily. So that's what they do to me when I'm jamming. They'll like herd me out, and it normally takes about three people as well, cause I'm a big girl. And then run back, and I've had chasing people like half a track before just because you have - I mean you could step in front of them, but then you risk getting a minor, or, if they take someone back with them, a major. So sometimes you don't take the chance, you go back, but yeah. I hate it. … But when you get like that you totally have to use the anger to like make sure you come in behind the person, and then like hit someone on the way through the pack, like. Cause there's some skaters from other leagues around the UK, or not the UK, from Scotland, and they're pretty well known for like dying inside, and if you, like, push them out and make them run back a few times, they die inside and they just keep fouling and fouling, and they don't, like, use their pissedoffness to actually better their game. They just – get sloppy. – You get sloppy and end up elbowing people in the face, and it's just like, dude, sort yourself out. Don't be like that. … Okay, that's a weird question, but it goes with my literature so. Has the way that you relate to your body changed? Um, yeah, I suppose. I'm like – I was quite shy about my body before I started derby, and now I'm like – wut! It serves a purpose, it does something well. Yeah, I'm quite happy with it. Like, it's by no means a perfect body, but I'm pretty happy with it, like, for the first time I'm doing a sport which I have a place in, like, as a bigger girl, I can't just go and play football, really. I mean you need to be really really athletic to do something like that. It's basically 11 jammers on the field. I mean I could do rugby, but I don't really – never really liked the thought of rugby. So like, it's a sport where I properly fit as a bigger person, and I still need to be athletic to do it. You still need to be agile, and stuff. You need to have endurance. And I'm pretty fit even for someone my size, like. I could run rings around a normal person for probably – (laughs). And like now I'm quite happy to take my clothes off in front of people, I don't really care about it. Cause, like, cause we just get changed in front of each other all the time, and I'm just like – What else should you do? I know. And like sometimes I get, like whenever we're doing the graduation bout I just started changing my T-shirt in front of a room of, like, strangers, and I didn't even realise I was doing it. I was like: oh shit, there's loads of people here! I completely

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forgot. So yeah, I quite like my body now, it does things and it makes me feel good with the things it does, so. Except for the leg, but even the leg's kind of making me feel good, cause I feel stronger from doing the leg. Cause if I can come back from this, what is there to stop me? Really? I broke my leg and I've come back from it. So if I break another bone then I'll just come back from that. It's a kind of really roundabout answer to – … How do you think people outside derby see derby girls? Um, I think – We're all sluts? Yeah, all big lezzers, as well. No, I think there's kind of two camps. There's two camps. There's the people that understand the athletic ability involved in derby and how much we train. Like skaters' boyfriends or family, or refs and stuff like that. Um. And then - Or other athletes tend to have a good idea, like if you talk to – the people in my work who tend to have a go at me are the people who are not athletic at all, and then there's some people in there that play football, and some that do a lot of walking, hill-walking, and they totally understand it, they get it. So you get that. And then there's another camp who just think, it's kind of like a ridiculous thing for women to do, and they just kind of think it's – they just watch it to see women on skates hitting each other. Like, I kind of think it turns into more of a sexual gratification thing. And yeah, it doesn't seem that serious to some people. Like, they wouldn't see it as a sport, they just see it as women together, having a play? I don't know. It's, um, it's weird. But you do - there're definitely two split opinions. One that take it seriously, and one that don't. I think. And they don't tend to be men. That's what my theory was, that's why I asked that question. Okay, it is annoying, but when you get people like that, they're people that are not important. And they're people that you wouldn't even associate with in real life anyway. So, when you see opinions like that, it's just like “oh whatever”. So, like, I don't really take it personally. It can get a little bit annoying, but. Have you ever heard that people call derby girls emasculated? Masculine? Don't think so. No. I've never really. No. No. No, I don't think so. I think they do seem to have retained the feminine image, I don't think they've really gotten, like, – it's been made them masculine. I don't know. I don't think so. Okay, the next one actually kind of ties in with what we just said. Do you think the way that derby is advertised and reported about in the media influences the way that outsiders perceive the sport? Yeah. Yeah, I think. I sometimes get annoyed with leagues like, logos, and stuff. Like a lot of leagues choose their logos to be sexy women, like, riding a pair of skates. And it's like: I'm trying to be a serious athlete here and you basically got someone fucking a skate. You know, it's not cool, and like I saw a logo last week for a new league that's opened up in Belfast. And they had like a 1950s woman with a black eye and like getting ready to hit someone. And it's like – I mean that just doesn't represent derby to me at all. That just - I mean to be honest she looks like a battered wife. It's just like: why are you trying to make this out to be like: we get into a ring and we fistfight each other. I mean that just doesn't – it kind of annoys me a little bit. I mean sometimes you do get a black eye but … I mean sometimes you – I've seen people just get flicked in the face, like, an accidental elbow, and you're in a pack, sometimes it just happens with your own team members as well, like. You just get a little flick and

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you'll get a black eye from just that, cause your eyes are a really sensitive area. So yeah, it happens but it's – it's the way that sometimes our own leagues represent derby is just wrong to me. I don't like it. And the media is just as bad. Like, the media in the UK is only starting to take a hold of it and we've had some people from STV come and interview us, and we've been on – we've been on the TV as well cause they came to practice with cameras and shit. That was just recently, wasn't it? Well there was one recently, and then there was another time, like, maybe six months ago where they came too. And they just, they still don't really bring it across in a serious manner, they still make it look like we're having fun on skates and that's it. And they put a lot of emphasis on the derby names in a jovial kind of way. Like – “haha, Stitches lolz” in brackets Sasha. And it's like stop making fun of us! Like. That's kind of a reason why I would like the names to go as well, because sometimes they are, um, taken in a bad way from the media. Like, they just use it as another way to make it look like we're not a serious sport. So you kind of feel like the leagues, I mean some of them, not all of them, some of the leagues themselves are misrepresenting the sport? Yeah. I don't think it's all of them by any means, but some of them have maybe only just discovered derby, and have maybe – cause there in America, it's kinda split as well. There are people who do it where it's kind of like wrestling, and then other people kind of do it like it's boxing, if you know what I mean, that kind of difference in America. Like, in America some of the roller derby over there is more 'staged'. And another is how we do it here, a serious sport. So, like, some of the new leagues here have maybe just seen in America where it's kind of like the staged roller derby, and so they've taken that and used that to make their image, and they've not realised, maybe, that that's not what we do? And they still, like, really grasp onto this image of 'We wear fishnets, and we have cool names, and we hit each other'. Instead of 'We practice six hours a week, and we go to the gym five days a week, and we sit and have meetings for four hours on tactics', you know. They don't grasp onto that part of the athletic part of it. I don't know. But yeah. It's like they don't know how much work actually is involved. – And like, it is important to still keep a hold of the fun aspect of it. And like, in our home team season, I think that's what we're gonna do. The home team season is like, fun and, like, where we had the home team names were a bit ridiculous, and everyone had their own colours and their own themes for all the teams, and it was really fun. And then you get to our travel team games and they're serious. Like the Thistles games, it's a serious game. Like, it's still fun and of course we wanna have fun, but it's serious. It's about winning? Exactly. Or if you don't win, it's because you're playing a team that's much better than you on purpose. And it's because you need to learn. That's what the Thistles are doing anyway. … Yeah, do you - I mean the ARRG logo was redesigned just at the beginning of this year. Yeah, I really like the name being the logo. And it's simple and quite straight-forward, but it really stands out. It's kind of old-school as well. Yeah.

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I really like it. Though I also have to say that I like the old one, with the pirate ship, and the fist, and the t-shirts as well. I mean that's where we came from. So. We obviously still have to look at it and say we like it. But I really like whenever Glasgow did their revamp, and they kind of went along the same lines as ARRG, like, they kept everything very simple. And their new logos, and their new colours are just awesome. I really like it. And like, ARRG and Glasgow seem to be on the same kind of wavelength when it comes to how they want derby to be represented. And a lot of the Glasgow all star players are really interested in the same way that we are – as bringing it out as showing off how athletic it is, and how much you need to be an athlete to actually do it. And of course they still have some people who are like 'yay, fishnets and skates!' – like everywhere, but, yeah. … What do you think of the home team posters? They don't actually feature any skaters. They never had any skaters in them. Yeah, I mean, I like them, but you're right, they looked a little bland. I think they look quite kick-ass and vintage, which goes with the logo. Yeah, I suppose. Again I never really thought about that before. It's just, it's for marketing, and I was looking at posters, and there's gonna be a part about where I do analyse some posters, so, like, I got the latest one - I really like the Fringe one. Or the one with Midget - the bout programme. She's laughing, she's got the mouthguard in. It's not really sexy, it shows you. It's real as well! Whereas you got those others where it's like sexy vixens, and you know they never show bigger girls. Yeah. Which kind of pisses me off because most players are not skinny little – girlies. No no, I mean Fierce Valley, I think they're one of the only league that I've seen who're made up probably 80% of skinny girls. Which means if you play them, you can - they're ridiculously easy to knock down. But, um, they've got a few bigger girls but not that many. But most leagues have got - like it's either 50:50 or it's even just a little bit more towards the bigger girls. Because, I think, it really attracts them, as something they can do. I make it sound like they're like a different race. ... Last one, have you ever had to put up with any prejudice against the sport? Well, I suppose so. Like with the people I work with, where they don't – they just don't understand. And it's kind of harmless. Like sometimes it can be annoying but I don't really care about their opinions. But it can grate on you a little bit if you get it all the time, and I just want someone to take me seriously. And they don't, and it's like – URGH. Yeah, but it's nothing that will, like, make me cry or anything. Apart from that not really. I don't think. Does it make you feel like “I'm just gonna do it to spite you”? Yeah. I'm gonna be really amazing. Cause like - when we do roller derby and you're in one of the travel teams, we go all over the place, like we go to like Berlin and Helsinki and stuff. So I'm gonna get really good and I'm gonna go to all these amazing places, and then they can slag me off as much as they want cause I'll be in Berlin, and will be like “so what, bitches”.

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Transcript II – Respondent 2 Date and place: 8 August 2012, author’s flat in Marchmont, Edinburgh Name: Respondent 2 Age: 31 How long have you been doing derby? Since March this year. How did you hear about derby in general? God, d'you know so many people ask me that, how I heard about derby, and I think it was just trawling the Internet, to be honest. And I saw snippets and bits like that. And then I saw Whip it! Oh you heard about it before- I heard about it before Whip It! and I thought “oh that looks quite good”, and I Googled to see if there was any stuff in the UK, and I then found ARRG. And I was like “ah there's one in Edinburgh” and I never thought there would be, so I put my name down on their Fresh Meat list, like about a year ago. And I didn't think I would ever hear back from them. And then I did and was like “this is so cool”, so. Very nice. So, internet, Whip It!, ARRG? Yeah. So which words do you associate with derby? Um – that's so difficult. Fun, definitely sporty, hard work. Um, what else? I guess it makes me feel good about being a woman. You can do a good sport! More power to the women! (laughs) Can you come up with a fifth one? Um, hang on. Very sweaty, um. For me it's something that's helped my mental state, made me feel like a human being. Cause I had a baby just before I started derby, and I didn't feel like I was me. Whereas derby has made me feel like a person, neither than just “mum”. So how does derby make you feel? Oh it makes me feel good about myself. I never really felt like I fitted in anywhere, whereas at derby so many people are so different, yet everybody comes together, and everyone takes you for you. Well, pretty much everyone takes you for you. There's the odd exception but you'll get that anywhere. But, um, what it does is make me feel like a person, like I'm my own person, and it gives me my time. Like alone time, in a group obviously, but. So you feel like it gives you an identity outside your family? Yeah, totally. I've never really had, to be honest, before. And it's given me some sort of a social life as well. It sounds really sad. … It gives you people to talk to and actually make some really good friends, which is great. Do you like the fact that it's all just girls, or like mostly girls? Yeah, I do actually. I do. I think it's quite nice. Cause quite often when you've got mixed sports, girls can become catty. Very catty. Cause they're wanting to try and impress the guys that are there, whereas if you've got all just women you got no competition. Well you just wanna outdo each other for the sake of the sport. Yeah, for the sake of the sport not for the sake of “oh there's a guy watching”. So,

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yeah, I like it that it's all women. And the banter is much better. Definitely! I think it's, you know, what I find is that it's more unfeminine banter in a way. Yes! It's like, you talk about – I'm very inappropriate, and I always talk about crap with anyone, like it always turns a bit crude. But it's fine with derby girls. It really is! I wouldn't talk this way with my other friends that are non-derby. But I know they wouldn't appreciate it as much, whereas we all seem to be on a similar wavelength, the girls that do derby. You know, it's all about fun. You can talk about anything you like, you know, there's no hold barred, which is great. There's no 'you can't say that!'. Has the way you relate to your body changed? Definitely. I mean I've lost quite a lot of inches since starting derby, so definitely. Which is also a bonus. I like my body more since doing derby because it's a lot more muscular, less flabby-like. So it's like the sense that derby gives your body a purpose, you're not, you don't have to ascribe to a beauty ideal, you don't have to be like skinny Kate Moss, because skinny Kate Moss probably couldn't skate as well. No, she probably couldn't. Definitely not. Does that make you feel better, you know, not being a skinny flat, flat girl? I mean I never had a physique for sport, shall we say. You know, but derby, it doesn't matter what shape or size you are, everyone can have a shot at derby, and you know, as long as you're willing to put in the training and you know, give 100%, you're fine, doesn't matter what size you are. As long as you're willing to train hard, you'll get the muscles to get you good, but you can't do it as a waif. You need something behind you. How do you think that people outside of derby look at derby girls? I think they think that all derby girls are lesbians, for starters. Granted some are, but it's not a “you play derby so you must be a lesbian”. You know that's not the way it goes, and I think a lot of people think that, cause I remember telling people at my work, and one member of staff in particular said “oh I thought that was just for lesbians”. You know, and I was like that “ahem, no!”. I was quite shocked at that actually, I hadn't – cause when I thought of roller derby I, sexuality didn't come into it for me. I didn't think “wait, it's just lesbians that play that”. To me it was just a sport. And I thought “oh that's a sport I would quite like to do, it looks fun”, you know. So I was, that surprises me a lot of it. Or perhaps it's me being naive. But yeah, I was a bit shocked by some people's reactions to derby. Yeah, do you think the way that derby is advertised and reported about in the media influences the way that people perceive the sport? To be honest, I haven't actually seen any advertisements for derby. Anywhere! Well, if you look at the – well, yeah. Over here I don't think it's reported enough at all. But I guess people just see it on… God I don't know really know where they would see it, they see it, there's just this ideal, cause it's women hitting during the actual bout it's that you have to be a bit butch or you are a lesbian. But I don't know whether film like Whip It! help with that stereotype cause they didn't mention lesbians at all in that film. You know, so I don't know – cause the main character was with a guy. So I don't know. What do you think about ARRG posters and flyers? If you think about the

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Fringe bouts one. I think they're quite good cause – the recent one definitely anyway – it doesn't show the skater on the front in skimpy clothing, like little mini skirts with flesh all over the place. It shows someone in a sporting stance, looking athletic. Which is quite nice. Rather than wee tiny skirts and skin everywhere. Although to be fair the girl on the flyer is quite tiny. I know, but she's not naked. She's not naked. But she's muscular. Um. And I like the fact that our – I mean a lot of the logos actually in roller derby teams quite often are women, busty women with their boobies out. I don't know if you've noticed that. I don't know how that would, maybe, make people think it's more slutty than it is. Do you think that derby, some leagues, I'm not saying all leagues, but some leagues… They try to sex it up a bit and try to get people through the door to watch it maybe. Um, yeah, some leagues definitely, when you look at what their logos are, and it's women, you know, stick thin women that are very busty. Do you know the Gotham one? What's theirs? It's just the head of the statue of liberty, and it's like – very fierce but you don't see her body. That's nice! I mean you don't need to. Our logo is just our name. I really like our logo, it's so nice and old-school in a way. The point was to put the spotlight on the sport and not the things around the sport. As it should be. I mean I personally wear shorts. I like to wear short shorts, but that's from a sporting point of view, cause I don't like to get too hot wearing leggings. But they're not obscene, my bum doesn't hang out the back of them. And their sport shorts rather than hot pants, rather than just pants. Um, yeah. Okay, last one: have you ever had to put up with prejudice against the sport? I don't think I've been doing it long enough to come across any prejudice. What does your husband think? He thinks it's great. I think because I enjoy it so much, he's like 'yes, go for it!'. And he actually can't wait to see if I make the team, like the actual team so he can come and watch. Like all my family think it's great. Which is quite nice. My dad and my brother are like extremely sporty, and they were always, my brother was excellent at all sports and I was just crap at all sports. Whereas I actually feel like I could be really good at roller derby. You know, so it's nice to feel like you could actually do a sport.

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Transcript III – Respondent 3 Date and place: 10 August, Edinburgh Quartermile Name: Respondent 3 Age: 36 How long have you been doing derby? It will be three years in January, so – 2 years and 8 months? Have you started here in Edinburgh then? Yes. How did you hear about derby in the first place? I grew up with the images on TV of kind of the kind of old-fashioned 1970s roller derby, which is kinda the roots of the modern derby. Very very differently, obviously, it's almost kinda scripted, wrestling kind of derby, so that was my only awareness of it growing up. So you only had that. Then how did you – When did you hear about the new derby? I was vaguely aware there was a team in Edinburgh. At that point I hadn't - probably the early hmmm – maybe about three years ago, about the summer about three years ago, hmmm, I had seen some flyers and was vaguely aware that there was this – a new, but I had no idea that there was this new movement in roller derby that was very quite serious at trying to separate itself from the old roots of roller derby from the 70s and earlier. So yeah, vaguely aware of ARRG of maybe about three years ago. Can you remember how you actually concretely heard about ARRG? My friend ----, who is ----, got me drunk on New Year's, on Hogmanay, and said: "I heard about this thing and I'd like to try it, would you like to come with me?" Um, and I thought, “no no no no, I don't think that's for me”. And um she kept giving me whisky until I agreed. So I agreed to do Fresh Meat on January 30th, I think. Two and a half years ago, because I got too drunk on whisky on Hogmanay. Is that a decision you regret? Not at all, it's one of the best things I ever decided to do, but, um, yeah did have to twist my arm a fair bit. Which words would you associate with derby? Um, with derby? I don't know, I guess I couldn't – I can think about how it makes me feel personally. And I feel powerful and independent and strong, and proud that I can make my body do this incredible thing, so – those words have come through my personal experience of roller derby. If I hadn't done it, I would have a whole other set of words to use, but um, yeah, that's the words I can come up with. … I mean, how does it make you feel, that's important to me. Yeah, how does derby make you feel? Yeah, as I said it's – so proud that you can make your body actually in your mind do this thing that is so far out of most people's comfort zone. And yeah, I'm always always impressed with what I can make my body do, and the other girls can make their bodies do. It's just amazing, yeah. So, do you think the way that you relate to your body has changed? I think so. I think, um, I was beset with a lot of injuries when I was younger – I was very very athletic and I started having knee problems, I had a couple of quite bad,

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poor injuries when I was younger, and I went from being an athletic person to a very non-athletic person, probably in my late teens into my 20s. And I almost kind of mourned that loss of the athleticism, of being able to push myself and actually challenge myself in that way, and I think derby has brought that back. I think part of what I love about derby is that it encourages people who aren't from a sporting background to engage with a sport. But then for me it was kind of a return to – to where I was when I was younger, and although I've been plagued with injuries since I started derby, I-I kind of celebrate the return of that athleticism in myself, which I thought was gone and I thought I was almost too old really to bring that back. But yeah, that's part of what I really appreciate about it: look, my body can still do these amazing physical things that it used to do when it was younger, so, yeah. Do you think then that injury is kind of part of derby? I think it is a very integral part of the experience for some people. I think some people have, um, myself included probably, have had a series of them that just never seems to go away, and for me, then overcoming injury is very – is tightly connected to my experience in derby; whereas I do see other people who maybe never – thank goodness, knock on wood – never had a serious injury, and I think their perception of it, and the challenge and the journey that they take is so very different from someone who maybe has had to overcome injury. You know, people with broken bones, or who had massive soft tissue injuries. That, I think, is a whole different experience from someone who maybe is athletic when they start and then maybe don't necessarily have any big setbacks like that. It is a very different experience. Although I'm speaking from someone – from one side of it, and that's only my observation, obviously, for people who haven't had injuries, so. That's good, that's cool. Um, how do you think that people outside – like outside of derby, see roller derby girls? Roller derby girls?! Roller derby girls, women, women who do roller derby. Um, I think, going back to the whole "derby is marketed from within", I think, um, I think that roller girls are oftentimes perceived as sexy, promiscuous, um, easy, um, tough, mean, you know, it's someone who maybe doesn't know someone personally involved in the sport. um, and looking at a lot of the flyers, a lot of the media, you can almost not blame people for giving this idea, you know. So, um, yeah, I think, um, obviously, especially with its roots back in the kind of glorified, scripted ridiculousness of the 70s where it was kinda cat fights and, um, and spankings and stuff, which actually, part of that wasn't even out that long ago in part of American derby, um, is derby at fault? You know, um, derby is probably partially to blame for that as well, for portraying this image, um. I see now, obviously, modern derby has kind of moved away from that but I think they haven't managed to shake it off completely yet. Yeah, that was actually kind of connected to the question of whether do you think that the way it is advertised and reported in the media influences the way that outsiders perceive the sport - Absolutely! - and are actually some leagues to be blamed for what people think, for they do give off the wrong impression? Um, I think, even if it's not initiating the impression I think, uh, leagues maybe don't think hard enough about what their promotional marketing materials reinforce, what images they reinforce, when they put - say, a girl in fishnets in a suggestive pose on their poster: is that just confirming in people's minds what the image is that they have

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preconceived? I don't know if that actually makes sense. But, um, I think it's just too easy just to stick a pin-up on a poster and, um, and just confirm what people's ideas are, that this is roller derby, it's just a pin-up on a poster with – um, often in a reclining pose that is not even an action pose, um. Yeah. Yeah I'm skating like that. Yeah, or with my legs up in the air. Yeah, so, yeah, I think there is some responsibility that leagues have to put out material like the Fringe poster is quite good, you know, it's an action shot, someone who's clearly actually engaging in the sport, rather than just sitting passively in a sexy way or in sexy clothes, so. Yeah, I think we need to think about that. She's quite covered. Absolutely. Yeah, it's clearly an athletic top, – Her arms are the only things that are naked. Yeah, exactly, and I think that it's not a provocative pose, it's clearly an action shot from a bout. As you said earlier, she's wearing a mouth guard, she looks – the determined look on her face, um. This is the image we should be presenting to folk who don't know roller derby, I think. And we're selling ourselves short if we're portraying ourselves just as, um, pin-ups, there for male titillation. Do you think that maybe this has something to do with, that some don't take themselves very seriously as athletes? Yeah, um, I don't know. I think there is an element of this that attracts girls to roller derby, the whole kind of "culture" of being a roller girl. That attracts some people. And that the actual doing the sport of it, I think, um, those people who are kind of attracted by the whole image of the roller girl, I think those are the ones who come and maybe dabble for a little while but don't tend to stick around for a long time, cause actually, it's really hard work, it's mentally, physically, emotionally gruelling, and you can't just be in it to dabble and just to be able to wear the t-shirt, and show off the bruises. I mean, I think those people who don't take themselves seriously don't tend last very long. Um, so I think that comes back to the whole advertising and people's image of it, um, if there is that image of a roller girl, and I think, not only attracts the male audience who wants to ogle some hot roller girls, but it also does attract the girls who, maybe, want to be able to adopt that image without really putting in the hard graft. Actually, functionally be a roller girl. They just wanna be sexy. Skate vixen. Yeah. Yeah, and you know, it's interesting when you see Fresh Meat, when you see the outfits some people wear, and then they kind of gradually change. Well, although there are obviously still people, folk who still wear fishnets, even on the kind of travel team Thistles level, but you, it is quite interesting when you see skaters when they first start out, what they choose to wear and what they kind of have in their believe what a roller girl wears, and then it kind of changes as they get more experienced and realise, that actually, practical clothes are far better for playing roller derby, than a tutu and fishnets. (laughs) I would never even think about wearing that. No, me neither. I mean, you're moving, you're sweating! Exactly, and if you fall you're just gonna get a rancid – like – scrape in the shape that looks like fishnets on your leg.

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Fishnetburn. Ya. But, yeah, I mean, ARRG has used that exact wording to advertise a bout in its early history, so you can see fishnet burns used to be an actual thing ARRG used to promote themselves, but now we've moved, obviously, beyond that. I'm just currently thinking of the Goronation Street poster. Do you remember that? Yeah, I think that was … on the poster, yeah. It just looks kind of trashy. Yes. And, um I think, that was just in the last, even in the last couple of years the image of derby has changed and how it's sold, and you know, you have all the photos of all the bout photos and you can see there's a distinct change from the kind of glorifying violence, the kind of overtly sexy – to action shots. And I know there was some discussion, some actual conscious discussion about that change, and we decided to move away from named bouts, which often, again, glorify violence, and violence against women, um, or bruises, or the really kind of – the tough aspect of roller derby to non-named bouts and that "live roller derby" is at the top of the poster, and it's not a clever pun about violence, it's not an image that glorifies violence, or it's not a passive sexy female on the poster anymore. So, you, if you can see the progression of the posters and how they are marketing the bouts, you can see the movement towards, this is sport, rather than this is a bunch of sexy roller girls beating each other up. One of the arguments that I read in one of the texts, maybe I shouldn't say that because I'm giving something away, but one of the few texts about roller derby that I found was saying, was arguing that, um, by, you know, using the outfits, you know the sexy skanky outfits, and the bout names, and the derby names, it's kind of as if they are making the rebellion that they're trying to make against, I don't know, the male establishment, like, less harsh? So you know, you got the athletic side, but then on the other side you got the leagues and their posters saying "we're not actually that serious". To take away from it in a way. Right, I see how you mean, and I think there is also the argument "we don't wear these outfits for men", you know, we wear them for ourselves. And I think, I don't know, I think that's a very fine distinction and I don't think – obviously – if I want to wear hot pants and fishnets I can say I wear it for myself, like, I want to feel – I don't know, I don't actually, I've never actually worn that stuff so, to me I can't even imagine why I would wear it for myself. To me those things are just for male titillation and I don't understand why you'd want to necessarily wear it for yourself. Um, but maybe, I guess I just don't – I can see how you mean though, that it is maybe putting a bit of fun into it, to make it less confrontational. Um, I don't know, that's kind of, that's more thought than people who are putting together bout posters are actually considering. I think it makes it too easy to dismiss roller derby as not a real sport, but then we need to be aware of its slightly counterculture, alternative roots as well, and I think that's a big struggle that's going on right now, is that roller derby is a DIY sport with a very strong identity, and there's a huge contingent of people that are very closely involved in derby that don't want that to be taken away, and if it does become mainstream, or a legitimate sport, they'll worry that's all gonna become watered down. So maybe that is an attempt to keep that kind of slightly counterculture element ingrained in roller

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derby. I don't know, yeah, there's a huge vocal contingent of people, especially in the states, that are "I don't want the names to go, I don't want the image of the tattoos, the fishnets, the –, I don't want that to go, because that's the roots of roller derby and we want to stay counterculture, who cares if we're ever in the Olympics, you know. I think there is a real struggle between those two camps right now. Whereas there are other people who say "we're real athletes, we want this to be in the Olympics, we want to be respected as athletes". There's a tension there I don't know, it's something that is still hashed out, yeah, and I don't know what the solution is. Maybe the whole travel teams versus home teams, maybe that to some extent is a compromise that, you know travel teams that represent leagues out with the league, travelling, tend to be a bit more emphasis, well obviously, the most elite skaters in a team, but there tends to be the emphasis where athletic uniforms. Whereas the home teams seem to be reserved for all the fun, the sort of more frivolous side of roller derby, but then, as I said earlier, someone who looks at it from the outside is not gonna be able to distinguish one from the other, necessarily, if they're not a roller derby kind of – if they don't know the difference between the travel team and the home team. They see a girl in a sexy waitress uniform and think that is roller derby, and don't necessarily see the athletic, more serious side of it. They don't know the rules. Yeah, what rules! … Yeah and I think it's the people who follow higher level derby, and who do a considerate and legitimate sport, they are the ones who seem to learn the rules, and, um, and pay more attention to the intricacies and tactics on the track. The ones who just want to see a bunch of girls falling over each other, and knocking two shades of shit out of each other, aren't necessarily going to be interested in being persuaded that derby is a serious, legitimate sport. They're not gonna take the time to learn the intricacies, the tactics, the ins and outs of all the rules. This just makes me feel that, you know, home team bouts probably have a different audience than travel team bouts. I think so. I think in ARRG it's maybe not so distinct, I think, um, we haven't gone over the top developing separate themes for each of our travel or home teams, we don't have elaborate costumes, we don't have crazy half-time entertainment. I think if you look at some of the leagues in the States and their home teams situation, it's very different, you know, we still don't have proper athletic tops we have t-shirts, we don't have sexy waitress costumes or - what are some of the other ones? – Whip It! for example, the Girl Scout costumes. You know, those are costumes rather than uniforms, and so I think, with ARRG there's much less of a distinction between the two, and obviously the home teams are a bit more, a bit of fun, and more inclusive in some respects than the travel teams, but I don't think, ARRG has not gone over the top in promoting this that they almost have a circus attraction like I think some of the American leagues with their very distinct themes and, I don't know. Maybe that's the difference between American and UK derby, that derby in the states is so much more embedded for a lot longer. Like, there has been about, it's been since 2000/2001, so they've got, ARRG was in established in 2008, so they have like 8 or 7 years on the UK. Exactly. Yeah. So, I think UK roller derby seems quite different in general than American roller derby. I think, um, more of a family friendly image also in some respect.

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Under 14s go free! Exactly! There's babies. There were loads of babies at the last bout, and it's quite a family friendly sort of atmosphere, whereas in America you tend to be, you tend to see the bouts at night in places that serve alcohol. Um, I've only been to two bouts in America, and it was just a very different atmosphere. So, um, yeah, I guess I don't really know much about American derby to really comment too much on it, but to me it seems like the struggle between the professional athletic image of derby, and the frivolous, sexy kind of themed image. It seems a little bit more keen than it seems here. Um, what about derby names? Do you think, they're kind of like a marketing tool as well? I think so, yeah, alongside some of the other things, I think it possibly – see, I guess it depends, it's like in the struggle between the roots of derby as being a kind of counterculture thing and then also –, between that and professional serious athletes. Um, I'm not a fan of derby names. I use one, but I'm not a fan, I think, it actually hurts the image of derby when you speak to people who don't know derby they look at that as something, say, professional wrestlers have silly names. They don't see it as being something that a legitimate sport should be entertaining, um. I don't know, again, if we necessarily need to care about that, if it depends on which side of the fence you fall - if you want, so, my physio, who is a rugby physio said "if young guys wanna be taken seriously, you need to get rid of the stupid names" and that was like, I hadn't actually even really thought about –, up until that point I was almost just more concerned with myself feeling a little bit silly using a derby name, but that having him actually say "This is holding you guys back as a sport because you have stupid names", that didn't even occur to me, that that's what potentially people who were coming to bouts and seen us use these names, um, I didn't even occur to me. Someone who was quite involved in another serious established were kind of dismissing in a disdainful way the names, um. That doesn't tend to be our target audience necessarily, someone who's, say, a serious rugby player or football player, that is not the audience that tends to be targeted by roller derby marketing, so maybe it doesn't matter, but yeah, I think again it depends which side of the fence you fall on, whether you want derby to be a serious, perceived as a serious, sport, or if you actually want it to maintain that counterculture – roots. I don't necessarily think that names are integral to that, but just a lot of people feel very passionately about it. So.… I think some people say it's a persona that I step into when I'm on track, and to me, why do you need a persona? Why don't you be that powerful person on track? To me, I don't want to be a different person on track, I want to be the person who takes credit for being on track, so. I would actually be really proud to have my name on my back. There's a new skater from Granite City, and she skates under her own name. Yeah, ----. And ---- skates under her own name. Other sports people have nicknames, um, I actually don't even think we need names on the backs of our jerseys, necessarily, the number's what's important, but I would be really proud to have my own name on my back, because "look at what I'm doing!" This is me doing these amazing things, not Respondent 3, whoever she is. …. Yeah, just cause all the ones that I wanted were taken, and like, there's in a way, I don't want to have 'vagina' in my name, I don't wanna be the Mighty Quim. It's really funny but would you really - people wanting to go to the Olympics, would

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censor that out. Like ----. Yeah I know and we, there was this discussion that, it was either when ---- first came up with her name or when ---- came up with her name, there was the discussion "What are we gonna do about names that are potentially, could be construed as suggestive or inappropriate" – and we decided that we were not gonna censor people's derby names, it's their own decision obviously if they wanted to choose one of those names. However we did need to advice that announcers might not announce it in a bout, or – In the programme, your name is not gonna be printed in the programme. Or it just might be shortened. I see why people like them, and it's fun to think of them. To me, I think, they should just be nicknames, you know. Maybe printed on your helmet, but yeah, I think take credit for what you do on track, don't step into a different persona. That kind of makes me think, since my dissertation is concerned with feminism, that kinda makes me feel like they are girls who play derby, they're strong, but they're not strong enough to take their own names for it, not want to take credit for their action, to say "we are serious athletes and we're not wearing tutus and fishnets". It's a bit like, it's quite split in a way. I think it's people who feel like, maybe feel like derby puts them outside their comfort zone and forces them to do things way beyond things they ever thought possible that they could do, and that's when they put themselves in that different person, then that's the person who is an amazing kick-ass skater or powerful blocker, that is not me in my everyday life, it's not me that goes to work every morning, who washes the dishes in the evening, and who has to feed the dog, but that's my superhero, And that kind of is what it reminds me of, is like people taking on superhero names, it's like "No! You are that person, that strong amazing person, that's challenging yourself, and doing these amazing things", so: take credit for it! I mean, it is really, yeah, it's strange that people feel empowered and strong, but then they kinda wanna blame it on this superhero persona. So. I know there was some talk about, it's to avoid stalkers, they don't want to go – You can make your Facebook profile private! Exactly! You don't print your address in the programme. Yeah, and I think if someone is really determined they can probably find out all these details on the Internet. Everyone puts their derby name on their Facebook! Yeah, I do find the whole name thing kind of strange, and I think I'd consider, maybe, when I come back skating, I might just drop it altogether, but then I'd have to have my shirts reprinted, so. Cause when I changed my name I had to get my shirts reprinted and now my ---- shirts as jammies and stuff, um but yeah, I think it's unnecessary, the number is what matters really, and if you really want a derby name, take it on as a nickname and maybe put it on your helmet or something. But yeah, be proud of yourself doing these amazing things! I think the derby name is one of the things that makes it attractive to people. Yeah, but again, that's what the whole little package of being a derby girl is about, and really, at the end of the day that's not actually what it is about. It's not about being able to choose a fun name, and wear fishnets. Yeah, I think again that's all part of the

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trappings that people have these preconceived ideas of what's the attractive part of it, and to me that's not one of the actual important parts of it. Yeah, OMG I cannot find a derby name! Oh and god, all the threads on the forum, and all the hours and hours of discussion, and searching TwoEvils. It takes up a – it's just a slight distraction. It's fun, and gosh I had great fun with mine but yeah, in the scheme of things it's not really that important, and I think it's one of those things that might be detracting from, or adding to the misconceptions about roller derby that people have outside. You mentioned DIY. Do you think, because derby is by skaters for skaters, do you think this is really, a really important aspect of what makes derby derby, that it's not like a football league that's owned by someone? Yeah, absolutely. I think, yes, I think, for me that's hugely important and that was one of the parts of it that really attracted me to derby that there wasn't some person who wasn't actually doing it that was the head of the league, the fact that we had a board and a committee structure and spokesies, all making decisions collectively, um, and not just one kind of tyrant at the top making decisions, um. That was really really important – Well it wasn't important to me in the beginning cause I didn't actually realise that, but then the more I learnt about it and the more I got involved, it just, it's a big complex machine and everyone has their part in it, and I think that make you feel far more, ownership and investment in something, than when you just show up once a week and somebody else does all the kind of behind the scenes work. Maybe to the point where people are obviously pouring everything they have in it, there's a potential for burn-out, and stuff as well, cause people spend all their time either thinking about derby or organising derby, writing emails – but I think it does give you far more investment in what's going on than just something that you show up for twice a week and then go away and don't even think about it the rest of the time. You can't when you have like 200 emails sitting in your inbox in one day! Respondent 1 and I were talking about, there's a league in Belfast and their logo is quite – apparently it's a 50s woman in fighting stance. What was she dressed like? Don't remember. But Respondent 1 talked about when people think that roller derby is all about sexual allure, and that it could be because newer leagues are not quite savvy to presenting themselves yet. I think, newer leagues, that's what attracts people, maybe again the whole pre-packaged idea of what roller derby is, and then they are, they do tend to start initially often with these overly sexy kind of logos. I mean, Glasgow! Glasgow's old pin up that I got on one of my bags, of a woman reclining with the skates in the air, you know, and now see the change they have undergone in the last year with their new re-branding. Um, I think that's the easy image to put up on a logo, is a sexy 50s style pin up, and then as the leagues mature they tend to move away from that and have a rebranding exercise, and get a more sporty logo or, um – I really like the new ARRG logo. Yeah, it's brilliant. I think it's really good. It looks so classy, I think, professional. It's really good. Again there was a bit of the desire to keep the fist, cause the fist was ARRG's kind of official logo, the ARRG fist with the stinky flies around it. So there was still a desire – I don't know whether you were around when we were going through the

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whole process of getting the new logo. There were a couple options that still maintained the fist, um, and there was - a lot of people feel very nostalgic towards the fist and wanted it to actually still be part of the logo. But obviously we chose one without the fist, and I think, um, I don't think that's a bad thing. I think that the new logo is a big departure for ARRG, and I think maybe did signal a change in how we portray ourselves to the rest of the UK derby community and the world, I suppose, especially now that we're WFTDA. But also non-roller derby people, there's not – … – exactly, we kind of removed this threat of violence. But I know, I like – The fist is still in the boot camp logo. School of ARRG Knocks. It's not a bad pun. Exactly. It's a really good pun and works for a boot camp. And I think you're advertising then to people who already are in roller derby, you know. Your audience is other roller girls, and I think, I don't know if that was a clear decision to actually – I love the logo with the gold knuckleduster – but I was glad it wasn't chosen as our official logo, but I really was happy to see it as part of the boot camp poster. Cause I do say that it's actually rather effective and you're advertising it to other roller girls who already know what derby is about. Yeah, they are savvy to the different kind of marketing that you use. Yeah, I mean, exactly, other girls don't think they're gonna come to ARRG and get punched in the face with gold knuckle dusters. I'd like to hope they're not coming to get their faces punched by knuckledusters. But you know, it's people who already know what roller derby is about. Yeah, when I started Fresh Meat, I was a bit: what's gonna happen? Yeah, and I think, well, after most people come to their first Fresh Meat session, a lot of the myths are probably already dispelled when they go home after their first session. So, yeah, I think that's quite important, that probably people who come and have an idea in their mind of what it's going to be like, um, there is a quite high rate of people who don't come back the second week, probably because they just had no idea what to expect. That you actually have to sweat! You have to sweat, precisely. So it does come back to those people, I think, who're more interested in the image or lifestyle thing vs. people who realise that they actually kind of have to work their asses off. Yeah, I'm not a really sport person, but that's mostly because I don't really like - when you got a coach shouting at you who's not doing it. With ARRG it's all other skaters training you, so they know what - they had to learn it themselves, it's different. It makes me wanna go to the gym to work out FOR derby and not just, going to the gym just like that is so boring. Yeah, I'm exactly the same. But it does give you the motivation to actually become a more athletic person for derby other than the other way around necessarily. – Also derby doesn't make you an athletic person, you need to be sporty to do derby. – And the other thing that I really appreciate about ARRG is just what you said, is that ARRG has a core of coaches of actual skaters, whereas the whole thought of being yelled at by someone on the sidelines with a whistle, that doesn't do it themselves, um. You know, I used to take part in organised sport when I was younger, and um that was part of it that I really didn't miss, so this is really refreshing that actually the

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coaches are other skaters. It's not someone chubby, bald guy, on the sidelines, screaming at you. Exactly, especially a man. Or a kind of evil, masculine woman. Cause that's what you – I'm sorry but my female PE teacher was like that. She had short hair and calves like – so you're scared. And you also kind of feel like that when you get muscles, you feel like you're losing your femininity. Yeah I think you do lose your chest, you lose your curves. It does eventually happen. But yeah to me that's quite refreshing cause I know other leagues that do have male coaches who aren't skaters, and, ARRG is very inclusive for men, and we love our refs especially, but that really doesn't appeal to me, to be yelled at by a bloke on the sidelines. I don't know, there's something about that that really – I was just so pleased to see that this was a supportive group of folk who do it themselves. The coaching, and not some – It's like, pure Riot Grrrl, do it yourself. That's kind of like the basis, printing out own stuff, we don't need other guys to do it for us. Yeah, we're doing it ourselves, and yeah I think we should really be proud of that. I think that's – derby needs to be – hopefully as it evolves it won't lose that. You know, I guess when you look at, don't know whether derby will ever be an Olympic sport, but there's definitely a movement to kind of push for that to happen. Will we be able to continue to be run by skaters if that happens? I don't know. I-I hope so, cause I think it would be a real shame if that element of it is lost. It sounds like, this whole element, that you're in control of everything you do, how you represent yourselves. Yeah and it's not just one person making a decision, it has - and obviously one person making a decision, it often happens a lot quicker and more decisively. Whereas decisions when you have committees and, uh, spokespeople – the process can take and take forever. But really, I think we do quite well given the fact, how many people we have involved in the decision making process, and I think I wouldn't wanna lose that for the world, that we steer what happens to us and no one else. And I think that is so deeply important. So even the board, I mean –. Okay there's five people on the board, but we can't make any decisions. Everyone has to collectively make the decision. I was really surprised that there's not a head of the board. No. We have co-chairs. There are two co-chairs? Yeah, and the co-chairs are basically spokesies for the board almost. And they don't run anything themselves, like anything the board comes up with we have to run through the spokesies and the spokesies need to kind of make sure everything is okay with their committees, and – you know, it's not like, the 5 people on the board don't make decisions, we have to have everybody else. And there are meetings. It's like a company. Exactly. Yeah, and everyone in the league management so to speak is responsible to all the members, really. And I think that the fact that it's classic decision-making, and considering how many people are involved we do a really good job of it. You know, we may be a little bit excessive on the emails sometimes, on the forum, or whatever but I think we do a really good job, and I think it's something we should really be proud of. That we all make these collective decisions together and for the most part

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they are really effective and – yeah. It makes you wanna be like that in every part of your life. Wouldn't that be great! And then you go to work and it's like, oh no there's someone above me and I can't actually just do what I want to do. I know, it's frustrating! Okay, I'm just gonna do the last question, which is kind of like – been included, but have you ever had to put with any prejudice against the sport? I think personally no, I think I have some of my non-derby friends, especially on Facebook, once they start seeing that you get engaged in this new thing, your non-derby friends can often be like "oooh what's all this about". So I did have a group of friends that saw that I was starting getting involved in derby, and was posting about derby, and was becoming friends with people with silly names on Facebook. And, um, and who went and actually took it upon themselves to Google it, or to look at Youtube videos of it, um. And then, some of them came back to me with some really weird misconceptions about it. Like, "so, so what happens, how many black eyes have you had from people punching you in the face?" And then even just last week I had a friend, one of – a mutual friend of me and my husband, he and his wife and his baby came to the last bout, and then another mutual friend of ours who's a rugby guy commented on a thread on my Facebook page, saying "So how many fights were there in the bout?" – and like. – That's a misconception. Exactly, and he had gone, obviously, and he was always very interested and supportive when he found out I was in it, but he went away, looked at videos. "I looked on Youtube, there were some massive brawls". So he attempted to educate himself about derby, which I appreciate, I thought it was really nice that he showed interest, but he obviously somehow stumbled across – whether by design or accident – stumbled across videos of women fighting in roller derby, you know. How many bouts have you seen, how many times has that actually happened? I've never seen it happen in person. I occasionally hear. – Yeah you occasionally hear about people being slightly scrappy, but how many actual – so he somehow got this – Everybody talks about the elbow in the face, and that is strictly not allowed. So somehow, even in the people who are trying to educate themselves still sometimes seem to get a misconception about it. It's like, so I don't know if it's just because those are the images, those are the videos that are more watched on – say – Youtube, so they come up higher in the search results. I guess I haven't actually tried it myself, maybe I should. Or, cause those are obviously the ones people want to watch, non-derby people want to watch, whereas you and I might wanna go see Youtube videos of people playing amazing roller derby and not beating the crap out of each other. That lift! The Pegassist! That was amazing. And that was probably quite a highly watched video, but likewise there's probably a whole shitload of videos on the Internet of roller girls fighting each other, and it's a shame that people who then want to go educate themselves are coming away with these misconceptions. I like the videos that are like "how do I do a transition". Some of them are really really good! The Bonnie D. Stroir videos, there are some good and some instructional videos on there as well, but then, you know. There's still

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– when I first started getting into it, there was still a lot of videos of some of the old-school derby, um. Yeah, so even people who are making an effort to figure out what it is, still somehow seem to come away with the wrong idea it seems. Maybe, gosh, looking at videos of people fighting is fun, so maybe they didn't actually try to look any further than that. But I guess we can then just take responsibility and try and point them in the right way of maybe some good videos. Or, I explained to my mate, actually, no, fighting is strictly not allowed. If you fight you get sent off! Exactly, so. Yeah. I mean. I've never actually – you get the whole "ooh you're a roller girl, isn't that very dangerous" – but yeah, I've never actually had any kind of negative experiences other than my friends just being a bit shit and not really taking the effort to really find out what exactly it really is. No preconception that everyone who does it is a big lesbian? Well there's a fair bit of that too, isn't there. I think that's again – But isn't that funny cause there the element of roller girls are easy and dressed for male titillation. But then on the other hand it's "all roller girls are lesbians". I know, but how do you do that?! But then it's the whole lesbians are sexy for men as well. Yeah that's a big thing in advertising, the ads are produced for the male gaze. It's basically to say "you can't have this". Exactly. Just to make the men want the women more. But it is funny because it is the two sides of misconception, and they don't quite seem to marry up, but then – I don't know. Men are quite happy to see lesbians, there for their titillation as well. … And I think there's that – comes back to – the whole thing, who is responsible for the reaction of someone else. Like, I believe a woman should be able to wear whatever the hell she wants, without receiving unwanted male attention, without being accused of being provocative, or – and that again comes back to the whole what you wear when you're playing roller derby, and the image that you're presenting. To some extent, we're not responsible for the reaction of other people to what we're wearing, or how we're acting. Um, but then, men in general often see someone wearing a certain thing, and perceive that as wanting male attention, or trying to attract male attention, or think the woman is actively trying to pursue male attention if she dresses a certain way. And I think that's part of the problem with the whole advertising the sexy passive female, is that even if that's not the intention that's how it's gonna be perceived by certain people. How responsible are we for that? I don't know. It's the whole kind of Burqa argument: if you cover yourself from head to foot, women are still very – women are still abused. It's not our responsibility to police what's going on in other people's heads, but there are people who are going to think how you are dressing is an invitation to a certain type of unwanted attention, or advertising. So, yeah. I'm trying to be diplomatic. Give me a few beers and I'll go on and on about male sexuality.

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Transcript IV – Respondent 4 Date and place: 10 August 2012, The Crags, Edinburgh Name: Respondent 4 Age: 41 How long have you been skating? Three years and a bit. Started in May 2009. How did you first hear about derby in general? Um, it was – I was in ----‘s shop, I didn't know ---- at the time, I was just shopping for clothes. And I saw a flyer on the wall when I was in the changing room. I asked the helpful lady that was in the shop and happened to be ----, and she obviously was really enthusiastic and made me like come along to a practice so I came along and had a look, and I was hooked. So the first time you actually heard about ARRG was from an Arrgie? Yes! And about derby as well in general? Yeah! Which words would you associate with derby? Powerful, fast, exuberant, fun. How does doing derby make you feel? How does? How does it make you feel? About yourself? Oh, all right! About me, yeah, it makes me feel lots of things. Um, makes me feel fit. Makes me feel happy. Excited. Proud. Does it kind of make you feel better as a woman? It comes down to feminsim that's why I ask these things. Um, does it make me feel better as a woman? I don't often think about it. In that kind of terms. I'll be honest. You don't? That's fine! How do you think that people outside of derby see derby girls? Girls who do derby. Or the sport. There's a bit of a stereotypical view of a roller derby player who has a, um, strange hair and tattoos, and of course I'm not like that at all. (laughs) Um, but that's – derby's great because lots of different people do it. So I don't think there is a typical roller derby girl. But that seems to be the thing that people zone in on. It's things like that stuff. Do you think that, um, the stereotype and that there's only one kind of derby girl is kind of influenced by how the media talk about it, how it's advertised? I think that's a lot to do with the media. If you look at – if you look at articles, a lot of the time, that's the first thing that they come up with, it's girls who have tattoos and hair. Piercings is the other thing they tend to mention and focusing on. And yeah there are girls who do, but there's also many girls who don't. What about the stereotype of being the easy, sexy derby girl? Don't get that. I think that's kind of completely false. At least as far as I'm – don't get that. Um, how do you think that ARRG flyers and posters present derby? I love the way we now do our flyers and posters, that it's done from a very sporty point

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of view. Um, it's about athleticism, it's about the sport, and the fact that we don't have named bouts anymore. We're just going down the route of “it's a sport, this is what we do”. Do you think it's actually helping to get the sport taken more seriously? Yeah, I reckon. It's a sport, this is what we're doing, it's a sport. What about derby names? I feel quite strongly about derby names in that I like to have a derby name, I like the fact that I can choose my own derby name, and that that can be anything I want. It's quite nice to be able to kind of wear it. Do you think that it portrays to the outside world as well, like the sport where girls have different names? I think it shows that sport can still have a fun side. That even though we're playing a team sport there can be individuality within the team. And I think that's a good thing. You don't think it's taking away from the seriousness? Nah. Okay, – and um have you ever had to put up with any prejudice against the sport? Um, not as much prejudice as far as misunderstanding. Um, roller ball – this is a thing that comes up a lot. Explaining to people that there is no ball. That we don't actually wear inline skates. We wear good old-style quads. The way forward. The only way. That it? Yep. Thank you!

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Transcript V – Respondent 5 Date and place: 18 August 2012, outside Meadowbank Stadium Name: Respondent 5 Age: 27 How long have you been doing derby, or were you doing derby? I did derby for three years. I skated for three years, and then I stayed involved with the league for a year after that, and then I quit completely this year. Do you miss it? Hm, yeah, I do. Like I miss, um, I miss skating, like I miss the physical feeling of skating and I miss like being involved in like a massive collaborative project with loads of other people. How did you first hear about derby in general? I first heard about derby in general in 2008. My friend ---- saw a poster for the Glasgow Roller Girls in the Black Bull in Edinburgh. And she was like 'we should set up a league in Edinburgh!' I was like 'whatever, that will never happen, I can't roller skate.' And like, she always kind of had these crazy schemes that kind of faded after a while, so I thought that that was what roller derby was gonna be, but we started looking into setting up a league. Um, yeah. And then the rest is history. So you did not hear about ARRG, you kind of invented ARRG in a way. Mm, yeah, I guess I was involved with like the other five to 20 people who like invented ARRG. So. Which words would you associate with derby? Words? Mmm, complicated – do you mean like roller derby the sport or the whole thing? Well, the sport, or how it makes you feel – Respondent 3 was talking about how it makes her feel. Um, uh, so many words. Um, like complicated and confusing and conflicted, but also, and like regretful and disappointed cause I stopped skating, but also like inspired and humble and in awe of like everyone who does it. That's quite a lot of words. That's good, no, that's good. So, if you just look at how derby makes you feel, how does it make you feel? In general? Like, overall, if I had to choose one feeling it'd be like really happy and hopeful and inspired. Does it kind of make you feel good about being a woman? Would you not associate it with gender? It – like, for me it is really gendered, and it was always about like being a women-led space, and like being something that women can do together, or like, self-identifying women can do together, like. I'd really like it if derby could be more actively inclusive of trans-people, I guess. Um, I wouldn't say that it made me feel – maybe it did make me feel good about being a woman. But I don't get – would not spontaneously phrase it like that myself. Like, it made me feel really happy to being able to know other women through derby, to have like a shared project with other women, I think. Like it made me feel good about the women. So, like, the way – since I started skating I actually like my body better, like I don't care that I'm not skinny, flat, because like I know my body can do, I'm

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good at blocking people and things like that – did derby make you feel different about your body? Yeah, I think, like, cause I'd done – the other like. Hm, like it was the first sport I think that I really committed to, ever. And, like I probably just keep repeating myself, and the first time I'd ever been involved in like a collaborative project. And I think I really enjoyed the chance to use my body instrumentally, to like, for it to be this thing that you're doing things with, rather than for it to be the classic thing that other people are looking at. Um. And, yeah, I think, like definitely over that past – so, fuck, just over four years since ARRG started, and I think I really liked that time – so I was 23 when ARRG started and I was 26 when I stopped skating, and 27 when I left the league. And like those four years for me, like, I think I got a lot more comfortable and confident and just giving less of a shit about my body, and I think. So, like, I don't know, like I definitely, like I care about what I look like, definitely, um, and I think – so over that period of time I like stopped shaving my armpits and shaving my pubic hair and things like that. And like, I think stuff like that is maybe to do with derby, like just feeling a bit more confident to be like “actually, fuck you, I don't care if you're looking at my armpit hair”. And I think it's all just like spending three to eight hours a week in like, whether it's like fishnets and hot pants, or like athletic leggings, like clothes that – I don't know, make you, clothes that you'd never normally wear, it's clothes that I would never normally wear. I guess you get to like see your body in a different way, or you – yeah, or you use your body for different things. Sorry, I'm rambling. No, that's fine! But, yeah, like I think that derby definitely has the potential to be a space where lots of women can like feel more comfortable or happier or proud or like not give a shit about like whether you're fat or thin, or like, you know, all the things that you basically get indoctrinated to give a shit about. Um. But I think as well, like, there's probably potential for it to be a space where you feel like “maybe I'm not strong enough”, or “if I were thinner I'd be faster”, or like, you know, that kind of thing. So I guess, it's like not a perfect space that's completely immune to everything that happens in the world. It's kind of like not, you know, a mainstream beauty space, you know it's not like: tall, blonde, skinny. … And I think it's really good, like it's good to see a variety of other, especially women that you admire, cause, yeah – I think it's really easy to admire other women that do derby, right, or look up to them. So it's good to see a range of women that you admire who have like a range of different body shapes. Maybe that's a good way of saying it, like there is a range of like beautiful, powerful, flawed human women who are like all different shapes I guess. How do you think that people outside roller derby see roller girls/women/females? Um, who play roller derby? Um. I don't know, I guess like, I guess there's quite a lot of like popular perceptions that are like “there's loads of rockabilly girls” or “it's loads of punk girls” or “it's loads of like really butch girls”. Um. So yeah, I think, like I think that stereotype is changing cause there's such a push from derby to like address that image, I think. I think that's – I mean you can see it in the way we, the way that ARRG has changed over the past four years, like, 2008/2009 we had like burlesque nights, we auctioned, like in 2008 on our first fundraiser, we auctioned off a date with a roller girl, and we had like a strip auction as well with another roller girl. Like those things

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would basically be impossible now, cause I think there's been like a conscious effort to like – like our logo now, and everyone's really anti like the, you know, sexy lady logo or the pin up logo. Um, so yeah like I think there's been like a conscious effort in ARRG, maybe roller derby more broadly, to like kind of address this stereotype, these popular perceptions, but maybe they still exist, I don't know, kind of just like 'the wild dangerous girls'. I mean whenever you read a newspaper article, it's, like even, so most recently I was reading like, it was and STV thing with Mo and Alma. I read that. And was like, huh what's going on? Yeah, cause even though – wasn't it so strange how even though she was like, she was like. That article seemed to be doing both, right? She was saying like “there's much more to roller derby than fishnets and bruises and tattoos” but – Then she talks about the peroxide fin and stuff. I read an academic article recently, I think it was Finley. I read the beginning and was like what the fuck did I just read? There's two other. I think there's, I think one of them is someone called Cohen, who, like it's an awful article anyway, but it's like, yeah. And it starts like that, and then “wait a second, there's all this bending”, which has me like: why do you start in such a crap way? Yeah, yeah. And like I've read a few newspaper articles more recently that are like, you know, cause it used to be a bit like “of course it would be all about the fishnets!” and I read a few more recently, um, that were like “these girls wear athletic sports wear”. And that was it! I guess that's part of why I try to address this. Athletic sportswear? Yeah. So you do think that the way you know derby is kind of advertised or broadcasted is influenced by the media? Um, yeah, I guess so because like – like, I don't know. If I had my way, then, like, we wouldn't even bother with the – like, yeah, in my like derby utopia we wouldn't bother with like engaging with the mainstream media. Or with media that was like outside our control. Or with media that wasn't sympathetic to a feminist or a queer cause, or like run by people who are into that I guess. Um. So yeah, I guess the way that people perceive derby is influenced by how it's articulated in the media. Do you think that's – I'm not like pointing fingers – but do you think that some of the leagues kind of also, you know, with their posters and their flyers, do you think that they kind of contribute to the stereotype, sexy girls on roller skates and fishnets, and it's not actually about the sport? I guess so, but like, I think. Aaah, it's so confusing, like, I find it so hard to articulate right, because, like: if you're a derby league and you produce your poster that is like a sexy skater in fishnets, then like obviously that's producing one representation of what like roller derby is, or what the people who play it do. … Obviously if you produce a poster or a flyer with a sexy skater on it, then like, yeah, that's one representation of what a skater is or what roller derby is. But I don't know if, like, – hm, but you can't like, you can't really control, and if you put that out in the world you cannot control how people are gonna interpret it or use it, or what they're gonna think about, right? Hm. So yeah, I would be really hesitant to say there's anything, like wrong with leagues doing that. And I think – like, I guess you hear that a lot, but like that kind of representation or presentation of roller derby takes away from the focus of it as a

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sport. But like there's absolutely no reason why you can't be like sexy in anyway you choose, and wear whatever you want. Like I think the problem is like with a narrow classification of what counts as sport rather than what anyone is wearing or what anyone's flyers look like. Um. Yeah. Does that make sense? Yeah, kinda makes me think of cheerleading which a lot of people don't consider a sport, but how many people can like just throw their leg up to their leg, like. It looks easy but it's not. And because they wear the short skirts and tops, people are like “oh they're cheerleaders”. And boy cheerleaders they must be gay. Yeah, like I don't really care what like SkySports or the Olympics or like some fucking sports journalist or some football fan, like I don't really care what they think about roller derby, like as long as the people who're doing it are having a good time. And like it's up to everyone who's involved in roller derby to just decide, like what they want it to be like. You know, and we don't, I don't think we have to fit in with like any pre-given definition of what sport is, like. You know, you could – yeah, just you could, sport, there are many things that are fucked up and problematic about sport as an institution, as an industry, as a set of ideologies. Like I don't think being sport is like - especially not being sport like in all these terms that come with a really misogynistic and androcentric – – and also homophobic history. Yeah. So I think like, um, I don't know if roller derby as a whole does this but I think, like I think it's good to be critical about what sport is, and like not take, you know, not take the – not take it seriously basically. Just because in sport things, you know just because in sport people don't wear fishnets, or because in sport people don't like work in a DIY way, or just because in sport, you know, you have sponsorship deals and all that, you know, just because that happens in sport doesn't mean that roller derby has to do that, and it can still be a sport, like, roller derby has the potential to expand in the definition of a sport. Yeah. So you're not, some people are very like “ah we went to go to the Olympics” and it's all about the athleticism, and the other, you know I find, - What I found is that there's kind of like two sides, like some are like “yeah, we wanna be recognised as an athletic sport”, and then you've got others who're like “it's a sport but it's also an alternative environment that we're in, so fuck the Olympics, we do not want to be part of the Olympics”. Yeah, like, um, like I'm not, I'm definitely not a fan of the Olympics, like absolutely not. I mean there's just all kinds of things that are fucked up about the Olympics, but I think that like roller derby could still be this like incredible athletic thing that requires like strength and commitment and skill and speed and stamina and all of that stuff without it being in the Olympics. Um. I don't see why the Olympics have to be like, you know, the highest thing to achieve anyway. So. Because I never thought of derby being, in a way, mainstream and that at the moment, and that's just how I feel, trying to get more audience because the leagues need the money in a way. “Oh, crap, we need money! We need to like reach a broader audience, we need to have more people, more different people come to see the bouts”. Yeah, but like, there's more ways to generate income and generate resources than like –

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Kickstarter! Yeah, exactly! And like, yeah. I think, like, I don't know, it's just in a really interesting phase at the moment like where it's changing so much, and, like. Like I kind of like it that it is in this ambiguous place where it's kind of both: getting into the mainstream and there are still aspects about it that make that transition really difficult. Like I think that's one of the things that makes derby so good is that it's just a bit ambivalent, and like, say, there're loads of people in it who're like “fuck that noise, I'm gonna skate with my real name, and I wanna be in the Olympics”. Oh yeah, the name thing. What's your take on names? Um, I think they're good, like I think. I don't know, all the stuff about derby that wouldn't make sense to the Olympics I think is good. Basically. Like all the stuff about roller derby that like. Yeah. Just all the stuff, like I like how it doesn't make sense, I like how it's this incoherent mess of like people called ---- and like – and then children making signs. And I like how it's slapdash and um. But at the same time there's like loads of people working really hard and being really efficient, and, like. Yeah. I like how it's all messed up. I hope. No, it's really hard, it's like this whole 'little' organism, and I think that there's, when you look at it, there's also a difference between America and – you know the States and the UK and Europe. Because, you know, they got billboards. And people know what derby is. Glasgow roller derby have an advert on the underground in Glasgow. Really? Yeah, like a full size – so like next to – I mean I guess the advertising there is quite good cause mostly for things in Glasgow, though there's also Jack Daniel's and some stuff. But anyway, there's a whole massive poster in the subway. Um. Yeah, like I think, I don't know, like I think even – So when we were thinking of names for the home teams there were all these suggestions to call them like “Avocado and Prawn” and you know, like, the suggestion list for what the home team names was … like huge and it didn't make any sense. And people were suggesting like, you know, “Saturday Night Beavers” should be a home team name, and “Greyfriar's Bobby” should be a home team – like. And there were like dirty, sexy, funny ones but then there were also people being like one of the teams should be called Prawn. And obviously that didn't happen in the end, and like maybe one of the reasons why that didn't happen was because like, you know, we want to be accessible to a wider audience, want to be like more like a serious sport, but the names that did happen in the end, like “Skatefast Club”, “Leithal Weapons”, “Cherry Bombers”, don't necessarily make any more sense than like Avocado or whatever. So I think that like sometimes even when we try to be like more intelligible like it's still – not that it doesn't work – but the way that we do it is still this thing that's like a little bit challenging for sports fans to recognise as sport I guess. Like I think roller derby is a sport but I don't think we need to change anything we do so that anyone else agrees. Like I think, yeah, like I like derby names cause they don't really make sense and – um. And cause they're silly and like, but like it's obviously okay to like not have a derby name. … So I just wanted to say something but now forgot. Urgh this always happens! Semi-structured. Ahem, you, there was this thing, cause I need to connect it all to marketing and it's about advertising and like whether it's feminist or commodity feminism or like false consciousness, so it's like, it boils down to

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whether it's empowering – and there was this one argument that if you have a skate name it's basically not you doing it, but that it's this person that you take on when you're on the track. And it's not me in real life because I'm something else in real life? Yeah, and people say, that that, like, decreases the emancipatory or power. Yeah like you should be kicking ass enough to say that this is me, this is my name – I think that's bollocks cause that relies on a conception of the individual as like this thing that's problematically – that relies on like an idea of the self as like essential and unchanging and singular and unitary. And like even when you're just like called Maggie or Ursula, it's not like that, right, cause you're a different person throughout your whole life, like you're always changing. Plus in a way it's like you didn't choose that name as well. It's not your name and it's not necessarily what you would choose if you could name yourself. Yeah, and I don't know like, maybe – I'm a bit sceptical about saying like you can choose this name and then emerge as a beautiful butterfly who is like empowered or powerful. Like that can happen but I don't think – for me I don't think that's what's going – I think being able to have a derby name, whether that's just like another name and nothing more, or whether it makes you feel like you're a different person, like. I think like that's just a more honest approach to like how a person works in itself anyway, cause like, I'm a different person with my parents than I am with my partner, or like I'm a different person when I'm teaching than when I'm like drunk. … You know, there are, everyone's got different facets to them anyway and like I don't, like I think the idea that there is like a more, there's an authentic you that either exists in your – like the idea that there is a real self, I just don't think that there is. Like we're all just responding to like the context or the situation or whatever that you find yourself in, and like, obviously there's continuity, but like. Yeah I don't think – but it's like you have an authentic self and then your derby name is something else, where I don't think it's your derby – and you'd be able to find your authentic self – I just don't think there is an authentic self so like it's okay to be multiple people, or like call yourself Crotch or something else. What my personal opinion is – it's like what I think or feel about derby names, it's like, you know, girls are not supposed to talk like that. You know, girls are not supposed to call themselves like ----, like, as a girl you're not supposed to be kind of sexual or like actively, just in a passive role, like you can be like sexual like “Oh hi!” and “look at me, how beautiful I am, don't you want to have me right here and now”. But yeah girls are not supposed to be like actively – Yeah, that's a really good point actually. And I don't know if you read it but like someone called Ginger Snap, a skater from the States, wrote a post for Derby Life Blog in September last year, and it's called “Derby Names: Not Ready For Prime Time”, and in it she calls out loads of people who have a dirty name. I think I read that one! And um, she's saying like, we shouldn't like – skaters shouldn't have icky names, she calls them because they put off the Olympics and Fox Sports or whatever. But! Like in the article, in the article – I don't know – she doesn't distinguish between names that are offensive because it's like a dude being called Ray Pugh, and like a girl being called Rose Hypnol, or a woman skater being called, um, like Clittler. And it's like, I

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don't know, the idea. Like you said, women aren't meant to be actively sexual and like, the taboo of like woman's body parts as well. Like there's a difference, isn't there, there's a difference between like clit as a word being offensive and like jokes about the Holocaust being offensive. There's a difference between being like a rape survivor talking about rape and a rape perpetrator talking about rape – that those things happen from a different position, right, so like. Like I think there is something like powerful and subversive about like being called Clit Eastwood and Cunty McCunterson, or like using – or just like having words for vaginas in like everyday talk, I think. I think that's related to what you said, and I think that, you know, because, it's like in the sense that anti-obscenity discourse or anti-pornography law like – I don't know, you can have like pornography that is really violent towards women, and you can have this like amazing queer amazing pornography, and I don't mean violent towards women as in like BDSM. You know what I mean? Yeah, I know what you mean. The woman being submissive and all. Like I think being submissive is okay but – like, I don't know, there's like a difference between like, yeah. It's like, you know, that's my personal pet hate: political correctness. Just because you … Instead of saying someone's fat you say horizontally challenged, and like that draws more attention – or like a bit thin on top. And it's like this whole derogatory thing about it. Like a housewife is a domestic engineer? I actually nearly died laughing. It's a bit like, in a way, it's like you're giving words so much power, you should not give words so much power, they're just words, you know, like the word cunt, it's a word and people get offended because they're like 'oh my god you cannot use this word'. It's a bit, like I don't know, it's this big, and difficult – Yeah, and I don't think, like, like derby names don't like answer that problem but they intervene in it, in a way I guess. Just like derby doesn't like solve what – you know derby doesn't solve all the like discrimination against women in sport or like marginalisation or trivialisation of women sport, it doesn't solve that. But like it addresses it in a way that like very few other things do I think. Yeah. … Okay, I got just one last one: um, have you ever had to put up with any prejudice against the derby? You know from people like at Uni or at work? Like, “what do you?! does that mean you're gay?”. Um, I think like, um, like. Cause like I do my PhD on derby, like, I think maybe this is more in my own head than anything else, but I worry that it's like a trivial subject. But maybe, I don't know what else exactly, but – when we first started up, some of the like, guys guys I knew that I like work with or you know, were like a bit dismissible, were a bit like 'this is really stupid' – um, and I guess that's cause they found it threatening. Or they were used to be like the main event, like they were used to people come watch their band play – or they were used to women coming to watch their band play, and like not doing anything. But other than that – Yes, and I guess, like it's a bit, I don't know, yeah, I think that's the extent of it though, nothing else. Yeah? Yeah I think so. Yeah no one's ever been like “oh you play derby you must be —“ – well, my mum always used to be like “you look really scary when you're in your equipment”. What are you talking about, mum? Like, what, like, you know – I thought there was some subtext there. … But I didn't have like any negative reactions.

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Transcript VI - Respondent 6 Date and place: 22 August 2012, Auld Hoose, Edinburgh Name: Respondent 6 Age: 38 (I'm old. - No you're not!) The average age of derby players is apparently 31 so you're just above average. Slightly. How long have you been doing derby? Since September 14 2008. Almost four years. Three and a half at the moment. Almost four! We're literally like a month away. Did you start – did you kind off start when ARRG started? They started in April, and then I did in September, so a few months later. How did you hear about it, derby in general? Well I had a friend in Canada that was doing it, who's still doing it, and it looked pretty cool, and then I kind of needed something to do, cause I was always in a band. And when I left my band and wasn't really doing anything I got really bored, and I came across and thought I could really like this. So I think I went on Myspace and found a Myspace page, back when Myspace was cool – not so much Facebook. And I found it, went along to practice. Was that when the practices were open? Yeah. And so I just sat there and thought “yeah that's what I'm gonna do”. But I didn't start right away – I think I went home to Canada and then bought like my skates and all the stuff there, and then came back with all my gear, and then started officially. Was gear cheaper in Canada? No, I just couldn't start before then for some reason. I think I was like leaving – I think I found out about it and then left like a week later, and then it took a few more weeks for me to start officially, so. I didn't even need to try on some skates first, I just knew that was what I was gonna do. But in those days, you just showed up to practice and someone just kind of became your buddy and would tell you how to left knee fall, right knee fall, baseball slide. And just that stuff, and I was like “okay, that was pretty hilarious”. And yeah, that was it. So you actually heard about ARRG by research in a way. Yeah. Yeah. Which words would you associate with derby? With derby? Hard work. Mentally challenging. I'm sure there's a lot more. Gosh, I'm unprepared. … Although I don't have like a lot of words to say, like, obviously hard work, it is really hard work. A lot of people don't realise when they're coming to it. And it's fun, and you do have a lot of fun and you do make friends through it, but it's up to you how far you wanna take it. And then you kind of have to change your lifestyle so it, it is really mental sport, because if you feel like you're having a good day, and then a good month, and you're getting better and better and better, and then you feel like you're not good at it. And you're constantly trying to be good at something and you keep messing it up. Then your emotions go up and down, like you're really good, you're really bad, you're really good, you suck. You know what I mean? So it's so hard to – it's hard to focus. You need to be focussed! That's another one, focussed. But it's really fun.

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Um, what about you – you use a lot of your time to do derby if you do it competitively? Yeah. Especially when you start – when you do it competitively and you're the kind of person like me that does everything. Not does everything, but – there was a point where I was doing everything, like I was on the board, and then I was the captain, secretarial spokesy. All these kinds of different rules. So I kinda knew what was happening throughout the league all the time, and you literally lose your entire life in roller derby to skating and meetings. I think you really need to balance it, learn to balance it earlier on, because you just burn out. You probably get fed up with it as well. Yeah. And it's not even that you get fed up with the skating part, it's that you get fed up with the so much work and constant you knows, that it makes you start to lose – like before you even start to get fed up with the skating. You know, you never really resent skating, cause that's always the fun part. When you put your skates on, nothing matters, just skating and all that. Like everything goes out the window. But it's the little stuff behind that I would say is so – it's early on when you need to know what your limits are and then keep to that. You think that it's from the DIY culture? The say, Riot Grrrl background? Yeah, just anything like, like. Feminist bookstores. Any kind of volunteer run place, if it's all volunteer. Everyone has to put in a certain amount of work. But there's always those people that will take more work on than others. And people need to dedicate time to do things. And yeah everybody needs to do kind of the same amount, and then it would put a lot less pressure on certain people, but yeah, that's the same thing in every kind of DIY sort of thing. So it's like less people do more, basically. It seems okay as far as I know, but I don't really know. (laughs) I'm sure it's the same in every league. Um, is that something that you actually really like about derby, that it is DIY, you know, by the skaters for the skaters? Or would you rather have something like a higher instance? No, I think it's the best way to do it. I don't think there should be like paid people or anything like that. Unless they are specifically paid to like listen to rest of the membership, you know what I mean, so they wouldn't have any more power. It's just that they have very specific rules. Like a secretary? Kinda like that. But I like ARRG mostly cause it's mostly all female, you know, and that kind of feeling that you get of just hanging out with a bunch of people. Are there any guys on the board? No. It's a few refs and that's it. But the refs are like on the refs committee? Yeah, and I think that there's a f— they're on other committees as well, but they're not on the board. But definitely can be! So that's not a problem at all. So how does derby, you know doing derby, make you feel? It makes me feel like I have no worries outside of roller derby. So, you can lose yourself in it to the point where you literally don't think about anything else. Do you have like a sense of female empowerment? Um, yeah. Yes, definitely, because it's probably the same with everybody. Like you

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see people progress through their confidence issues from the beginning. Being really nervous just about, I don't know, silly things like the outfit, yeah. You know because it's such a sporty movable sport, you have to have quite minimal amount of clothing. A tank top or either shorts or those athletic tights, whatever, spandexy things. Like sports kind of things, clothing. And then, I've seen people go to training wearing like baggy hockey shorts, almost like surfer shorts, you know that style, Bermuda shorts or whatever they're called, to like wearing tights. And I mean I've gone from wearing the same thing to little shorts, and it makes you feel so much more confident about your body which is quite interesting. I think that's really really important for people. You just – get confidence doing not only doing, but having a voice, learning roller derby and the rules in it, and everything and all this kind of stuff, and you try to yell at each other on track, it teaches you to just have a voice. To speak, you know, kind of thing. It's think it's really quite amazing kind of thing. And it's throughout the board – across the whole span of skaters, you know. Um do you think the way that you relate to your body has changed? Like since I started skating I feel better about my body, like I don't need to be skinny, like I can do things the way I am, I can be annoying with my bum and no one's gonna get past me. I know, that's the really cool part of it. I think … human, like everybody has a role. Like there's people who're still tiny, like ---- but she hits really hard, and is amazing and gets in your way and you can't get out, you know what I mean. And it doesn't matter who you are, you have the skill and therefore a reason – it's pretty cool. It makes me feel – I think the main difference, I suppose, is that I wear shorter shorts or shorter skirts. Yeah, so. Just in derby or like in general life? I wear maybe like tighter clothes, you know, that I wouldn't maybe wear when - those stretchy mini skirt type of things, you know. (laughs) Which is fine. I'm not so like weirded out about my body anymore as much as I used to be, even though I've always been the same size, I haven't really changed, but how I view it. It's weird. I guess it's kind of like, you know, girls are trained to be … Yeah, they're trained to be girls, and have all this – weirdly, ok, so they're taught to be women, but at the same time they're taught to not like their bodies. So they're taught to want to be skinny, to have the body like a model, which is kind of like the body of an adolescent boy. Like, girls don't want hips. But yeah, that's what you need to have to be a girl. So yeah. And then the funny thing, it just, when, because it's a sport that is so athletic and you can do so much with it, and you need those parts of your body to be able to do the things you need to do in roller derby. That's why you start to overcome body issues. All girls should do roller derby! I mean I know it's pretty hard for everyone to do, but it's amazing the difference it makes you feel. Like it's quite huge, I think. Quite huge. Especially for younger girls that might have had body issues and then like - serious ones even – and then don't give a shit. Yeah, it's like learning acceptance. How do you think people outside of derby see derby girls? I think they still see them as kind of Rock'n'Roll. I don't, I think it's gonna be quite a while before they stop thinking of roller derby that way. Kind of sexy? Sexy girls in fishnets? Sometimes. But then there are bigger girls and smaller girls, and girls that look like

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boys, do you know what I mean? I think there's different girls. It's not just like the stereotype, but I still think it's more – because, by nature of the people who are in roller derby at the moment, who that started it. It started from kind of more punk kind of roots, but that still draws that kind of crowd. Obviously it's now started to draw more sporty people, like down in London, someone who's a fire fighter joining London Roller Girls, you know. She's totally full on fit! She's gonna kick everyone's ass. Yeah, basically. So it draws much more sporty people as well as still quite a lot of punk rockers. But not everybody's covered in tattoos and you know all this kind of stuff. It's always gonna have this element of slightly alternative. Do you think, you know, did you see the STV article that came out like two weeks ago? About Mo and Alma? They like interviewed them at the Crags? No, but I didn't hear it. Was it on TV? No, it was, it's an article. It's online. Oh, it's online?! Yeah, ARRG posted it on their Facebook as well. I saw that but I thought it was on the radio. So that's why I never — It was a written article, and it was like, going on about how. You know it started, you see her with her peroxide fin and everything, short skirts. And it starts with the kind of stereotypes that a lot of people have. And then it's trying to do, make the point that it's actually a real sport. It's a bit torn, like this article was a bit torn. Do you think that generally that media and the way they report about derby, do you think they're generally torn? Yes, I think that the media should definitely just stop saying that stuff. Stop saying that stuff about fishnets and girls in tights, little skirts and hot pants, and tattoos. Like, and just - if the media would start talking about roller derby as an actual sport and just concentrate on that, then it would start slowly to get away from it. You know what I mean? Cause it's more, it's much more of a sport in the States. They're all like ex like figure skaters and hockey players and professional speed skaters and all that kind of stuff. So, they. – And rugby players, and you know just actual people that have come from one sport and just transferred it to another, to roller derby. Whereas a lot of the people in the UK when it started weren't sport people at all, they just started up because it was cool. Well, it sounded cool, and it sounded quite amazing. And now it has gone into the sporty direction, so it's started to get more of a – but I think that, yeah, I think that they are torn, and they should concentrate more on the sport aspect. Do you think that in a way that some of the leagues, I'm not saying particular names or pointing my finger, you know with their logos and posters, do you think they kind of perpetuate, say contribute to it? So it's like, they kind of give fuel to the fire? Yeah, I think that's why. There's always gonna be leagues that don't want to be sporty, and want to do it because of that reason. Like, uh, when we changed our logo, from like a knuckleduster fist to the words, which is more better, straight to the point, you know, you can't even read the old logo. But, um. Yeah, I mean even Rainy City they have a girl in roller skates and a black eye and stripy leggings, and they've been around for ages, and they're pretty sporty. Maybe they need a make over. Yeah, a new logo. But if anyone's had their logo for so long then maybe they

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shouldn't do it. Maybe. ARRG had their old one for about three years? We had quite a few logos. Changed it many times. The ship was one as well? I like the fist. Yeah, the fist was one as well. I mean I liked the old fist – well I think a lot of people don't remember ARRG from the beginning and they chose, it was originally the green and black, a zombie green. It was totally based on like zombie – I didn't even think of that! I was wondering why it's green and black! You know the zombie kinda theme? Yeah. Like that … the first, the knuckleduster, the stinky fist, and all that stuff it was all like zombie related art and everything. The stinky flies are because of Auld Reekie? Oh yeah, yeah it is but the essence of it is zombie. And then, cause that's the people who started it, were all this kind of people, like, and had that style and stuff, and then. And then it just slowly morphed into a different kind of fist, and then we changed everything completely, and, to the ship and all that, the ropey kind of fist thing. And then everything just got changed, and there was just one logo, and it's just so much easier. I love the new logo. It's so pretty. But the fist had a comeback for the boot camp. Yes, it did. A new improved fist. I like that fist. I still I. Yeah. I still have my old, when we played at Roll Britannia in 2009, that had the fist on it but it was like the original fist, so it was bright red and bright green, well, green fist, like the zombie kind of fist. So funny. What do you think of the ARRG posters? Well, I do them. So I think they're really amazing. (laughs) They are really amazing. I love the Fringe one, I love it. I only started that one but ---- finished it. But she did the, I don't know, we swapped. Or the home seasons ones? Yeah she did those. I just find them really interesting cause there are no skaters on the posters. I love the poster but it's just really striking to see that there are – But there are two small skaters! Yeah, the silhouettes, it's not like a girl standing there, like being on track. Yeah. Um. Sometimes you need to have a skater, but sometimes you don't. Depends on the situation. What's the last one they just did? The Fringe one? ----? Yeah. Um, that was my first kind of thing with blending. Blending layers! So exciting! But yeah, we're off-topic. I think they're good, the design committee, we work – I don't know if that has anything to do with what you mean – we have guidelines of what we need to have on the poster, like matching of two fonts, always has to say “Live Roller Derby” really big. Um. Has to have a skater on it in roller skates, but sometimes doesn't, like depends on the situation. Does it specify what kind of position the skater is to be in? So you just chose action shots?

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Yeah, I mean some of them, like the one from last – I don't know if you saw it – like last year, when the Thistles played the Cannon Belles. That was just like, we tried to make it cartoony, like an explosion. There's just two skaters, randomly skating, with an effect so it didn't even look like a real action shot, but it was from an action shot. We change it so much, so it just ends up going kind of into a different kind of action shot. I think I got that one. (shows on computer screen) Do you just keep them? No I just to get – Like that one! That one there. That's the Fresh Meat one. Yeah, that one was supposed to be like, just literally, cellophaned over a package of meat and skates, which unfortunately when it gets blown up to poster size you can't really tell what it is. But it does – I like the nutritional info. Um, was it that one? I did that one. But you can tell my style. And I did the, eh, LRG last year with the Brawl Saints when we played the London Roller Girls, the pink one. But I quite like… I like that one. That's me. That's Titty Twister from Stuttgart. Like that one, with the old fist. Yeah because I'm writing a bit of a content analysis as well, on ARRG posters, cause I only have 15,000 words, so I'm doing a bit of a case study, having a look at the some of the posters. Thought I was gonna take some old ones like Goronation Street, which is really different in style, and probably also speaks to a different kind of audience. And check the Crashablanca one, did you see that one? Crashablanca, is that on Facebook as well? I'll go have a look for it. It should be. Pixel did that one when she was on the design committee. There's loads and you can see everybody's style. Like ----‘s done one, ---- has done some. ---- did the background for the London Roller Girls one, and I kinda did the same that I did on this one, kind of the stamp effect with skaters. And yeah, obviously ---- has a different style again, you know. So, it's good, cause everyone has a different style. You can see how the posters are going through a kind of movement of like, you know when you kind of look at the posters in a row, you kinda see how things change. Well, especially since – when I joined the design committee there wasn't a design committee, there was somebody doing the posters and everything, and that was it. I did my first poster and it was awful awful awful! I kind of want to show them to you, email them or dropbox them. But it was Jurassic Skate Park, and it was so bad! And then you go to something like Blockenspiel, which I love. So we kind of went through a phase of ---- doing the backgrounds and then me kind of finishing it off. And then now, sort of ---- helps me out a bit more, cause ----‘s busy. But ---- kind of a professional designer. So even today I was doing the Derby Baby! banner, and then ---- was like: but I need it with a 6 pixel radius around the edge, and I was just like: okay, just give me a few minutes. And then asked ----: “I don't know how to do this pixel radius! Like I got this selection with the 6px radius, but I'm like, I can't get the corners to disappear”. And then she told me how to do it and I did it. And then, so I emailed it. And ---- said she needs it in black, and I just thought, how do I do it in

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black? Cause I thought they needed it an invisible radius, but then realised they needed a black radius. Anyways. That was quite funny, cause I'm just learning. I'm not actually a designer, I just do it cause I have - I just enjoy it. When you do them, do you actually think about what people are gonna think when they see them? Not really, no. Like, what would they think of derby, or do you just want it to look awesome? Oh I try to make it look good. Obviously. But I mean, I got a background of design, but more like visual merchandise display, so I can see when something looks right, or something's slightly crooked or wrong, or in the wrong spot, or needs to be there cause it's too busy. And then sometimes ---- being sort of design mentor, if you will, I kind of say 'What do you think of this?' and she's like 'no you can't use that font - awful!' or something like that. But usually I can tell if something looks really bad. Like the one I did with ----. I designed it just as one poster for one game. So there wasn't that much information. But then I had to go on holidays, so I had to leave it with them to finish. They finished it slightly differently than I'd wanted it, but I wasn't there, so it couldn't be helped. But I kind of think I care about what the design committee think, and then, I ask my fiancé what he thinks, cause he's really good artist as well. And if everybody agrees then it's kind of like fine. Okay. That's interesting. I didn't quite know how it works. Well, yeah I mean everyone has a different style. Mine tend to be quite flat backgrounds – so like the one with ---- was the first one I did where I like had a background, then I changed the colour of the background, super-imposed the outline of the castle on it, and then put the picture. And then you have to search for fonts, cause that's the thing, if you've got a rustic themed image, like this last one, you need a rusticky kind of font. And you have to go through all these websites. I've always loved fonts. And like before computers and massive amounts of fonts, I had a book just of fonts. Like all those really ornate, like ones that are like this big, with tiny details in them. And you can get them online now, but it was an actual proper book and it used to like … a full massive book, and you got the stuff that's got black on it, and you got the pencil and a piece of paper. But I sometimes also choose, not being a professional designer sometimes I choose fonts that may or may not match. … What did the other people think of the posters, the ones you've asked? So far everyone's loved them. Good! … Well with the Blockenspiel one we were quite worried people might think we're nazis or something like that. Like pro. – Yeah, but it's the left arm, and I get the pun but maybe that's because I speak German. Yeah yeah yeah. But the – we thought it would be seen as more of a propaganda kind of poster, do you know what I mean? I know what you mean, and I never even considered that. Cause this is the Bauhaus font, which is quite good, but we wanted it to be like this kind of way. And then I tried it with a black letter font which was, basically looked totally Nazi, so we had to change the font. It was quite good. But that was my first one that I did properly, that I actually designed quite intensively. And I was gonna, what I was gonna have was this, was trying to get this kinda Spanish civil war looking kind of revolution poster. But fighting with their skates. You know the image, like the

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anarchist images, the four people going 'Arrrrrgh!' on a black background? That's what I was trying to do but when you get four people in here, they end up this big, so I decided on just one big person. Better effect. I think it's really really cool. This is kind of where we started, um, going away from using – I think that was one of the last ones where we used the logos and stuff. Like we started going away from using our logo and those of other teams. Takes up too much space. It can also disrupt the whole flow of the poster in a way. So you think of roller derby as a revolution. Yes. Spanish anarchist revolutionary. That's what that is supposed to be. … Okay, last question: have you ever had to put up with any prejudice against the sport, or like against you being a derby girl? No. Never. Some people mostly just don't know what it is, and then I have to explain it. But it's a relatively confusing sport, you know. So it takes a while to explain. What do you think about the description: it's like rugby on roller skates? At the moment yeah, because I'm basically fighting my way through a wall of four people, which can be quite annoying. It's much more like rugby on roller skates now than it ever used to be. Cause when it started, I joined, like I do remember thinking 'how do they not work it so that one team is all just on one jammer and another team is all on one jammer, and that's basically all that happens for like two laps. And then I never said it out loud, and now this is what's happening, this is all it is. It's all defence, all defence, all defence. Revolutionary! So it's pretty interesting. You literally have to have so much strength now – that why roller derby is so much harder, we do so much more off-skates training cause you literally have to fight your way, legally, through four people trying to push you over. And it's really hard. And you hear the lead jammer whistle and just “fuck!” … So I don't know what the rules are gonna be, but the, they will obviously with no minors means that you can't cut track anymore before that last skater, so you need to go to the back of the pack. It's just gonna make it so much harder. But at least you can't get cut track over and over again. But I wish they would change the parameters of the pack. Like it's quite ridiculous that they let you go and bead, like ten feet, ten feet, twenty feet. And if they were beading - that's not, like as long as you're still in, you could do that all legally. But you can see that during the games, like …The rules should reign it in, so you can only go like, five feet five feet five feet. Cause then it's boring, it's boring to watch a jammer that is on the flow, and then literally stopping the game and go backwards. It's the worst thing about roller derby at the moment. But no prejudice, that's good.