Do you know what kinds of people play roller derby?

All kinds.

All backgrounds. All sizes. All careers. All of it.

So, maybe it takes a certain something in your personality to get you to the point where you walk through that door and sign up to try out, but that one small thing in any of us isn’t enough to say ‘everyone who plays roller derby is ( fill in the blank )…’

Because they aren’t all one same thing. Except human.

‘Roller derby is bad ass!’ people love to say.

Yes, it is. But that doesn’t mean everyone who plays fits into your mold of what bad ass might be. Because social workers and art teachers and writers and cooks and doctors and students and engineers may be sharing the track and the bench at any given time. The loud with the quiet, the assertive with the shy, the hot mess with the super orgnanized. All of it.

Last night after my photo shoot, I met up with a friend for dinner. She had something she wanted to give me. It was a book of roller derby photos she found in Montreal. By a photographer who had also been a skater. So, that was pretty thoughtful and also a pretty perfect thing to gift me.

When I looked at it I felt like some of the photos could have easily been taken of my league, at one of our practice spaces. I looked for my friends in some of the images. It’s possible that thoughtful gift may have influenced this post which I didn’t really think about until I got to the very end of this quick post.

Fun how art and life keep influencing each other….