How to not dress for Halloween.

(Warning: lots of pottymouth ahead because I am mad.)

One thing I hate about Halloween is the rampant sexification of women's costumes. Like, seriously, WTF. Fuck No Sexist Halloween Costumes does a pretty good job outlining the ridiculousness of this. And this year I came across Sexy Osama Bin Laden. Like, okay, what the fuck is wrong with you people, really.

When you think about the ridiculousness of things like Sexy Osama Bin Laden and stupid shit like Sexy Fruit Salad (and why the fuck are women's costumes the "sexy" version of the norm?) on the one hand, and then even stupider racist shit to throw on top of the misogyny (e.g. this Trayvon Martin costume, complete with blackface) it almost makes "sexy roller derby skater" not offensive.

I'm sorry, but what the fuck is this shit.

Let's ignore the fact that the first time I saw this was on DNN. Or, let's not. Like, maybe if they weren't also promoting athleticism and whatever about derby, then that might be okay. But if people go to them for a source of information on derby and see this, doesn't this just give a really, really wrong idea about derby, especially since people don't already have much idea of how it is played (besides the obvious "oh I saw Whip It so I understand it" sort of thing).

Of course, I'm not saying that derby is a special case, since pretty much every sport (involving women or not) is sexified at Halloween. But this one doesn't even make any fucking sense.

Here's an alternative one from Value Village.
It's not perfect, but it is much less ridiculous,
and hey, she's actually got pads and a helmet
AND SKATES with it.

In the image above, there are stars on her boobspenders (I call them that because as far as I can gather the suspenders are connected to the boob tube?), and stars on derby helmet covers, so maybe that makes it derby?! I don't know, but I'm really reaching here. Also, if you go to the store website for this, the pads aren't even included. The only thing remotely derby-ish about this picture isn't even included. *headdesk*

 So besides the unnecessary sexification of women with this costume, the fact that DNN posted this apparently "for fun" could potentially be leading people who might want to know about the sport down the wrong path. It's different from something like this sexy football player costume because hey, people actually know about football, so they KNOW it is a costume. They don't know about derby, so it is actually possible that people think that we actually wear shit like this to skate. It's like when people talk about whether or not derby is a sport--shit like this makes it look much more NOT like a sport, because people have much less to go on than in other sports for information.

Okay, but let's try to find a silver lining. The only thing derby about this is if you went to a party wearing this and someone who did derby asked you what you were supposed to be and you told them, they would probably hipcheck you in the face because this costume is so freaking stupid.

But if you're still looking for a nonstupid costume, do not despair! At least there are some other choices available. Take Back Halloween has an awesome list of non-sexified, historically accurate (to some extent) representations of strong females on which to base one's costume. (They even have one specific for my wife, yay!)

Yeah! Science, bitch!

Well, not really, and this might just be the Breaking Bad withdrawals or whatever, but I came across this roller derby periodic table (click here for the high res version) and it looks pretty neat.

I like how it spells out what the penalties are, and the bottom block are the variants of the ones in the top part of the table. The only thing that could make it cooler is if the "atomic weights" of the offenses were such that they related to the sections of the WFTDA rules, but otherwise, this is pretty cool. (Plus it makes it easier to learn the codes you need for being a NSO penalty tracker!)

Also, I just wanted to post this:

Needs more punctuation. But you get the point!

Ducks in a row

This one comes courtesy of Smooth Operator, who was our guest coach at practice tonight! One skater is designated to be "Number 1" (or I like to say, "Mother duck"). All the other skaters skate behind and basically try to get the number 2 spot right behind her, and maintain that spot. You can block people out of the spot if necessary, or hit them out of bounds, or knock them over, so long as it's all legal.

Out of my way, bitch!

It probably looks less like a line of ducks as much as it looks like the mother duck with a clump of aggessive ducklings behind her who keep hitting each other.

Two rules though: if you touch the number 1 mother duck person, you have to skate a lap and rejoin at the back. Also, if the mother duck stops and you stop ahead of her or go out of bounds to stop, you have to skate a lap and rejoin at the back.

So you're practicing staying really close to someone without plowing into her while she's speeding up and slowing down and whatnot. And people are hitting you all this time.

Also, apparently, for people watching us do this drill, it's like watching NASCAR.

Super heroes do roller derby!

Yep, and now there's evidence of it!

Check out these cute DC vs Marvel comic rollergirls, done by Kevin Bolk (aka K-Bo).

I have to say that I certainly do approve of them all wearing appropriate derby gear, since you get so many pictures of "roller derby" where it's a girl on skates without pads or a helmet. So this at least gets that bit right. But hey, they have pads on, but not just any old pads; their pads are character specific. I mean, check out Harley Quinn's wrist guards or Spider Woman's kneepads.

And they have proper derby skates on, not those artistic crazy boots. Yay!


More of his art is here on Deviantart.

Squee!!