Doin' some old fashioned book judgin'..

Respect of a different sort..

I am gonna talk about respect as well..but in a different vein than what my blog sisters before me talked about.

I'm gonna talk about the respect non derby people do, or do not give us.. for what ever reason. But it mostly applies to my fellow derby sisters around the world who choose to make themselves stand out with their apperance..in whatever way they choose..

It's about respect, but to an extent it's also about a form of being biased.. a "racism" of sort. Or having an elitist attitude.

There is an old adage about not judging a book by it's cover. Most people have their mind made up about you upon the first 60 seconds of meeting you. So to that, my mother always said "you never get a second chance to make a first impression."

Screw that.

You also only have one life to live, so may as well live it making YOURSELF happy, instead of trying to spend it preparing for a neverending cycle of possible first impressions.

The first team I was on, was filled with what you expect derby girls to look like. Tattoo's, piercings, weird haircolors, gauged ears..funky clothes.

And when we ventured out of our "area" we got "the look"

You know the look...the plastics give it..like "omg, lower income people who spend all their money on trashy things, I MUST grasp my purse tightly and look nervously around."

I don't think the girls I was with at the time ever noticed it, they were used to it. I noticed it because I had the inner freak, but I always tried to conform..I have over 25 tattoos, most were hidden, upteen hidden body piercings, although my lebret had been pierced since 2000. I was fairly normal looking..

But even then.. when I first got my piercing, people stared, avoided eye contact. I even have a dear friend of mine now.. who then didnt know me, sit in her car in fear staring at me because of the piercing and my size.

Once she talked to me, she looked at her daughter and said, right in front of me.. "Look Heather, she is really nice, and smart too!"

Now, I have my septum done, my nose, my lebret,rook, tragus..had my eyebrows done numerous times, they always reject..and now I have very obvious tattoo's on my arms..and my hair is pink.

I get it all the time.."Derby freak"..they assume it all means I am poorly educated, shifty, can't keep a job.. just a n'er do well..

Because we choose to make ourselves happy.. and because we don't look like everybody else..

On the contrary..I have a degree, I have a job, i'm fluent in 4 languages passable in a 5th...I just happen to look like a weirdo...

The moral of the story...derby girls have originality..individuality..just because we don't look like everybody else, doesn't mean we are all miscreants..give us enough respect to find out who we are, and what we are about before you just dismiss us..

You might just be missing someone who can bring something fantastic to your life underneath all those tattoo's and metal and haircolor and fantastic weirdness...

Respect.

Respect for our personal choices...

Respect that not everybody is the same....

Respect that maybe our "book" has a far different cover than yours.. it doesn't bring our "face value" down at all..

Respect.