Fight Club

In the summer of 2006, prompted by her new athleticism and to help pay for her divorce, she entered a Jell-O-wrestling contest at Asylum, the Adams Morgan nightclub that is one of the league's main sponsors, which carried a $500 prize. Though she was aware that the event might be more show than sport, she dressed athletically, in layers of jog bras and tank tops that she tested by having people try to pull them off before the match. She won successive rounds handily, although, she says, the judges deducted points "because I was wearing pants. Everyone else was wearing lingerie." The easiest way to get points seemed to be to let one's top slip off. In one of the final rounds, she says, she wrestled her opponent over to the judges and pulled up the woman's top. Hellie won the contest.

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Hellie is one of the team's strongest jammers. She also skates back blocker, a position that anchors the rear of the pack. "As a jammer, you know exactly what your job is. As a blocker, you have to think about what to do," she says. "I had a really hard time learning how to be part of the pack."

At ECDE, Hellie is scheduled to skate again shortly, though she still seems shaken from her collision. A few minutes before 9, Slice crouches down next to her.

"I can skate," Hellie says, preemptively.

"I know you can skate," Slice says comfortably. "The question is, should you skate?" She cocks her head and studies Hellie. "Is that too mommy of me?"

In a moment, it's decided: Hellie will wait until the following day to skate, in a bout against the Connecticut Rollergirls, another first-year league.

By the end of the weekend, the bouts have taken a toll. Everyone is bruised and weary. Slice has taken a block with her shoulder and can't lift her arm; Michele Pevahouse, 31, of Alexandria, whose derby name is Six5onSkates (so named for her height), has broken two ribs in a collision with a blocker on another team. In retrospect, Slice calls the weekend the team's eye-opener.

"That was our 'Holy [expletive], these girls are really, really going to hit us,'" she says.

DERBY HOLDS A PECULIAR POSITION IN THE PANTHEON OF WOMEN'S SPORTS. While it may not be the only rough, full-contact women's sport -- there are numerous women's professional football leagues, for example -- it has quickly become one of the most popular. "The idea that women are naturally less aggressive than men is bull [expletive]," says Alison Piepmeier, director of the women's and gender study program at the College of Charleston. Instead, she says, "women are trained to channel that aggression in certain ways," like sarcasm and cattiness, rather than physical dominance.

As young girls, "women are much more punished for aggressive behavior and made to feel like they've violated some kind of code," says Carole Oglesby, an applied sports psychology consultant.

For women, Oglesby says, sports can be a way to return to what she calls a "healthy self-advocacy," making good use of one's power. "I think there is a joy, a kind of pleasure, in making an all-out effort at something," she says, "not saying, I want to break a bone, but saying, I'm going for a goal, and, by God, I'm going to get it."

As Slice notes, the particular attraction of roller derby for her is not necessarily how physical it is but how mental it is: a rapid, endless series of opportunities to outwit, outmaneuver and generally thwart one's opponents. Of course, on some level, Slice says, it's all physical. "When you're blocking someone," she acknowledges, "you want to see them get a little air."

Whether derby girls are born or made, the game does seem to be played by women for whom, as for many men, physicality is a means of expression and a certain brash toughness has been the vernacular. "The biggest draw of derby for me," Nation says, "is the chance to be a part of a community of women who value athleticism, a community where I'm not only allowed but expected to be both female and physically competent."

At a team bonding event at a lake house over the summer, says Slice, some of the women ended up body-slamming each other off the dock into the water at 3 in the morning. And sometimes Six5 and Harley Quinn stand outside the nightclub Asylum at the end of an evening out and play a game in which Harley slaps passersby, either men or women, on the rear end. "At the last after-party," Harley wrote in an e-mail, "we had quite an audience . . . Some people walked by several times trying to get a smack." When people complain or approach Harley for a fight, Six5 steps forward imposingly, which tends to settle the issue.

Piepmeier says activities like these reflect a turning of the tables.

"It's common for women's bodily space to be invaded," she says, "so it's surprising to us to see women doing it. When men do it, it's just the way things are."

Roller derby is arguably the only women's sport that makes a point of its femininity. In the same way that the skaters' names are exaggeratedly tough and cartoony, their uniforms are almost caricatures of sexiness -- campy, theatrical get-ups that riff on traditional types, such as stewardess, schoolgirl, geisha girl. The result is a kind of repurposed burlesque, one that can threaten as well as invite. The effects of this combination vary. Slice's boyfriend, whom she met snowboarding, enjoys the company of the team and regularly attends the league's events, as do many boyfriends and husbands, though not all.

"These women are playing with patriarchal ideas of women's sexuality," says Piepmeier. For these reasons, roller derby today is often associated with feminism's so-called third wave (the first wave was suffrage and the second, the bra-burners of the 1960s), a somewhat controversial designation that includes alt-rock and "riot grrrls," ushered in, in part, by rocker Courtney Love -- women who claim the right to be sexy and still be tough and feminist.

Whether this attitude sets the whole feminist movement back 100 years is the subject of bitter debate among academics and in the blogosphere. Female sexiness, some feminists argue, has always meant submissiveness, and tough, even aggressive women who also want to be sexy are borrowing trouble. The combination of sexiness and toughness can cause problems with men who misread or ignore the signals. In one scene in the documentary "Hell on Wheels," about the Austin roller derby league, a male spectator is ejected from a game for groping a skater. "We walk a fine line between sexy and slutty," the announcer says to the crowd. "And crotch-grabbing is slutty."

The tough-sexy combination also adds a wrinkle to the dynamic of standard male-female interactions. "I won't ever back down because it shows weakness," wrote Six5 in an e-mail. "Once you show weakness, you invite more aggression towards yourself." Last December, she says, she was in a bar with some of her teammates when a group of drunk guys came over. "They were trying to holler at us, and we weren't having it," she says. The guys persisted, calling the women derogatory names, says Six5. The situation "escalated," and it ended when she punched one guy in the face several times and had to be pulled off by the bouncer.

But it is this combination, Piepmeier says, that is "part of what I think is really feminist about roller derby. These women are saying, I'm claiming ownership of this body, and I'm willing to fight you for it."

AT THE ALL-LEAGUE PRACTICE THE WEEK AFTER ECDE, many of Scare Force One's skaters are under the weather, in addition to nursing the battle scars from their weekend, which they are keeping to themselves. "Some people aren't telling anyone because they don't want to expose our weaknesses," says Slice, who has a chest cold and a tubercular hack. "But I say, let a bitch try to hit me in my left shoulder, and I'll expose somebody's weakness." Someone asks Six5, watching from the sidelines in her street clothes, why she isn't skating.

"I'm on my period," she says frostily, though she is really nursing her broken ribs.

By Scare Force One's team practice at Dulles SportsPlex on Friday night, the debut bout has sold out, which has unnerved everyone. "I wanted to vomit all day," says Katelyn Coram, 24, (Slambam Thankyouma'am). Although it is the night before the bout, Scare Force One seems eager to channel its apprehension into a productive practice, and the women end up spending a couple of hours working on plays to break up walls. When practice is over, they linger on the floor.

"The next time you come in here, there's going to be 800 people looking at you," says Hellie, and everyone groans.

By the next day, game day, the weather has turned gray and damp. Hellie and Nation are on the road to Dulles SportsPlex, where they have been playing this season, by midday. "For the first time in my life, I'm early, out of fear," Hellie says. The two look a little bleary. They both have head colds and were up until 3 that morning, working on the team's uniforms. They stop to pick up Harley at her apartment. Harley has her blond hair up in pigtails and curled into ringlets, and a slash of black eyeliner on her eyelids, like Brigitte Bardot. "Who's nervous?" she says, bouncing in her seat.

At the SportsPlex, the canvas walls that divide the space into individual rinks have been drawn up, and the vast indoor plain of the arena stretches the length of the building. The floor is empty except for the referees, including one who calls herself DayGlo Divine, whose helmet has a black Mohawk that mimics her own fluorescent pink one. Slice's brother Doug has taken on the job of team manager for the bout, and he studies a clipboard with the team's lineups.

By 3:45 p.m., the line to get in has looped around the lobby and is out the door. Many skaters' parents have come, as well as boyfriends, husbands and kids. Nation, who has put silver spikes in her face piercings for the bout, finds her parents, a tall, patrician couple who have come down from southern Pennsylvania, and seats them in the reserved section, where they peruse the program. Most of the rest of the section is taken up by Slice's family. The group is 20 altogether, including her father's motorcycle buddies and Slice's grandmother, who has driven up from North Carolina. Hellie's parents are sitting in seats marked "Reserved for Mr. and Mrs. Handbag, Sr." Hellie, wearing her Jell-O-wrestling championship belt, which is as big as a dinner plate, has slipped her skates on over her bare feet and is skating over the taped lines of the track to see how they feel. Slice takes a lap. Her eyes are bright. "I'm so [expletive] scared," she says. "Is my lipstick smeared?"

The first bout, between the Cherry Blossom Bombshells and the DC DemonCats, is packed. By the time of the second bout, between Scare Force One and the Secretaries of Hate (or the Haters, as Scare Force One calls them), the crowd is exchanging chants. The Haters are revving up the audience, making laps with a big banner that says "HATE" in silver letters, along with a couple of small children wearing T-shirts that say "Hater Tot." Scare Force One is bunched at the edge of the track awaiting introductions.

Slice stands in the middle of her team. She has the same impassive expression as she does in practice, but her jaw is tight. She believes her skaters are ready. Still, everyone is on edge.

"This is just another Thursday night practice," she tells her team, above the din. "We're going to go out and whip some bitches' asses. Look at each other," she says. " And don't let them through. If I see you not looking, I'm going to take you out and put someone else in." The Haters are taking their introductory laps to an earsplitting reception from the crowd. Scare Force One's skaters nod briefly, their eyes on the track.

"All right, ladies and gentlemen, clear the runways. We're about to be invaded by Scare Force One," thunders the announcer, whose voice is promptly swallowed by a wall of noise. Harley, in a pair of black aviator glasses, does a behind-the-leg hold around the top of the track. Slice swoops through her lap, bent low into the crowd with her arms held out like wings. Trampon has "HI MOM" spelled out in tape on her helmet.

The match is a blur of skates and helmets, its shifting tensions broken by the dull thuds of colliding skaters. Early in the first period, a skater on the Haters throws a shoulder at Hellie as Hellie tries to pass, catching her on the hip and knocking her out of the pack. On the next lap, the same skater lunges at Hellie again. At top speed, Hellie shifts her weight almost imperceptibly, and the other skater misses her completely, spilling onto the track. In subsequent laps, the women who take aim at Hellie get addled upon contact and fall over in a tangle of skates or swirl away in a tailspin. Nation, unflappable, anchors the middle of the pack. Skating jammer, Harley sails weightlessly through the scrum; in the second jam, she darts through a brief window on the inside of the pack and throws her arms up triumphantly. Scare Force One has a strong lead.

But the Haters have some heavy hitters, including their captain, Mother Clucker, a quick bruiser of a skater with a bone-rattling block, and their jammers,Whiskey Tango and Lois Slain, are pugnacious. The crowd, true to roller derby tradition, seems more interested in a battle than a blowout, and at one point, when the Haters' jammer makes it through the pack first during one jam, the screams are deafening. "I thought I told you no points!" Slice yells at her team. "Why do they have two?"

In the second half, the crackling energy has leveled into a fast, tight spar. The Haters make up some of the difference in the scores. As the half progresses, Scare Force One's pack begins to cohere, the skaters slipping up and back in the pack like pistons in a machine. In the reserved section, Slice's contingent is on its feet. Her father has ahold of the back of the chair in front of him and is rattling it. When Slice's opposing jammer wipes out, her father and his friends hoot and yell. In the back, Slice's grandmother has rolled up her program and is clutching it to her chest.

When the last whistle blows, the crowd is on its feet. The final score is 78 to 31, Scare Force One. The team takes a victory lap, and then one of her teammates tackles Hellie, who is the team's high-scoring jammer, and she disappears under a pile of skaters.

After the bout, in the locker room, the team strips off its equipment, adrift in a sea of duffel bags and helmets. Hellie appears in the doorway. "Team Awesome," she calls, and the locker room vibrates with cheers.

"Let me bask in the awesomeness," says Slice.

The arena takes a while to empty. In little knots around the track, skaters reunite with their families. Slice's father, waving his arms, rehashes some moment with Slice at the far end of the track. Hellie's mother, a demure woman who spent the entire bout sitting in her seat looking vexed, is swinging her hip at Hellie in a passable imitation of a hip-check. Little girls cluster around the skaters for their autographs. A group of military vets, who came to the bout for their "family day," get their picture taken with some of the team, including Trampon, who flexes her biceps, Mr. Universe-style, for the camera.

At the after-party, at Asylum, the bar is packed with well-wishers, including skaters from other leagues. Some skaters have gone to dinner with their parents, but gradually Scare Force One trickles in: Harley, Slice and her brother Doug, Hellie and Nation. They look exhausted but serene, like climbers at a summit. Midway through the evening, the team clusters around one end of the bar, hugging and hollering, and condenses into a single jubilant mob. On Monday, the women will go back to their regular lives, back to their jobs in the real world, where their primary responsibility is for themselves. Here, tonight, they are part of the pack.

Lauren Wilcox is a freelance writer who lives in Jersey City, N.J. She last wrote for the Magazine about the Mormon church's outreach efforts in the black community. She can be reached at laurenwilcox@hotmail.com. She will be fielding questions and comments about this article Monday at noon.