Does size matter?

Today I was at my faculty orientation for the new job, and we had to do a boring thing where you go around and introduce yourself and then say something interesting about yourself. (Sidenote: academics REALLY like that pedigree shit; everyone was like "I'm so and so and I did my Ph.D. at such and such university" or whatever.) Obviously, for my interesting fact, I said that I did roller derby. Some people laughed; others just looked surprised or confused. Whatever, that's not a weird reaction at all I guess. Then, later in the day, a woman (who was probably in her mid-30s) came up to me and was like, "Aren't you a bit small to be a rollergirl?"

I'm sure she meant well, but what the fuck?

I'm about five feet tall. Maybe 5'0.5" on a good day. But until this point, I wasn't aware that there was a particular size and build that people who do derby. Maybe she was just thinking that women who do derby are giant amazonian behemoths who can crush walnuts with their thighs or something. Maybe she thinks they're the kind of women who kill men by Snoo Snoo. But whatever it was, I was kind of taken aback.

I didn't really respond to the question except to probably smile weakly and say "no", and then I was trying to think of something else to say. Okay, so people make assumptions about all sorts of things all the time. Maybe I should have told her that one of the reasons I liked derby was because it didn't require people to have a particular size or build to do well; hell, I thought any team in their right mind would want a combination of skaters of different sizes, because differet people can do different things. Isn't that what the all-inclusive spirit of derby is about? For example, check out the infamous video of Rice Rocket taking a ride on Beyonslay:

Surprisingly, I'm not just posting this video for the "WOW, HOLY SHITBALLS" factor.

Obviously, there is a sense in which size does matter. If it were the other way around, I seriously doubt that there'd be any youtube videos of Beyonslay taking a ride on Rice Rocket without crushing her. Beyonslay is clearly great at what she does, which is blocking the shit out of the incoming jammer (after all, she's the "shark/power blocker" in that play), and she knocks RR out a few times before the ride in the full video of the jam. Likewise, RR is a great jammer and uses her size and speed to get around the rest of the pack with more or less no problem. So there, it looks like size is important, in some kind of role-specific sense.

But then, there's another, broader, sense in which size doesn't, or shouldn't, matter. If you had a team of all Beyonslays or all RRs, well, I think that'd be an interesting bout to watch. Most teams will put a combination of different skaters in, to optimize their abilities and whatnot. Having people with different abilities based on different sizes is one way you don't put all your eggs in the skill basket. That said, it'd be interesting to see how derby strategy develops if a team was all made up of tiny skaters who could skate five abreast and not touch each other or something, or a team of all really large women who could booty block the entire track or something.

But that can't even be true. What you can do in derby isn't contingent on what size you are or what your body build is. I mean, okay, maybe people who are bigger and heavier can take out smaller people more easily, but that's not even a given:

(Photo: LRR)

That's London Rockin' Rollers' Murder Urs taking out a blocker who is pretty much twice her size. Ans she's doing a fucking good job of it. So it's not like big girls have a one-up on little girls by default. (Also, she's little and blocking! As much as I like jamming, I get a bit bleh at the assumption that little girls jam and big girls block, and there's no in between. Also I think I think this because I'm not very good at jamming.) But yeah, so size doesn't seem to matter here.

Finally, it's not even that you have big girls and little girls. Derby skaters come in all kinds of combinations of height and build and ass-sizery. I don't have a skinny ass. Hell, my butt pretty much starts right at the bottom of my ribcage and goes to my knees or something in a continuous ass-and-thighs-in-one-thing. It's not mega huge either though, even though I can pretty much leg press Ze Boyfriend (and he weighs almost twice as much as me). So you might think that if size matters, it's size where that matters. But I'm not sure it does. Also, the twelve-year-old boy mentality in me is tittering a lot at talking about size and where.

But I can't get over the fact that said lady at my work orientation even made the comment at all. Is it because I'm short, that she thought I must be likely to be crushed to death by women bigger than I in derby? (Okay, muntings aside, really.) Or maybe she's just thinking about whatever impression of derby she's got, like from Whip It or something, but even then, that can't be right.

They all look more or less the same height and build.
Also, I am seeing a distinct lack of derby booty.

Or maybe I am taking this out of context and she just wanted to have a friendly conversation with me, and I am a socially retarded idiot who is taking this too far.