by Grant Wigmore, B.S. in Urban and Regional Analysis and Planning

In most North American metropolitan areas city living is unfortunately no longer as commonplace as suburban living.  The obvious exceptions to this being New York City, Chicago, and Toronto.  In the decades following WWII, the shift from the urban core to the suburbs and now exurbs has increased dramatically.  People fled the inner city for new single family homes and a plot of land to call their own.  They left due to congestion, pollution, poverty and perceived high crime.  Soon, retail and other employers followed the people causing the core of many urban areas to become a shell of their former selves.

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by Aimee Porter (Petite Furie QCRG #26)

When you think of little girls do you still imagine sugar and spice and everything nice?  Do you imagine Barbie dolls and dreams of wedding days and baby names?  Do you imagine fashionistas with pointy shoes, little purses, well stocked kitchens and an innate aversion to dirt, mud, and sweat?

What about striped knee socks, short pleated skirts, a fitted girly tee, a helmet, and a mouthguard?  Does that throw you off?  Not if you are a roller girl.  More than 15,000 women in this country already are.

Roller derby started in the 1920s with skating marathons.  The best parts were when skaters bumped into each other, taking each other down.  The premise of roller derby exacerbates just that.  It is a race, offense, defense, strategy, it is both physically demanding and exhilarating.

The allure of roller derby is rapidly expanding.  Even Hollywood has taken notice with a movie called Whip It in the works and multiple video games being created.  At matches fans pile into local roller rinks to see something reminiscent of the 70s.  However, this game is not fixed; it is not like “wrestling”.  It is not theatrical, it is real and the hits are real.  These women pour their hearts into this game.  These athletes train in 3-4 intense practices each week.  Skating skills assessments must be passed and rules tests must be passed.  Many players work out on top of these practices.  They make many changes to their lives in order to take their game to the next level.  To them, roller derby is more than just a little hobby.

Thousands of DIY leagues are springing up all over the country.  The Women’s Flat Track Derby Association (or WFTDA) governs much of these leagues. They provide guidelines to skaters and leagues that make the game today a legitimate, consistent sport.  These leagues are skater owned and skater operated.  Players volunteer their time, bodies, and money, all for the love of the sport.  They buy their own equipment, uniforms, and skates.  They are the treasurers, marketers, committee heads, the bout production, and the entertainment.

In many articles and online blogs written about roller derby, I have witnessed a lot of stigmas coming back on these women.  Among the many stereotypes against derby girls are “the sport is fake”, “the games are fixed”, “all the girls are lesbians”, “all the girls are fat, ugly man-haters”,  “all the girls are tattooed freaks”, “all the girls are trying to be boys”, and other such nonsense.

Well, I am a roller girl and I am none of those things.  I train hard to own my skates.  I work hard to have agility and endurance.  I even have a personal trainer.  I am not afraid to fall; I have had many bruises, a severely sprained ankle, and more to show for it.  I have a job; a career, actually.  I have a dog and turtles and lizards.  I pay my own bills and clean my apartment and cook dinners.  I like to bake; I make a mean pumpkin pie from real pumpkins.  I am madly in love with a smart, good-looking boy and no, there are no kinky dominant/submissive issues there.  I have one tattoo that has nothing to do with roller derby and I am not ugly, thanks.  I am actually quite fit and attractive, if you must know.   And, I love roller derby.

Aside from pure ignorance, these stereotypes spark a great deal of debate.  We roller girls are indeed many things.  We are teachers, corporate zombies, artists, hairdressers, lawyers, writers, computer geeks, social workers, bankers, mothers, sisters, and daughters.  Some of us prefer the ladies.  Some of us are regular vanilla chicks.  Some of us are married.  Some of us have tattoos.  Some of us even model… so you can throw that ugly comment right out the window!

Any league of 80+ women is bound to have a lot of variety.  You can find that in a grocery store, on a college campus, even at the mall.  What unites us all is a passion for a largely misunderstood sport known for its violence and speed.  Roller derby is the only all female full contact sport.

I suppose some men and even other women would have a problem with any woman breaking out from a traditional gender role.  Since when was it cool for a girl to have stinky, sweaty wrist guards?  Since when were bruises badges of honor for women?  Since when was it a matter of pride to launch someone into the third row?

Is the ultimate legitimacy of roller derby as a sport questioned because women are perpetrating the offense of breaking the mold from traditional masculine/feminine roles?  We have been spoon fed stereotypes for generations.  Boys were encouraged to climb trees, ride mountain bikes, play hockey, and dig in mud.  Boys are supposed to play sports.  It is more socially accepted for boys to take risks and be bolder, all with a “boys will be boys” shrug.  Girls aren’t supposed to take chances or risks, especially physically.  Girls were always told to “be careful”, “watch out”, “don’t do that”, “be afraid of the dark”, be a cheerleader on the sidelines, encouraging the men.  The gender intolerance happens on both sides of the coin as well.  How many “effeminate” males are persecuted, harassed, or picked on?

There have been many occasions, especially in modern history, when women have been able to overcome certain gender limitations.  Think of Rosie the Riveter, Women’s Suffrage, and the rise of women’s role in the workplace and their fight for salary equality.  We can be doctors, lawyers, executives, professors, police officers, and soldiers and do it as well, if not better, than men.  So why can’t we play a sport and do that well?

Come to a bout and see what these women are all about.  Expect to see some fast skating and some hard hits.  Expect it to be real.  Expect it to hurt.  Expect to see one of the most exciting games you have ever seen.  Roller derby: played by women with a little attitude and a lot of guts.

from the February Issue of Auxiliary Magazine

Welcome to the second issue of Auxiliary Magazine!  We’ve made it past the one-hit-wonder stage.  When we first started out on this issue our idea was to make an issue about beating the winter blahs.  Located in the northeastern US, we get a lot of snow this time of year and the February and March months are a generally a slow, dark, and depressing time.  As we were putting together this issue I began to see that this theme had indeed woven itself into the issue, yet it had also developed into something more.  There are straight forward articles like a guide to throwing your own winter luau; articles and features on Valentine’s day, love, and giving; and a fashion editorial called “Bright” focusing on neon colors.  But I could see there was more to it.  In a time of economic depression in the US a lot of people are feeling frustrated and giving up hope.  Though some are holding on to hope and light. This issue we have an editorial on moving to urban centers and how that can boost economic growth and help build a stronger city through community and culture.  We have a feature on Potential Life Studios, a unique gallery in Rochester that is surviving despite everything.  And perhaps the most insightful were our interviews this issue.  In the Fever Ray interview, Karin sighted the understanding and creativity that comes from family and being a mother.  Dan and Smith of Babyland continually bring up survival and DIY throughout the interview, and pointed out that people are beginning to realize they need to do things in the scene to keep it alive and are starting up all sorts of new projects. So the theme to this issue, “brightness in the dark” seemed to take on a life of its own and surface in more ways than we had planned.  In addition, you will also find a new photographer for one of our editorials, Studio X, and a much expanded music section.  We hope that you are finding a way to keep positive and get through the dark months.  Hopefully Auxiliary can aid you in this task.  Enjoy, and as always, thank you for your support.

Sincerely,
Jennifer Link

from the February Issue of Auxiliary Magazine

Welcome to the first issue of Auxiliary Magazine!  Auxiliary Magazine is a magazine dedicated to alternative fashion, music, and lifestyle.  But you can read more about the idea behind our magazine in the mission statement.  In this issue we focused on winter and the upcoming holidays.  You’ll find two photo editorials on women’s winter fashions and beauty for parties and the holidays.  As we started to work on these editorials a few months back, Meagan Breen (our fashion editor) and I were very into lace and textures and dark romantic colors, popular in high fashion trends, and we saw them as fitting for the winter months and holiday social gatherings.  We sought out alternative fashion designers that fit what we were into, and in alternative fashion this seemed to translate into a dark and elegant sort of goth style.  From there this focus on the goth aesthetic seemed to explode.  With an article on decorating for the holiday season and one titled “my life as a goth girl” it was clear what direction this issue had taken.  But perhaps it is more than just us who is currently focused on this style.  When examining current trends in alternative fashion, our contributor Sally Reardon came to focus on three styles that look for inspiration in the past, something the goth style does in drawing from Victorian fashions.  And perhaps the fashion industry as a whole is looking toward this aesthetic, this seems to be a safe assumption, with proof like FIT putting together an exhibit titled “Gothic: Dark Glamour”.  So perhaps this was our focus for this issue, but alternative fashion does not stop there!  We have high hopes to cover a lot of different styles in this magazine.  So check back next issue to see what our new obsession is.  Thank you for reading our first issue, and we hope you enjoy.  I would also like to thank everyone who contributed to this issue and made it possible.

Sincerely,
Jennifer Link

by W Edward Cook

When I was asked to write this article, I was a bit embarrassed. I tend to get worked up about a topic, rant my brains off about it, and then put it out of my mind for a good long while. The topic of self versus community was a hot button of mine during the last summer, but it had seen its rant and I’d then been distracted from it.

However, after thinking about it for a little while, that’s not really true. In fact over the last few months this one idea had spread in so many different directions that I mistook it for a whole new forest of issues.

Self versus community is a very tricky subject to tackle, because it can be looked at in so many different ways. It can be a kaleidoscope of ethics, economics, and culture. Right now the world that we live in is at a loss as to how to deal with the simple question: what am I entitled to as a human being?

The most obvious interpretation of that question would be viewed as a subject of human rights, the basic dignity that should be allowed to all people – a guarantee of the necessities of survival. There is an obvious lack of this internationally and even intranationally if we have the stomach to look.

A more subtle approach to what the human being is entitled to, or what we as a species needs in order to truly be free, extends beyond the necessities of survival. There are greater necessities we need to live rather than just survive. Life to me has always been a matter of freedom. In fact as a twenty something, nearly all of my efforts since graduating high school have been spent in an effort to attain economic freedom to some degree. Economic freedom to me has been a matter of increasing my income to a point where I can spend money on things other than the necessities of survival. To be free to choose where to spend my money, and to have the power to get the things I desire.

During years I’ve spent in higher education and working in a variety of jobs, I’ve begun to notice that there seems to be a very disturbing trend. This trend being that our society does not stop at merely taking years of our lives in academia, climbing a corporate ladder, or braving the unstable entrepreneurial seas, it also takes more than its fair portion from our personal time. This may not sound like something terrible at first, but let us consider that we are human beings first, and employees and students second. We are people, not “associates”, “team members”, or “staff”. We work so that we may take the benefits of contributing our time to a pooled arrangement of resources (which is any business, government, or non-profit) so that we may reap the most possible profit from our labor.

Our economy is such that it is driven to take as much as it possibly can from those who work within it for the sake of making money. In a balanced world, those that work the hardest would reap the most benefit. In this world though, those that work the hardest, generally get paid the least. Those who are higher up the pyramid, those that have the most power, pay themselves the most, and give away only enough to ensure that they get the maximum amount of production out of their workers. If you think this is sounding like a “cogs in the machine” argument, you’re right. If you’re thinking that arguments like this have no place in a post-industrial economy, think again. We may no longer be factory workers, sitting side-by-side with other bits of machinery, cranking out car after car; instead we are software engineers, writing line after line of code. We are marketing representatives selling the latest piece of technological wonderment to client companies. We are program coordinators fretting over our job description.

The difference between industrial factory workers and service-based careers in the information age is that a factory worker leaves the factory, and never has to think about work until they show up the next day. Today, in order to do our job we are forced more and more to continually research on our spare time to do a job that is constantly changing. So often we hear about the rapid pace of the world today, we never pause to consider what this is doing to us, and whether we should allow it to happen.

The individual is having life dictated to them by the community. This is wrong. This should not happen. While it’s true that this is not something new, community has been dictating lifestyle to the individual for millennia, however, never before have we as individuals had such an ability to choose our lives for ourselves. In centuries past, the community made decisions “for the greater good” on the basis that it forced us to do unpleasant things for the sake of survival. Now, however, we know how to do survival. We have enough gadgetry to make sure that all of us (not that we have chosen to act on this ability) have the necessities of life: food, warmth, and shelter. Now we have the ability to live. In the global village, where information cross-pollinates ideas across the globe via the internet, and available to anyone with a computer and modem, the individual has the ability to change the community. The community is something controlled from the top down by those in power. Now, for the first time, the individual, those of us all over the pyramid, can easily communicate and organize. We can decide what the community will be. This isn’t mere democracy (or even the sham of a representative democracy in the U.S.), this is pan-consciousness. This is something undreamt of by the ancient Greeks. Not only can we all vote our opinion, we decide what the topic of the discussion is, because we have access to all points of view.

Once, the individual needed the community to survive. Now the individual is in a community so huge that there is no community. Only individuals. It’s about time the individual remembered what it meant to have a choice in life. Not the tawdry black and white, silver-screen choice made popular with The Matrix, or the choice of what pre-set lifestyle one wants in Office Space, and certainly not the ridiculously violent choice of what we want to destroy to make our voice heard in Fight Club. We can grow up and change the world by insisting on living life as we want to. Subscribe to an ideal of your choosing, and make sure it’s yours. Community like life is now what we make of it.

by SharonTK

So you want to be an alternative fashion model eh?  The problem is, does anyone know what that really means?  I truly don’t think there is a definition for this but the modeling industry seems to think it is.  Do we all have tattoos?  Is our hair to be a certain off-color of the rainbow?  Do we only like to wear latex or dress in ant shopping mall fashions?  Maybe we like to wear our make up a little too heavy and like to be photographed in “dark environments”?

Well, whatever the definition “alternative” modeling seems to be hitting the mainstream modeling culture.  It is slowly but surely invading mainstream magazines such as Elle, Cosmo, and Harper’s Bazaar.  Just the other day I saw a spread that had latex pieces in it.  Or what about all the models with tattoos and bright hair?  What about Dita Von Tease in the front rows of the Jean Paul Gaultier show?  I’m pretty sure that high fashion magazines would like to believe that they are “discovering” these underground secrets.  Those of us who know and live the lifestyle know otherwise, that these fashions are more mainstream than they’d like or want to believe.

Smaller magazines such as Marquis, Shut Up, Inked, Cause a Scene, Bizarre, Skin Two, Leg Show, UCE, etc. know what’s up!  They recognize that fetish, tattoo, pinup, and high fashion are the basis for mainstream fashion ideas and layouts.  I’m pretty certain that all these famous fashion designers secretly read and research these cultures.  You always see touches of these cultures in fashion shows such as: Victoria’s Secret, Gaultier, Versace, Chanel, McQueen, and Galliano.

Do I consider myself an alternative model?  Shit, I don’t even know what that means!  And I’m pretty sure not many people in the industry know what category to put me in.  Yeah, I meet the measurement requirements for and agency, but oh no, I have tattoos and my hair is a brighter shade of red than the norm!  I like all styles of modeling, why limit myself to just one category?  I believe that keeping a portfolio showing a wide range of looks will in the end get you the most paid work, so far it has worked to my advantage.

So let’s rap this up.  I don’t know if there ever really was a point to this or if it’s just a random rant, but whatever it was is, really it’s up to you to decide.  I just want it to be heard, I just want it to be known, that without the underground world of modeling (to those of use who can’t get signed because of stupid little things that the big guns deem unworthy) they would soon be running out of ideas and inspirations!  Because one thing I do know is that “alternative models” are nonetheless some of the most inspiring people in the business!

Viva la alternative chicas!