When Rollergirls was on A&E last year, I watched it with great interest and mostly joy. I wrote about it on my blog several times. I thought it was problematic, certainly, but ultimately feminist.

So when I set about to watch it again to review it for Heroine Content, I was skeptical. I really didn't want my Heroine Content-eyes, which are more and more open to sexism and racism, to see things my original eyes had not.

I'm happy to say that for the most part, they didn't. Upon the second watching, I still found Rollergirls to be mostly a very pro-woman show. It didn't do as good a job with race, but it wasn't totally whitewashed either.

Rollergirls is a "reality show" about the TXRD Lonestar Rollergirls. The show follows the league, focusing on a few specific women, through their 2005 season. Both the lives of the women outside the derby (their jobs, love lives, friendships, families, health, etc.) and the bouts (roller derby matches) themselves get screen time, and the show dedicates quite a bit of its focus to the relationships between the women in the derby. One of the many things I love about the show is that women are very much the primary focus--there are a few guys in it, mostly the women's partners, but they are very secondary characters.

I also love the women themselves. Though the show veers into clear docu-drama territory more than once, you still get what I think it a fairly realistic idea of these women, and they are tough, conflicted, bitchy, wonderful. They are real women, not two-dimensional female character stereotypes. They fight. They work. They skate. And they run their own lives.

When I originally reviewed Rollergirls on my personal blog, I wrote:

Maybe it's stupid to get that serious about something like roller derby, but I honestly don't think it is. We are trained to take men's organizations and interests, including and especially their sports, seriously, but not women's. And make no mistake, these women are athletes. I can't even fucking stand up on skates, and I know they're athletes. And general badasses, too. What the group of women involved in TXRD have done, in terms of business, in terms of athletics, and in terms of building a truly woman-run organization, impresses the hell out of me.

My second watching confirmed that opinion. Although there are clear critiques that can be made of the blatant sexuality of the derby and the skaters, and of the cattiness that the show focuses on at times, at the end I'm left feeling like the enterprise is very, very pro-woman. At one point, early on, one of the skaters describes being a roller girl as being a superhero, and I can totally see that. Another way to say it would be that it's being a heroine.

Racially, the show and the derby itself are again problematic. The league in the show has one team called the "Putas del Fuego," a team which often dresses up in an imitation of Mexican gangs and a few of whom have Spanish slang names (such as "Chola"). Like slurs for women, racial slurs are not off limits here, so you have to make of that what you will. For me, the fact that several members of the league are clearly Latina helps. I am bothered by the lack of any African-American rollergirls during the filming of the show (though I know there is at least one in the league now).

Another possible criticism of the show is that all of the featured skaters are thin. This does bother me, especially since it's clear that there are skaters in the league, crowd favorites and high scorers like Smarty Pants, who are not thin.

What the show loses for me in sizeism it makes up for in class sensitivity, though. It is wonderful, for once, to see working class and pink-collar women on television, living their lives. A few of the rollergirls have professional jobs (Lux is a nurse, Sister Mary Jane is a teacher), but most of them don't. Punky Bruiser works two jobs, waitressing and selling clothes at The Gap. Hades Lady works at a convenience store. Lunatic and Venis Envy have office jobs. Catalac is a stay at home mom with a laboring husband, and she mentions their seasonal financial woes. It is clear from the outset both that these women are supporting themselves and struggling and that their jobs do not define them. We see far too little of that on TV.

All in all, Rollergirls is a show worth watching. It's definitely not perfect, and if you are especially sensitive to conflict, catty behavior, or violence, you aren't going to like it. I give it three stars, however, for taking on sexism, racism, and classism in ways that are way more than the usual. While it doesn't always succeed, it makes a valiant effort, and I definitely think that is worthwhile.