Hours before the Saturday night battle, Jennifer Lindow Eskin (H'00) stares into the bathroom mirror. Leaning over the sink counter, lipstick in hand, she fills in the contours of her smile in a blood-red hue. It's a vamp-like grin, colored perfectly to match the headband holding her spiked golden hair. In the background, INXS's "Suicide Blonde" thumps over the stereo system in her Sterling, Va., home, near Washington, D.C.
Her husband, Peter, a computer programmer, has seen this ritual before and stays out of the way. He knows this is her time to get ready. Controlled chaos awaits. She takes inventory. Black eyeliner, shadow, and mascara? Check. Lips? Killer. She’s decked out in a black baby-doll T-shirt, leopard print stockings, and red shorts. Her transformation is complete.
Goodbye, Jennifer—a division administrator for the National Endowment for the Arts.
Hello, Blonde Fury.
Eskin, 33, is a member of the DC DemonCats, a roller derby team that competes in the DC Rollergirls league, sanctioned by the Women’s Flat Track Derby Association. The season spans from October to May, and the league also selects an all-star squad—which includes Eskin—that barnstorms throughout the year. It’s a demanding, unique sport that combines legitimate athletic competition with healthy dashes of camp and theater. Names of teams in the D.C. area include the Cherry Blossom Bombshells, Scare Force One, and Eskin's DC DemonCats. Among the many skaters' nicknames in the league: Guantanamo Babe, Killary Hittin, and Condoleeza Slice.
"Sometimes in roller derby, you have to play to the crowd," says Eskin. The bouts have kind of a carnival atmosphere—there's face-painting for the kids, mascots, fan giveaways, and halftime entertainment, as well as winks, waves, and blown kisses to the crowd from the players. "Even dancing has been known to break out on the track," she adds.
At 5-foot-5 in a league where skaters can occasionally eclipse six feet, Eskin competes as a "jammer," a position that requires speed and agility to weave through opposing defenders. Every time she laps an opponent, she tallies a point for her team. Defenders, of course, don’t give up points easily, as evidenced, over time, by lots of bumps and bruises. Not that she's complaining. Last May, the DC DemonCats won the 2009 league championship.
"I got my first skates when I was six and wanted to play roller derby," recalls Eskin. "I saw it on TV. I wouldn't say I grew up watching it, because it was only on when I was very little. But yeah, it made an impact." She spent hours jumping over coffee cans in the basement of her family's Strongsville, Ohio, home, just south of Cleveland.
For the Heinz School graduate, roller derby offers a much-needed respite from the workweek, where she spends her days in a "government-issued cubicle" on the seventh floor of the historic Old Post Office Building, overlooking Pennsylvania Avenue.
"You only live life once," says Eskin. For Blonde Fury, it’s game time.
—by Chris A. Weber
