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Photo was offensive

My name is Julie Clark, otherwise known as Trailer Park Clark in the roller derby world. I am grateful for the amount of coverage that the Yukon Roller Girls have received.

My name is Julie Clark, otherwise known as Trailer Park Clark in the roller derby world. I am grateful for the amount of coverage that the Yukon Roller Girls have received.

Your reporter Tom Patrick has done a great job of informing and educating Yukon News readers of our events and the sport itself.

I have been fortunate to have had my photo and name featured in the Yukon News on numerous occasions over the past two years.

I have been happy with the results. That all being said, I am not happy with the most recent photograph of me in the May 2 edition and in fact find it offensive.

The photo perpetuates the idea that roller derby is a sexual display of female performers as opposed to sport played by trained athletes.

We, as a league, work to ensure that we represent the sport as an activity for strong and empowered women, especially because we have a junior derby league with young women.

This also appears to be a fitting moment to state that I am confused as to why this was allowed to go to print while our derby names continue to be censored. We choose our names, but I did not choose to be portrayed in this way.

I appreciate your time in reading this letter and I will continue to support the Yukon News but hope that another unfortunate incident like this will be avoided in the future.

Julie Clark

Whitehorse