A Mountain Bike film about inclusion, identity and hand-drawn heroes.
Becoming Ruby is a personal portraiture of an MTBer, family, diversity and community.
This 18 mins film centres on Brooklyn Bell who is a mountain biker, skier and artist. In the film, she speaks about her experience of being a woman of colour in MTB and the alter-ego hand-drawn Ruby she created to help better face the world.
The film explains how Brooklyn was ‘not seeing herself reflected in the community she loves, mountain biker, skier and artist Brooklyn Bell created her own role model: a hand-drawn hero called Ruby J. With Ruby J as a guide, Brooklyn spent the next few years trying to “live like her, breathe like her, be unapologetically black like her,” and in the process shaped her own identity, one that intertwines her love for dirt, snow and art—and a voice with which to advocate for diversity and inclusion.’
As Brooklyn chats with her sister, they muse how MTBers are ‘often annoying, stuck up and rich’. Brooklyn also notes that even if you have money and access, but come from a family that doesn’t value MTB, then you are spending a tonne of money on a new bike or new skills or a climbing rack … that you are a person and part of a culture that has a ‘cognitive dissonance’ – and how isolating that can be.
Brooklyn’s narration of what it is like to be a woman on colour in MTBing is well worth hearing. I find particularly salient her comments about music choice being a (differing) point of inclusion as opposed to acceptance.
MTB is definitely ‘white-dominated’, but ultimately for Brooklyn, ‘all that fades away and that what really matters is being connected to the dirt’.
Oh, and the beautiful cinematography of being outdoors, riding bikes and MTB trails – (*sigh*).
Brooklyn’s closing poem says it all:
Dear Ruby,
I am strong
I am fit
I am beautiful
I am fast
I have a huge heart
And I will not give in
And I will not give up
I am comfortable in my own skin
I love to ride.
I deserve to be heard and I am here
I am here
And it is just wonderful.
All images in this post courtesy of : Becoming Ruby (film stills)