Game Face: What Does a Female Athlete Look Like?

Game Face: What Does a Female Athlete Look Like?

Game Face: What Does a Female Athlete Look Like?

Game Face: What Does a Female Athlete Look Like?

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Overview

On playing fields and street corners, in backyards and gyms, the people in this arresting array of pictures are unselfconsciously exploring the physical and emotional pleasures of competition and play. Each image offers an affirming and satisfying answer to the question at the heart of Game Face: What do girls and women look like when freed from traditional feminine constraints, using their bodies in joyful and empowering ways?

To show America what women’s sports looks like, Jane Gottesman searched through the work of our country’s best photographers, from the newest photojournalists to artists such as Annie Leibovitz and Ansel Adams. The result is a unique and inspiring document of the tremendous impact that the growth of female sports at all levels is having on society—and on women themselves.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780307525680
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Publication date: 11/20/2013
Sold by: Random House
Format: eBook
Pages: 224
File size: 29 MB
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About the Author

Jane Gottesman, Game Face project director and co-curator, was a reporter at the San Francisco Chronicle, a contributing writer to Women's Sports & Fitness magazine, a writer and associate producer for ABC Sports, and co-editor of the book Play Like a Girl. She lives in Berkeley, California, and New York City.

The Game Face Collection was co-curated by Geoffrey Biddle, a photographer, educator, and author of the book Alphabet City.

Read an Excerpt

Introduction

"Women's sports is second-rate." This was the wisdom of the sports department where I worked in the early nineties. I was not long out of college, and I was the only woman on a sports writing staff of nearly twenty on a big-city newspaper.

To understand the departmental attitude toward women, I began a casual tally of the pictures that ran in the section. mostly, there were no pictures of women, so the count was simple: 15-0; 11-0; 12-0. A "good"day was a 9-2 day, an 11-1 day. Those were rare. As I counted, I saw that these seemingly inconsequential and repetitious pictures of able-bodied men hitting baseballs, throwing footballs, and rebounding basketballs actually had a cumulative effect on the way females saw themselves in relation to males and vice versa. When stories and pictures about women did find their way into the paper--a U.S. Open tennis report, an LPGA story, a column about Jackie Joyner-Kerseee--such items about outstanding female athletes would clash on the page with the "escort" ads, always featuring women, that were relegated to the sports section.

Wanting to fit into that all-male environment, I learned to keep up with Sports Illustrated. But in 1994, when the "Swimsuit Issue" arrived, as it did every February, I worked it into my picture tally. It was, after all, the only issue each year when a woman was guaranteed to grace the cover of America's premier sports magazine. I reviewed all the covers since the previous "Swimsuit Issue" and I discovered that from the "Swimsuit Issue" of February 1993 to the one of February 1994, the only female athletes on the cover were featured at their most vulnerable: Monica Seles after being stabbed; Nancy Kerrigan after being hit; and Mary Pierce, whose father lost control at her matches.

I wrote an essay called "Cover-Girl Athletes" about the fact that women athletes were invisible in the sport media until they made news as victims--or as vixens--as was the case then, in February 1994, when the Tonya Harding scandal was monopolizing the media's attention. The response to "Cover-Girl Athletes" held the seeds of Game Face. I got calls from people I hadn't spoken to in years. I got the thumbs-up from some colleagues, and I got sneers from others. I got, you could say, a calling, because for the first time I asked myself, What does a female athlete look like?

Based on my own life experience, both in sports and reporting, I had a vision of the answer. In the media and in bookstores, however, I found nothing that reflected the beautiful and complicated relationship women have to sports in a world where prescribed feminine behavior does not include the muscle, sweat, and passion that are ingrained elements of sport. I circulated my question "What does a female athlete look like?" to photographers by flyers, e-mail and word of mouth.

As I studied their responses and continued to look for more, the culture shifted. Though often misinterpreted as anti-male, Title IX, the 1972 law largely responsible for creating opportunities for females in sports, was vindicated at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. There, mean and women celebrated the gold medals U.S. women's teams won in basketball, softball, and soccer. The point was driven home two years later at the Winter Olympics in Nagano with another U.S. team victory, in women's ice hockey. Then, in 1999, in a sold-out Rose Bowl, while some forty million U.S. households tuned in, the U.S. team won the Women's World Cup. Men and boys celebrated right alongside women and girls. Some celebrated sheet athletic master; others cheered women's gains in society. Some cheered their daughter's ambitions; others cheered for the opportunity to play they never had.

"You know what this picture did? It gave a voice to the people who were voiceless." This is how Brandi Chastain decsribed for us the impact of the photograph on the cover of this book, an image that captures her famous reaction after scoring the point that clinched the Women's World Cup. We recorded some of those voices--from Olympics to elected officials, from coaches to corporate honchos, from schoolgirls to retirees. In these stories, which appear throughout the book, a few essential truths shine. As athletes, girls and women learn, without inhibition, the pains and joys of putting themselves on the line. As athletes, at any age, they discover the body and its gifts. Sports is a forum to gain insight into relationships with peers, family, and teachers; it is a place to discover personal and physical freedom.

Game Face's mission is big: to convey that athletics is a catalyst for girls' and women's self-creation, self-knowledge, and self-expression. It has a political mission as well: to reinforce the importance of Title IX by reflecting girls and women at play. To achieve these elaborate goals, we turned to the arc of the athletic experience as an elegantly simply organizing principe, and we divided the pictures into five sections: getting ready, start, action, finish and aftermath. The arc is organic to sports, has built in dramatic movement, and is rich metaphorically. When considered in terms of life stages, the various phases of the athletic experience symbolize determination, dedication, effort, completion and satisfaction. They represent the phases we all experience in big and small ways throughout our lives, and parallel the stages women have had to pass through to get to the level of involvement in athletics we now enjoy.

Today the sports section had twenty-three pictures of men and one small picture of women playing basketball. Game Face carves out a different space, a niche where women's athletics is firts-rate and women's abilities are the camera's delight. We hope readers see themselves in this mix and understand that they are part of the story.

What People are Saying About This

Anita DeFrantz

A powerful image seizes a moment in time and yet tells a story of a lifetime. There is no better proof of this then Jane Gottesman's Game Face. Game Face captures the essence of being a female athlete. And it also does much more. It shows that sport unites us all because it belongs to us all.

Dick Schaap

Game Face is a tribute to the beauty of competition, to the dedication, skill and enthusiasm female athletes are finally encouraged to display. Every one of these women is a winner and so is each of the photographs.

Gloria Steinem

Whether you're from the generation of drum majorettes or Title IX, the athletes of Game Face will inspire you. For women to become strong is a deep part of the revolution.

Bud Greenspan

A book honoring women athletes has finally arrived. Jane Gottesman's Game Face, in gymnastics terms, is a perfect 10. The photographs are riveting and the text dramatic and informative -- a timely tribute to a major part of the sports scene that has too long been ignored.

Robin Roberts

Inspiring! Game Face is proof that a picture is worth a thousand words. This book looks at women's sports from a refreshing perspective. Talk about feeling empowered -- I've got my Game Face on!

Bob Costas

These images are striking, distinctive, and evocative. Over the past generation, many of us have arrived at a better understanding of what athletic participation can mean to girls and women. Game Face heightens that understanding.

Billie Jean King

Game Face is a first. Together these photographs give a face to the critical mass of people who have made women's sports part of the popular landscape.

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