Faces of the Game

"Game Face: What Does a Female Athlete Look Like?", a compelling photo exhibition that has attracted more than one million visitors in eight cities in the U.S. since its 2001 debut, is headed to downtown New York. Also the centerpiece of an ambitious nationwide educational initiative, it will debut April 15 at the World Financial Center Courtyard Gallery in Manhattan. The exhibition is part of the World Financial Center Arts Events’ Spring 2004 program, and will be on display free to the public through June 6, 2004.

The collection of 139 photographs, with accompanying stories from women about how sports has shaped their identity, range in style and substance from sepia-toned portraits of a corseted lady with a bicycle in the 1890s to a full-color action shot of today’s muscular soccer star Brandi Chastain savoring, without inhibition, her team’s sudden-death World Cup victory.

Other photo subjects include legends such as Marion Jones, Chris Evert, Babe Didrikson Zaharias, Michelle Akers, Wilma Rudolph, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, Serena Williams, Tara Lipinski and Martina Navratilova, along with dozens of lesser-known athletes.

Each image offers a unique answer to the question at the heart of the exhibit: What do girls and women look like, freed from traditional feminine constraints, using their bodies in joyful and empowering ways?

MassMutual Financial Group, including OppenheimerFunds, Inc. is the exclusive corporate sponsor of "Game Face: What Does a Female Athlete Look Like?" In addition to the traveling exhibition, Game Face is the subject of a book published by Random House and a free educational outreach program geared to middle school children. The exhibition complements the national educational program that MassMutual helped develop, which is used currently in more than 2,500 classrooms nationwide, including more than 200 New York City classrooms.

"OppenheimerFunds has a long-standing commitment to being an advocate for women in all aspects of their lives, from financial empowerment to physical well-being," says Jennifer Sexton, Senior Vice President, OFI Private Investments, Inc. "We are thrilled that the exhibition is coming to our home–the World Financial Center–and look forward to giving thousands of women, men, and children in the area the opportunity to experience Game Face."

Game Face is the brainchild of reporter Jane Gottesman, who spent a decade interviewing athletes and photographers to collect images that portray the skill, desire and dedication of girls and women engaged in sports and physical activity.

The exhibition includes the work of noted photographers Mary Ellen Mark, Dorothea Lange, Ansel Adams, Annie Leibovitz, Tina Barney, Lee Friedlander, Justine Kurland, Ruth Orkin, Eve Fowler, Andrea Modica, Charles Harbutt, Robert Mapple-thorpe and Pulitzer Prize winners Annie Wells, April Saul, Melissa Farlow and Rick Rickman among many others. Together they highlight the photographer’s ability to wordlessly present the beauty and complexity of the women’s sports movement.

"New York City is filled with powerful women in every aspect of life, and Game Face is a great way to celebrate the strength of women in New York," says Frances Emerson, Senior Vice President, Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company (MassMutual). "The exhibition is more than a collection of motivational photographs. It’s a component of a nationwide education program that encourages children to examine their own assumptions about gender roles and self-esteem."

The Game Face Educational Outreach Program is a character-education program geared towards middle school age children. Using a compelling collection of documentary and artistic photographs, Game Face poses a series of "think about" questions that hit home for both boys and girls, whether or not they consider themselves athletes. The materials comprise a springboard for lessons on tolerance, body image, diversity and teamwork. They spark discussions on character and social issues and generate ideas for writing and research projects. MassMutual provides the materials to educators completely free of charge.

In 1972, Congress passed Title IX, a law that mandated equality for women and girls in schools. One of the law’s most radical effects was opening up the playing field to all. In 1971, 1-in-27 school age girls played sports; now, 1-in-2.6 do. Over the same time period the ratio of school age boys playing sports remained the same, 1-in-2. Not only did more girls start playing sports as a result of Title IX, but these young athletes also redefined what is acceptable for girls and, by extension, for boys. Title IX was born of the optimism of the civil rights and women’s liberation movements, and it continues to have a profound influence on our culture.

A generation of women, including Game Face creator Gottesman, have come of age under Title IX. Old stereotypes about women and sports have fallen away, and today’s women embrace athletics with a passion that would have been unfathomable a quarter of a century ago.

For many women today, sports is an expression of personal freedom. Athletics encourages women to be strong, daring and resilient, necessary survival skills in an era when women are constantly bombarded by images of fashion models, self-improvement products and the diet culture. The influx of women into the athletic arena is forcing a redefinition of sports. More importantly, it is revising traditional notions of womanhood.

Provocative and intimate, the photographs in Game Face reveal women’s powerful and complex relationship to sports, as well as men’s support for the athletic females in their lives. They depict the many ways a woman can use athletics to describe her sense of self, her physicality, her aspirations and her involvement in the revision of beliefs about womanly and feminine behavior.

Using the arc of the athletic experience–getting ready, start, action, finish, aftermath–as its organizing principle, Game Face synthesizes photographs and personal reflections into an elegantly structured story with built-in dramatic movement. When considered in terms of life stages, the various phases of the athletic experience symbolize determination, effort, dedication, completion, satisfaction and reward. They represent the phases we all experience in big and small ways throughout our lives, and they parallel the stages women have had to pass through to get to the level of involvement in athletics we enjoy today. –PRNewswire