The Magnificent One Atlanta, Georgia © Eileen Langsley, 1996 Jaycie Phelps won a team gold medal at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics.

May 25 - November 6, 2005

Game Face: What Does A Female Athlete Look Like?, a compelling photographic exhibition depicting the role sports play in the lives of girls and women, makes its Garden State debut May 25 when the exhibition opens at the Morris Museum. Sponsored by MassMutual Financial Group including OppenheimerFunds, Inc., the exhibition has attracted more than one million visitors in 11 cities since 2001.

The collection of 139 photographs, with accompanying stories from women about how sports have shaped their identities, offers a unique answer to the question at the heart of Game Face – What do girls and women look like, freed from traditional feminine constraints, using their bodies in joyful and empowering ways?

Photo subjects include professional and amateur athletes, and legends such as Tara Lipinski, Babe Didrikson-Zaharias, Chris Evert, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, Amanda Beard, Serena Williams and Janet Evans.

The exhibition includes photographs from Annie Leibovitz, Dorothea Lange, Ansel Adams and Pulitzer Prize winners Annie Wells and Melissa Farlow. Game Face began its nationwide tour at The Smithsonian in 2001, followed by stops in Chicago, Dallas, Indianapolis, Jacksonville, Kansas City, St. Louis, Salt Lake City, Springfield, Mass., New York and Los Angeles.

Former San Francisco Chronicle sports staff writer Jane Gottesman and photographer Geoffrey Biddle are co-curators of the exhibition. Gottesman, a native of Morristown, searched for nearly a decade for these images that span the photographic genres: documentary, conceptual, vernacular, sports action, as well as subject, time, place, age and race. Exhibition photos depict women participating in sports from ping-pong to pole-vaulting and from hunting to handball. The scope and style of the photos range from a vintage photo of a 1890s corseted woman on a bicycle to an action shot of today’s soccer superstar Brandi Chastain savoring her team’s sudden death World Cup win.

“Women and girls who participate in sports not only succeed academically, but also learn to thrive in competitive playing fields where self-esteem and teamwork are key to winning,” said Susan Sweetser, 2nd vice president of the Women’s Markets Initiative at Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company (MassMutual). “We have proved that the connection between early participation in sports and later career success teaches females about empowerment, leadership and discipline.” 

Sweetser is referring to a study commissioned by MassMutual and OppenheimerFunds titled “From the Locker Room to the Board Room: A Survey on Sports in the Lives of Women Business Executives.” The results of the study of 401 executive businesswomen, released in 2002, revealed that more than four out of five played sports growing up, and two-thirds currently participate in sports or exercise regularly.

Specifically, the research found that of women who played organized sports after grade school, 86% said sports helped them to be more disciplined, 81% said sports helped them to function better as part of a team, 69% said sports helped them to develop leadership skills that contributed to their professional success, 68% said sports helped them to deal with failure, and 59% said sports gave them a competitive edge over others.

Game Face documents the tremendous impact sports have on the lives of girls and women and recognizes the role that Title IX has had in increasing women’s participation in athletics. When Title IX passed in 1972, only 1-in-27 school-age girls played sports, compared to more than 1-in-3 today. During the same period, the ratio of boys playing sports remained the same, 1-in-2.

Game Face has been endorsed by the Girl Scouts of the USA, who have developed a Game Face patch, the NCAA’s Committee on Women’s Athletics, the YWCA of the USA and the National Coalition of Girls’ Schools.