BEING ALICE
“Football is a metaphor for life” - Jean Paul Sartre
My research project ‘Being Alice’ was conceived during Lockdown, whilst dropping off my daughter to her regular football practice once grassroots training recommenced. Alice is 15. She is a confident, energetic human being but like many teenagers was cut off from everything she'd ever know throughout Covid-19 Lockdowns : school, friends and her extra curricular activities. Alice has always loved to don sportswear along with the freedom to go for a kick around with her Dad, and so extra-curricular activity football has become a great outlet for her with the pressures that teenage angst can bring. Looking back, I can clearly see how sports have helped her mentally and physically, giving her a focus about the game and community team. I have been photographing Alice’s football team for this project in the aim that I would like to give them a voice with their football as they transition into young women, showing them the photographs of themselves in all manner of emotions on and off the pitch - this is a continuing project. The relevant themes consist of equality on the field, rights of women, sisterhood and positive self identity.
“To photograph people is to violate them, by seeing them as they never see themselves, by having knowledge of them that they can never have; it turns people into objects that can be symbolically possessed.…” (Sontag, S: 1977)
*The aim of this project is to research Girls and Women’s Football and Mental health within the team sport.* To research and understand the learning and resilience of a growth mindset in girls and young women in football in relation to training and matches.
* To investigate and analyse the psychology, topics included : sisterhood, coaches, gender equality, sexuality, self-imagery and friendships.
* Create an in-depth focus study on U15 Wildcats Team, using qualitative and quantitive research on positive and the negative impact of social media.
* Explore self imagery and identity during a phototherapy workshop through selfie’s and photo-booth portraits together with reportage shots taken during games and training.
* Research the impact of role models on young girls and women footballers including England’s women’s football team.
* To investigate and analyse the psychology, topics included : sisterhood, coaches, gender equality, sexuality, self-imagery and friendships.
* Create an in-depth focus study on U15 Wildcats Team, using qualitative and quantitive research on positive and the negative impact of social media.
* Explore self imagery and identity during a phototherapy workshop through selfie’s and photo-booth portraits together with reportage shots taken during games and training.
* Research the impact of role models on young girls and women footballers including England’s women’s football team.
“If we can see the present clearly enough, we shall ask the right questions of the past.” (Berger :1972)
Looking back in disbelief at the injustices that have played out in Parliament in reference to women's rights and freedoms. It is over 100 years ago this December (1921) that the FA refused womens access to FA football pitches. This began immediately after the First World War ended where women who had been liberated during wartime, forming football teams and playing to crowds of up to 53,000, they now found themselves being quietly shunted back into domestic life, returned to their "right and proper place" in society. Football was no longer a health benefit - it was now seen by top physicians, such as Dr Mary Scharlieb of Harley Street, as the "most unsuitable game, too much for a woman's physical frame”.
Today there are millions of women and girls playing in teams across the world. These players have found a common mindset of resilience and a healthy sporting lifestyle and for some professional careers through football. It is easy for us to acknowledge history and would hope that it would be impossible to impose these restrictions again, however it is during the present day as I record this project (August 2021) that Western troops completed their occupation in Afghanistan and Afghan women will not be permitted to play sport. The deputy head of the Taliban’s cultural commission, Ahmadullah Wasiq, said women’s sport was considered neither appropriate nor necessary. Reasons he stated : “It is the media era, and there will be photos and videos, and then people watch it. Islam and the Islamic Emirate [Afghanistan] do not allow women to play cricket or play the kind of sports where they get exposed.”
(https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/08/afghan-women-to-be-banned-from-playing-sport-taliban-say).