Photos by Josie Harrison featuring Ujvala Jupalli taken from the film Ujvala Jupalli: Asterisk Athlete
Project Purpose
The purpose of this project is to raise the voices of female athletes from all walks of life and provide a platform for the sharing of experiences and empowerment. This project will collect interviews from any and all who identify or who once identified as a female athlete and make them accessible to anyone who wants to listen, whether that be a young girl wanting to get into sports or someone coming to the end of their career wishing to reflect.
Through conducting the interviews this project will attempt to highlight the different experiences, and barriers that female athletes must encounter in order to compete as well as highlighting the sheer skill, dedication, and determination of female athletes.
Why Asterisk Athlete?
The choice of name for this project is very intentional. The title centers around the idea that sport is most commonly perceived as a man’s activity with mostly heavy masculine connotations. This binary and gender hierarchy has led to the default term athlete being attributed to men, with women being considered ‘female athletes’ and rarely just ‘athletes’.
Think of how many times you have seen a club (any sport) where there is the main team and then the women’s team. A notable example of this can be seen in the way Welsh rugby players are capped with the Men getting a WRU cap that just says WRU XV while the women have the same but with the addition of ‘women’ on the cap. This structure has led to the descriptor ‘women’ or ‘female’ being used as a kind of asterisk before a sport, highlighting women and girls as the other.
In recent history, it has been improving with many teams now highlighting the men’s and women’s teams with the gender signifier before both, however, it still has some way to go.
Project Parts
While the project is constantly evolving, it currently consists of three main parts:
- An ever-growing collection of interviews with female athletes
- The Hood Museum of Art exhibition “Elegantly Violent: Exploring Masculinity and Gender Expectations within Women’s Sports” showing 4/5/25 – 5/25/25
- A short mini docu-film about Ujvala Jupalli (Tennis Player)
The different parts of the project come together to highlight the various histories, experiences, and present-day growth of what it means to be a female athlete.
The Interviews
The purpose of the interviews is to hear about the different experiences of female athletes and to provide a platform for female athletes to share their stories.
Each athlete is asked the same five questions:
- What was the first/a time you realized you weren’t just an athlete but a female athlete?
- What has being an athlete meant to you/given to you?
- (Optional) What was one of the hardest moments of your athletic career?
- (Optional) What was one of the highlights of your athletic career?
- If you were speaking to a young girl wanting to get into sport what would your advice/message be?
The interviews are then transcribed alongside the video and audio, with each athlete having their own page which they can personalize with their own images. To look through the interviews click here.
The interviews are open to anyone who either currently identifies or has identified as a female athlete and wants to share their story. Please email asteriskathleteproject@gmail.com if you want to share your story.
Gallery Exhibition “Elegantly Violent: Exploring Masculinity and Gender Expectations in Women’s Sport.”
“Elegantly Violent: Exploring Masculinity and Gender Expectations within Women’s Sports” highlights the subversion of Western societal expectations of women in sports. It invites viewers to analyze the gendered history of sport, its impact on female athletes, and the opinions of the spectator. A mixture of modern and contemporary works from the past 120 years addresses the relationship between masculinity and female athletes’ bodies, actions, and identities.
The exhibition ran from 4/5/24 – 5/25/25.
Visit the exhibition’s page on the Hood Museum Website here.
Read The Dartmouth’s article on the exhibition here.
Docu-film: Ujvala Jupalli’s Story (Tennis Player)
This docu-film follows Ujvala Jupalli–captain of the Dartmouth Women’s Tennis team–as she describes her experiences as a female athlete all while competing at the highest level as an NCAA Division 1 student-athlete.
The film adds imagery to her story, following her in a documentary style, but also utilizing archive footage and projectors to create a space of reflection.
Project Book
If you would like to learn more about this project, the various aspects, and some behind the scenes moments take a look at the project book:
Asterisk Athlete Project Book Online View Link
Here is the first five pages from the book:
