Hadley Freeman On Life Beyond Anorexia and Breaking Out of the Good Girl Socialisation

In this episode, Hadley Freeman discusses her latest book 'Good Girls: A Story and Study of Anorexia' with FiLiA spokeswoman Raquel Rosario Sánchez,  in which she shares a harrowing first-person account of her decades-long struggle with mental illness. She addresses the broader, structural issues driving disordered eating among girls and young women and what society can do to improve the situation. Freeman also discusses her writing career and offers advice to young women struggling with anorexia and mental illness in similar situations to those she has lived through.

Hadley Freeman was born in New York and read English Literature at the University of Oxford. She is the author of The Meaning of Sunglasses published by Penguin in 2009, Be Awesome: Modern Essays for Modern Ladies, Life Moves Pretty Fast: The Lessons We Learned from 80s Movies, House of Glass: The Story and Secrets of a Twentieth-Century Jewish Family, Good Girls: A Story and Study of Anorexia.

She was a columnist and staff writer for The Guardian for over twenty years, and she is now a staff writer at The Sunday Times. Her work has appeared in Vogue US and Vogue UK, New York Magazine, Harper's Bazaar and many other publications. Her bestselling family memoir, House of Glass: The Story and Secrets of a Twentieth-Century Jewish Family, was published in 2020 and the paperback was Waterstone's Book of the Month in 2021.  Her most recent book is Good Girls: A Story and Study of Anorexia, published in 2023.

You can find her on Twitter and you can purchase Good Girls at the FiLiA feminist library.