During her years as a military linguist, Bailey Williams pushed her body to extremes. She later learned that eating disorders are more prevalent in the Marine Corps than in any other military branch. Her memoir is Hollow. John Powers reviews the Paramount+ series Landman. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy
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I'm Tonya Moseley.
And my guest today, Bailey Williams has written a new book that gives a vivid and at times brutal look at being a woman in the Marine Corps.
While struggling with disordered eating during her three years of service as a military linguist, Williams writes about how she pushed her body to extremes to prove her strength, running for hours a day, starving herself, binging and purging, which caused damage to her body, including her esophagus.
William signed up for the marine Corps at 18, partly to escape her strict Mormon upbringing.
But she'd come to realize the military was similar to her experiences growing up Mormon, a culture of secrecy, especially for enlisted women, who, she writes, were told to stay quiet about the sexual advances from superiors and fellow servicemen.