Hadley Freeman

Early life

Freeman moved to London from New York City in her youth. She has dual British and American citizenship.

Freeman suffered from anorexia and was treated in a psychiatric unit during six different periods between ages 13 and 17. After taking her A-level examinations while boarding at the Cambridge Centre for Sixth-form Studies, she read English literature at St Anne's College, Oxford, and edited the student newspaper Cherwell.

Career

After a year in Paris, Freeman worked on the fashion desk of The Guardian for eight years. She joined The Guardian in 2000 and has worked for the newspaper as a staff writer and columnist and contributes to the UK version of Vogue. Following an article for The Guardian in July 2013 criticising misogynistic behaviour, Freeman received a bomb threat on Twitter.

Freeman's books include The Meaning of Sunglasses: A Guide to (Almost) All Things Fashionable, in 2009 and Be Awesome: Modern Life for Modern Ladies in 2013, which was described by Jennifer Lipman in The Jewish Chronicle as "a detailed attack on how women are both portrayed and conditioned to act in public life". Life Moves Pretty Fast appeared in 2015.

In March 2020, House of Glass: The Story and Secrets of a Twentieth-Century Jewish Family, was published. It is an account of the lives of her grandmother Sala Glass and her three brothers Alex, Jacques, and Henri in Poland, France, and the United States during the course of the twentieth century. Karen Heller wrote in The Washington Post of Freeman being "an exacting historian" who "tackles anti-Semitism, Jewish guilt and success".

Freeman ended her Weekend Guardian column in September 2021 to concentrate on interviews for the newspaper. In November 2022, Freeman announced that she would be leaving The Guardian and would write for The Sunday Times.

Her memoir Good Girls: A Story and Study of Anorexia, recounting her teenage experience of anorexia, was published by Fourth Estate in April 2023.

In September 2024, Freeman, Jonathan Freedland and David Aaronovitch resigned from The Jewish Chronicle.

Views

In June 2018, Freeman denounced the treatment of undocumented child immigrants arriving in America, drawing parallels with her grandmother's experience of escaping from the Holocaust. Freeman described it as deliberate cruelty by the Trump administration, and a reflection of latent racism amongst its supporters.

In November 2018, U.S. journalists from The Guardian published an opinion piece criticising a Guardian editorial about the Gender Recognition Act, arguing it was transphobic. In tweets, Freeman defended the editorial. She has since been cited as expressing views that some have considered transphobic, particularly in regard to trans people seeking healthcare and trans people struggling with suicidal ideation. In June 2021, Freeman used her regular opinion column in The Guardian to describe that she had "lost at least a dozen friends over this ... friends who have told me my beliefs are transphobic". In December 2022, after 22 years of working for The Guardian Freeman left the newspaper after she said she was denied her request to follow up on The Daily Telegraphs investigation into the charity Mermaids, which supports transgender youth in the UK. She said there was an "atmosphere of real fear" at The Guardian over its coverage of trans issues, saying that the paper was not allowing her and others to write on gender issues and barring her from interviewing J. K. Rowling and Martina Navratilova who have gender-critical views.

In an essay in the Jewish Quarterly from May 2024, she argues that the progressive Left had "hijacked" the 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel and had been misrepresenting those atrocities.

Personal life

Freeman often discusses cinema, particularly from the 1980s, in her articles and occasionally in broadcasts. She has said that her favourite film is Ghostbusters and that she has a collection of related books and articles.

She has twin sons and a daughter.

References

References

1. (2 January 2021). "My naughty cousin Catie Lazarus was the funniest woman in any room – how I'll miss her". The Guardian.
2. Freeman, Hadley. (12 May 2018). "I can't wait to turn 40. After four decades of getting things wrong, I know some stuff". [[The Guardian]].
3. (2 November 2022). "Long-serving ''Guardian'' columnist Hadley Freeman leaves for ''Sunday Times''". [[Press Gazette]].
4. Freeman, Hadley. (4 July 2012). "Cricket and other baffling British habits". [[The Guardian]].
5. (19 April 2024). "Press Awards honour The Times and The Sunday Times". [[The Times]].
6. (4 November 2012). "Interview: Hadley Freeman". [[The Tab]].
7. Freeman, Hadley. (4 February 2017). "I'm American and British. Can I save the special relationship?". The Guardian.
8. Freeman, Hadley. (25 November 2017). "It wasn't feminist theory that cured my anorexia – it was having something to eat for". The Guardian.
9. "Alumni Profiles". [[Cambridge Centre for Sixth-form Studies]].
10. Levy Gale, Sadie. (10 August 2013). "Interview: Hadley Freeman – How to be Awesome". [[Cherwell (newspaper).
11. Freeman, Hadley. (10 May 2013). "I was banned from a slew of shows and never brushed my hair: Hadley Freeman's life as a fashion misfit". [[Evening Standard]].
12. "Hadley Freeman". RCW agency.
13. Batty, David. (1 August 2013). "Bomb threats made on Twitter to female journalists". The Guardian.
14. Freeman, Hadley. (5 February 2009). "The Meaning of Sunglasses: A Guide to (Almost) All Things Fashionable". [[Penguin Books]].
15. Freeman, Hadley. (25 April 2013). "Be Awesome: Modern Life for Modern Ladies". [[HarperCollins.
16. Lipman, Jennifer. (30 May 2013). "Be Awesome: Modern Life for Modern Ladies". [[The Jewish Chronicle]].
17. Ellen, Barbara. (17 May 2015). "Life Moves Pretty Fast review – a funny, absorbing study of 80s Hollywood". [[The Observer]].
18. Freeman, Hadley. (5 March 2020). "House of Glass: The Story and Secrets of a Twentieth-Century Jewish Family". [[HarperCollins]].
19. Hennigan, Adrian. (24 March 2020). "Picasso, Dior, Auschwitz and an Ayatollah: Uncovering a Secret Jewish Family History". [[Haaretz]].
20. David, Keren. (27 February 2020). "The family secrets found in a shoebox". [[The Jewish Chronicle]].
21. Heller, Karen. (30 March 2020). "In ''House of Glass'', Hadley Freeman unearth's the World War II-era secrets of her family's past". [[The Washington Post]].
22. Freeman, Hadley. (18 September 2021). "Opinion writing has changed a lot since I started out. It's time for something new". The Guardian.
23. Chandler, Mark. (17 March 2021). "Fourth Estate buys Freeman's 'ground-breaking' memoir".
24. (5 April 2023). "''Good Girls'' by Hadley Freeman review – anorexia from within". [[The Guardian]].
25. (2024-09-15). "Jewish Chronicle: Jonathan Freedland and Hadley Freeman quit in Gaza articles row".
26. Freeman, Hadley. (19 June 2018). "Donald Trump's child cruelty shocks us, but it shouldn't surprise us". [[The Guardian]].
27. (2 November 2018). "Why we take issue with the Guardian's stance on trans rights in the UK". [[The Guardian]].
28. Persio, Sofia Lotto. (3 November 2018). "''Guardian'' US journalists denounce newspaper's "transphobic" editorial". [[PinkNews]].
29. Hansford, Amelia. (10 January 2023). "Journalist Hadley Freeman condemned for 'dangerous' comments about suicidal trans kids". [[PinkNews]].
30. Valens, Ana. (2 April 2018). "There's nothing feminist about attacking trans women". [[The Daily Dot]].
31. Ewens, Hannah. (16 June 2020). "Inside the Great British TERF War". [[Vice (magazine).
32. Freeman, Hadley. (26 June 2021). "People have told me I'm on the wrong side of history, but I still want to be their friend". [[The Guardian]].
33. Singh, Anita. (5 December 2022). "Hadley Freeman: 'Atmosphere of fear' governs ''Guardian'' trans coverage". [[The Daily Telegraph]].
34. Hadley Freeman. (May 2024). "''Blindness: October 7 and the Left''".
35. Freeman, Hadley. (27 October 2011). "My favourite film: Ghostbusters". [[The Guardian]].
36. Freeman, Hadley. (27 October 2011). "Why I owe it all to 1980s movies". [[The Guardian]].