# data[].attributes.body
- Always look "presentable" and be in a good mood
- As a woman, your job is to attend to your domestic duties like cook and make the house clean and tidy
- As a wife you are to make sure husband is comfortable at all times
- Bare and raise children
- Don't complain, give orders, or talk back to your husband
- As a female you are to display your femininity, showing attributes of nurturing, innocence, affection, happiness, cleanliness, and more

# data[].attributes.body
- You are the sole provider and head of the household
- You are hardworking
- You get time to relax
- You are to be respected by your wife but you don't always have to reciprocate that respect
- As a male you are to display your masculinity, show attributes of strength, power, and assertiveness

# data[].attributes.body
Mary Anne starts off as an innocent, soft, girlish woman. But after spending some time there, she becomes engaged in war life, loosing her innocence and ignorance, and evolves into to an outright warrior. She defies the odds of what it means to be a woman in society. She finds her true self and discovers the things that make her truly happy: going out and physically engaging in missions, and she enjoys it. She enjoys the thrill and excitement the war experience brings.

# data[].attributes.headline
Appearance Prior to Her Transformation at Vietnam

# data[].attributes.subject
Appearance Prior to Her Transformation at Vietnam

# data[].attributes.body
Mary Anne used to dress up, wear makeup, had long hair, had more feminine qualities to her. Her job as a woman is to look appealing to men, look attractive.
(“It was Vietnam, after all, and Mary Anne Bell was an attractive girl...The men genuinely liked her. Out on the volleyball court she wore cut-off blue jeans and a black swimsuit top, which the guys appreciated...”).

# data[].attributes.headline
Characteristics Prior to Her Transformation at Vietnam

# data[].attributes.subject
Characteristics Prior to Her Transformation at Vietnam

# data[].attributes.body
Mary Anne is introduced as this innocent, attractive woman with a sweet and bubbly personality. She is very flirtatious with the soldiers. But she also had plans for the future: buy a luxurious house, get married to Mark Fossie, have 3 kids. ("From the sixth grade on they had known for a fact that someday they would be married, and live in a fine gingerbread house near Lake Erie, and have three healthy yellow-haired children..."). These are the desires of a traditional American woman, this is all she knows. Someone who has not had much experience away from American values only knowing what is expected of her or the social obligations of being a woman. She is oblivious and unbeknownst of the opportunities out there for her. All she knows is that she should get married and subject herself under the control of a husband, keep a positive personality at all times, and more.

# data[].attributes.body
Eddie Dimond describes her as this, calling her out for her bravery and fearless self, but pointing out her innocence and ignorance not understanding the real dangers of the war just yet.

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Characteristics & Actions After Mary's Transformation

# data[].attributes.subject
Characteristics & Actions After Mary's Transformation

# data[].attributes.body
"Mary Anne wasn't

afraid to get her hands bloody. At times, in fact, she seemed

fascinated by it...the adrenaline buzz that went with the job, that quick hot rush in your veins when the choppers settled down and you had to do things fast and right. No time for sorting through options, no thinking at all; you just stuck your hands in and started plugging up holes." Mary Anne loves the excitement and intensity of the war, she loves the rush of adrenaline and how empowering the war experience makes her feel. She is more happier, free to make the decisions she wants to make instead of complying to American's societal obligations of being a woman.

# data[].attributes.headline
Appearance During and After Mary's Transformation 

# data[].attributes.subject
Appearance During and After Mary's Transformation 

# data[].attributes.body
"The way she quickly fell into the habits of the bush. No cosmetics, no fingernail filing. She stopped

wearing jewelry, cut her hair short and wrapped it in a dark

green bandanna. Hygiene became a matter of small consequence...She wore a bush hat and filthy green fatigues; she carried the standard M-16

automatic assault rifle; her face was black with charcoal." This is Mary Anne now fully embodying this new side of her. She wants to experience the fullness of the war even physically, changing the way she looks to appear less "feminine".

"Her body seemed foreign somehow—too stiff in places, too firm where the softness used to be. The bubbliness was gone. The nervous giggling, too. When she laughed now, which was rare, it was only when something struck her as truly funny. Her voice seemed to reorganize itself at a lower pitch." Mary Anne is no longer the classic American woman she used to be, her personality has changed into a more serious, determined one.

# data[].attributes.body
Upset that Mary Anne has blossomed into this more powerful independent woman, Fossie tries to push her back into society's gender norms and expectations. He asked her to marry him, forcing her sooner into the role of a traditional housewife potentially when the war is over. Binding her to the traditional gender expectations of a wife, that you should always listen to your husband, make him comfortable, etc. But Mary Anne still tries to resist Fossie's attempts to convert her back into the "girly girl" she once was, naïve and innocent. Instead she chooses the war over him continuing to go out on dangerous missions with the Greenies.

# data[].attributes.body
She starts engaging in work that is typically done by her male counterparts. "She didn't back off from the ugly cases...she

learned how to clip an artery and pump up a plastic splint and

shoot in morphine...In her second week Eddie Diamond taught her how to disassemble an M-16, how the various parts worked, and from there it was a natural progression to learning how to use the weapon. For hours at a time she plunked away at C-ration cans...There was a new confidence in her voice, a

new authority in the way she carried herself." She is so focused on the war. It is all she cares about as she spends hours learning how to use and practice using weapons.

# data[].attributes.body
As Mary Anne becomes more involved in the war, this changes her past desires. All those talks about getting married, having kids, and living in a nice house doesn't excite her anymore. She begins to choose war life over these traditional wants ("But now there was a new imprecision in the way Mary Anne expressed her thoughts on certain subjects. Not necessarily three kids, she'd say. Not necessarily a house on Lake Erie. 'Naturally we'll still get married...'"). She has a better appreciation for life away from female American traditions. She understands the choices she has now, she can experience new things, its almost liberating for her in a sense.

# data[].attributes.headline
"At least for a moment she seemed to be the same pretty young girl who had arrived a few weeks earlier. She was barefoot. She wore her pink sweater and a white blouse and a simple cotton skirt...But the grotesque part, he said, was her jewelry. At the girl's throat was a necklace of human tongues."

# data[].attributes.subject
"At least for a moment she seemed to be the same pretty young girl who had arrived a few weeks earlier. She was barefoot. She wore her pink sweater and a white blouse and a simple cotton skirt...But the grotesque part, he said, was her jewelry. At the girl's throat was a necklace of human tongues."

# data[].attributes.body
When Mary Anne is mentioned like this towards the end of the narration of her, even though Mary Anne has completely immersed herself in the war experience, she is still herself. She hasn't completely changed, she is just more wiser more aware, and more knowledgeable. She understands now that there is more to life than subjecting herself to men, looking pretty, and doing domestic work later on in life.