A Maryland mom of four recently got a phone call from her husband at the library. He wanted to know if Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret was OK to check out for their third grade daughter. He felt like there was something about this book that he should be remembering.
The girl’s mom immediately remembered the book—and the something. Any girl growing up during or after the 1970s probably read the book, which puts a high-beam spotlight on the experience and emotions of puberty.
I first came face to face with Are you there God? It’s Me Margaret in the back aisle of the tiny library of a Catholic elementary school in northern N.J. A huddle of girls were debating who would check out the book week after week, thereby preventing any boys from getting their hands on the sacred tome and getting any insights into what happens to girls.
Blume is now center stage once again with the release of her newest adult market novel, In the Unlikely Event, which takes readers back to New Jersey in the 1950s. As Blume makes her way through interviews and appearances, there is a lot of reminiscing over what she did for children’s literature in the 1970s. Plenty of moms are rereading the book to see if the something they remember is still something of consequence.
But it was some of Blume’s other books, such as Deenie and Forever, which dealt with masturbation and premarital sex, that would cement her status as a groundbreaking (riotous to some) author for the tween and teen set. Blume was simultaneously loved and loathed for her candid approach to sex—loved by adolescents of tight-lipped parents and loathed by those same parents.
Blume was one of the first authors to use fiction to give children information about puberty and sex, and she used a vocabulary that made many parents cringe (intercourse, menstruation, Playboy). Blume happily embraced the role of headmistress of the suburban sex-ed genre and sold millions of copies of her books in the process.
But as Blume reemerges, it is into a world that is culturally a universe away from 1970. Last week, Blume appeared in New York at an event moderated by Samantha Bee of Comedy Central. Bee read Blume an audience question: If she wrote another young adult novel would she incorporate today’s big social issues (gender identity to name one) into the plot line? Blume’s response was swift: “That’s issue writing,” she said, and “I don’t do issue writing. I do character writing.” She acknowledged that other writers could and probably would write those novels, it just wouldn’t be her.
Bee then asked Blume, “What do you think would be different in terms of your approach to puberty and religion” if she were writing Are you there God? It’s Me, Margaret today? The character of Margaret—a product of an interfaith marriage– is as interested in her own changing and developing body as she is in developing a relationship with a God. Margaret is constantly looking for and hoping for a higher force that would be “proud of me” –not a staple of mainstream young adult books today.
Blume expressed relief that she would never have to write the book again, saying, “I have no idea. I was writing from the point of view of the child I was.” In other words, she was writing before Madonna and MTV, the Kardashians, the Internet and Tinder. She was writing when sixth graders went to square dances and pharmacies made house calls to deliver “feminine supplies.”
Back in 1978, the New York Times ran an article, “Coming of Age with Judy Blume,” in which the reporter interviewed mothers and daughters about reading (or not wanting their daughters to read) Blume’s books. “If past generations were sometimes damaged by the sexual fears and inhibitions that came with knowing too little, it is too early, still, to know what will become of the generation raised on Judy Blume and her many imitators–children for whom very little remains mysterious,” the article concluded.
Fast forward to 2015: Blume’s reemergence happened to nearly coincide with the release of the Bruce-turned-Caitlyn Jenner Vanity Fair cover, a media moment intended to convey that nothing that is biological is intimate anymore (unlike the secret meetings of the Pre-Teen Sensations that Margaret and her friends held in Are You There, God?) and the path to becoming a woman is not always how Blume explained it vis-à-vis Margaret.
Blume said in a June interview that she hasn’t lost touch with her childhood. But one wonders if the era of her childhood is relevant anymore. While my daughters and nieces may read Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, the influences and pressures on children today begin well before puberty, and the information available to kids on their iPads and at the checkout counter are far different than they were in Blume’s childhood (she’s 77) or even my own.
The age of Judy Blume’s Margaret is long dead. What confronts girls today – girls far younger than Blume’s protagonist Margaret—is a world of pseudosophistication that unfortunately is more interested in their “issues” than their character. Blume’s biology lessons seem quaint in comparison.
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