Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret
As a film adaptation of Judy Blume’s iconic pre-teen novel Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret hits our screens, we asked three writers to share the piece of pop culture that would carve out their identities in the years to come…
Thank God for a book that showed pubescent girls are concerned with the meaning of life itself
I am nine years old, in the back of my parents’ car, about to spend a whole day on the motorway with an American author called Judy Blume. My dad has lived in America and seen how beloved she is by interesting people over there; he thinks Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret might be a good fit for a growing girl. I can’t believe how right he is and find I am pulled straight into the life of an anxious 11-year-old who has just left New York for a different life in the suburbs. I’m several pages in by the time we’ve even pulled out of my granny’s street to start the long drive home, but the girl in the book, Margaret, seems to be obsessed with – what’s this word, this thing her friends keep going on about getting – periods?
It seems to only happen to girls, apparently, so I decide to ask my mum. She goes red, glances at my dad and my brother – says she’ll tell me later, back at home. But home is ages away, I say, as we keep on driving. What does it mean? Why will nobody help me out with some vocabulary here?
Before we’ve even got back, I’ve read the whole thing, having just about deduced that something surprising happens to American girls when they get to a certain age. (I’m not entirely convinced this mystery thing is going to happen to me, though – it seems very New Jersey?) And I’ve been quietly giggling the whole way home as the group of four best friends try to make their boobs grow while chanting, ‘I must, I must, I must increase my bust.’ (Has anyone who’s read the book forgotten that line?)
I’m confused why my parents would recommend a book and then clam up about its contents. But this is exciting;
this is new. This isn’t like the fantasy adventures I have on my book shelf at home. And it’s a testimony to Judy Blume’s pure voice that I have persevered to the end without any idea of why these girls are getting something from a ‘drugstore’ to put inside their underwear.
Looking back now, decades later, I can see that what actually filtered through to me was that our heroine Margaret was not always nice and not always popular, but sometimes popular and sometimes nice. Like a real, flawed person. Like me. Even better, she was in dialogue with a friendly God whom she talked to in her bedroom. She asked him for help, for reassurance and for good stuff to happen to her. She wanted to know the bigger picture, to make some sense of what was going on and fill in the gaps between what the grown-ups had and hadn’t told her. I could feel her pain entirely.
Aged nine, I, too, had been taking myself off to church on Sunday mornings for some time, joining other families there while my own family stayed at home, slightly bemused by my calling. I had always felt God was watching me, seeing me, even though this was not the sort of thing that people seemed to talk to children about in 1980s Yorkshire. And, just like Margaret, I would go on to wonder if my own chest would ever develop, if I would be the last to get a bra, secretly scrutinising my reflection in the mirror, looking for a sign that something was going on there.
Thank God, then (if indeed you are there), for a book that showed that pubescent girls talk about sex and secrets and who they fancy, but are equally concerned with the meaning of life itself, or whether their parents are right to deny them a religious life.
Because only as an adult re-reading the book do I see that it is also the story of a mother whose judgemental Christian parents have abandoned her for marrying a Jew. Margaret’s father is trying to escape his spiritual background, too, but the book shows that family will find you in the end, though it doesn’t suggest there is a right way to respond when they do. Ultimately, Margaret’s mum and dad eventually allow her to make her own choices – something they were never allowed to do – and the family develops a closer, more trusting relationship. The entire lack of proscription is what makes Judy Blume so great. She never reads like an adult trying to tell a child what to do. She writes in the voices of the kids, watching and wondering, marvelling at the confusion and hypocrisy of the people who are supposed to be in charge.
P.S. I have not managed to get my own 11-year-old daughter into Judy Blume yet. It kills me. Why does she not jump on this stuff like I did? Is it because she knows it all already?