“Why ‘Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret’ Still Matters”, The New York Times
By Elisabeth Egan, Essay, April 27, 2023
Judy Blume’s coming-of-age story finally hits the big screen this month. The book will always have a spotlight of its own.
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When I arrived at the Crosby Street Hotel for a screening of “Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret?,” a man in the lobby located my name on a list, then directed me to a line for the coat check. I heard the crowd before I saw it.
The hip Soho hangout was abuzz with laughing, chatting, selfie-snapping, champagne-sipping fans of the novel that launched a thousand breast enhancement exercises and frank conversations about puberty. One table was piled high with copies of Blume’s book, another with personalized diaries. Mine said, “Are You There, God? It’s Me, Elisabeth.”
Unfortunately, I’d stopped reading the invitation after “Please join us for an afternoon with Judy Blume”; what more did I need to know? Alas, this gathering wasn’t going to be the intimate affair I’d imagined, the one where Blume and I sat in an empty theater and bonded over a box of Milk Duds. This was an event, with a photographer, two hashtags — #itsmemargaret and #margaretmoment — and humans of every age, gender, race and manner of ironic eyewear one-upping each other’s devotion to the story we were there to celebrate. Words like “obsessed” and “adore” hovered over the room, heavy with italics.
“You don’t understand,” a stranger said. “I am Margaret.”
Of course I understood. I was Margaret, too. So were all my friends, and maybe yours.
It would be hard to overstate how important the book “Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret” was to the girls of Generation X, especially the subset I grew up with a few exits north of the (fictional) New Jersey suburb where it takes place.
We were girls who loved puffy stickers, fruit roll-ups, jelly shoes, Madonna bracelets and Cabbage Patch Kids. We were told we were equal, but “boys will be boys” was still a perfectly acceptable response to boorish behavior. We didn’t have a word for bullying. We didn’t have Google. If we were lucky, we had call waiting. If we were really lucky, we had a rotary phone with a cord that stretched to our bedroom. Movies were in theaters, music was on the radio and news landed on the front steps once a day with a thud. Books were made of paper.
Into this siloed world marched Judy Blume, bearing news of other tweens (a term that hadn’t been coined yet). “Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret?” was her clarion call.
To us, Margaret Simon wasn’t a character, she was a proxy — for the girl who stuffed socks in her bra, who felt uncomfortable in her own skin; for the girl who was homesick for a friend who had matured overnight or moved away or turned mean; for the girl who struggled to make sense of the diagrams on the origami-folded instructions inside the tampon box.
We watched The Movie in health class, snickering when our red-faced instructor stepped out for a smoke. We had The Book, with its old-fashioned false cheer: “You’re becoming a woman! Swell!”Maybe our parents gave us The Talk, maybe they didn’t. Best-case scenario, they leaned into “uterus,” “ovaries” and “fallopian tubes,” skipping “sperm” altogether. Ohandbythewaytherearepadsunderthebathroomsink.
But we still had so many questions, ones we barely had the language to articulate and only dared to whisper in the dark during a sleepover. Margaret asked these questions, and Blume answered with candor and respect.
She spoke at the Crosby before the lights dimmed — the actual Judy Blume, now 85, warmly self-deprecating but also clearly accustomed to the roar of applause that accompanied her to the podium. She talked about why, 52 years after entering the world, “Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret” was ready for film. She said it was her most personal book, written for her daughter, now in her early 60s. She thanked her childhood friends for being there. The fact that they were says something about Judy Blume.
“Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret?” has evolved over the years. Clockwise from left: The original 1970 cover, followed by versions published in 1982, 1991 and 2014.
I’ll admit, I showed up at the screening ready to nitpick and quibble. What if the movie was terrible? What if it failed to capture the essence of Margaret or the Garden State or the freewheeling but rule-bound era I remembered? Even worse — the very idea made me ill — what if the movie eclipsed the book?
By the time the Simon family moved from Manhattan to Morningbird Lane, I’d untucked from my defensive crouch. By the time Margaret started sixth grade (sockless, per the instruction of her bossy neighbor), I’d shrugged off my mantle of quality control.
Here’s what you need to know about the movie, which lands in theaters on April 28: It’s faithful to the book. It captures the vulnerability, curiosity, occasional cruelty and unvarnished potential of a person on the brink of adolescence. I’ve been an 11-year-old, I’ve been the mother of three 11-year-olds, and it still gave me a fresh look at this complicated and dazzling age.
Halfway through, a memory surfaced, as crisp as the picture in front of me. I was in fifth grade, in my bedroom, recuperating from a pelvic fracture sustained when I was hit by a car on my way home from school. The agony of it was so exquisite, I have yet to experience anything like it again — not during childbirth, not when a green sprinkle lodged itself in my eye for two weeks, not after I tumbled off a speeding Segway in Budapest and broke three ribs and an elbow.
Desperate for distraction, unable to do anything but lie still, I grabbed a novel from my night stand. You can guess what it was.
How Margaret landed in my room that day is a mystery. Maybe I borrowed the book from a friend or checked it out of the library. Maybe my sister left it for me, or my grandmother, who blazed into town while I was in the hospital. My parents were unlikely culprits; they were, understandably, distracted, plus my mom put Judy Blume in the same category as Barbies: too much, too graphic, not for us.
“Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret” was among the first books I read in a single day, inhaling it as the light changed on my bedspread.
In the late afternoon, the school principal stopped by to see me. I didn’t really know Mrs. Murray — I wasn’t a troublemaker, I wasn’t gifted — but there she was, perched on the edge of my bed, filling my room with her pungent perfume. Because I had “We must, we must, we must increase our bust” on the brain, I couldn’t help noticing that her blouse was so sheer, I could count the hook and eye closures marching up the back of her bra.
While I answered Mrs. Murray’s questions — Had I received the cards from my class? Did I need anything from my cubby? — I tried to ignore the parallel inquisition happening inside my head: Did she think my “Peanuts” sheets were babyish? Was she grossed out by my injury, close as it was to my uterus? Most pressing of all: Would Mrs. Murray notice the title of the paperback I tried to hide under my palm?
I didn’t want the principal to know I was reading about periods and breasts. What if she told my teacher? What if he thought I was a pervert? I’d like to think a modern 11-year-old wouldn’t be so racked with mortification but, trust me, the ’80s were a different time.
After she sipped the tea my mom delivered, after the three of us brainstormed crutch-friendly Halloween costumes, Mrs. Murray hefted her pocketbook onto one shoulder and got up to leave. But first, she tapped her burgundy nails on the cover of “Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret,” resting an index finger gently on Margaret’s face.
“That’s such a good one,” she said. “Enjoy.”
There was no brass band, no thunderbolt. The earth didn’t move under my feet. There was just a spark of recognition: fellow reader, kindred spirit. That was it. #mymargaretmoment.
There’s an intimacy to a book that we can’t get from a movie or a TV show, no matter how true it is — even in 3-D, in the highest of high def. You can’t hold a movie with both hands. You can’t smell it or put your initials on it or underline your favorite parts. You can’t read the names of other people who checked it out of the library, fellow detectives on the trail of life. You can’t pass it on to your own kids.
A movie lets you watch; a book invites you in. A much-loved one might even fall open to your favorite page. A book will find you when you need it most and show you what you want to know at the exact pace you’re able to absorb the words. It has a strong spine and a sturdy binding, just like Margaret herself.
When the credits rolled and the theater brightened, I wasn’t the only tear-streaked person clutching a sodden tissue. And of course, there was Judy Blume, thanking every guest at the door of the theater. Two hours earlier, meeting her would have been the highlight of my adult life; now, she was a much-admired obstacle to be navigated before I called my sister, crying, and then boarded the train home to New Jersey, where I cried some more.
There were so many things I wanted to say: You showed me how honesty can suck the sting out of just about everything — worry, embarrassment, loneliness, fear, even the bafflements of the human body. You taught me that nothing is unspeakable. Margaret will always have a place on my shelf. And, just curious/no pressure, have you considered a sequel about menopause? Did Margaret suffer from insomnia? Did she have any luck with melatonin?
But when it was my turn to say goodbye to Judy Blume, I only managed to choke out two words: “Thank you.”
Her response echoed the message we found in her books — the one on the flag she planted at the threshold of adolescence, which still waves today. She looked me in the eye and said, simply, “You’re welcome.”