Watching the new movie version of Are You There God, which is in theaters this weekend, I suddenly realized how much my adolescent self had wanted to hide her existential yearning. No, what embarrassed me about the book was Margaret’s earnest search for meaning, her questions for God. I was self-conscious, sure, but only because having a human body is so inherently weird and puberty is the first time you realize that. It’s not the subject of puberty that disconcerted me - getting boobs and my period never embarrassed me (though referring to breasts as a bust has always made me cringe). But it’s also because I found the book just a touch mortifying. Partly that’s because the heroine didn’t wear petticoats or face the risk of an early death. I read it then and I liked it - it’s a quick little gulp of a book - but it didn’t reverberate in my sixth-grade psyche the way some other books did. This might be the only essay about Judy Blume’s Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret that does not start with a declaration of how much the book meant to me when I was 11 years old.
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