Why We Still Need Judy Blume

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In third grade, a friend told me I was a crybaby. My reaction, naturally, was to cry.

I cry at any (and all) big emotions, happy or sad. I cried throughout my wedding day; I cry thinking about my dog; I cry when I get into an argument. Watching the adaptation of Judy Blume’s Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret, I was blubbering throughout the last scenes of the film—and I was teary when I streamed Judy Blume Forever, the new documentary about the author’s life. So you’ll never guess what happened when I spoke with Judy Blume herself.

Though we are just on Zoom, and the conversation is for my job, I feel the need to confess how much she's meant to me—and I suddenly want to tell her about when I got my period for the first time. But I am not there to recount my life to Blume (though I’m sure she would’ve listened), I am there to talk to her about the upcoming documentary about her life and the film adaptation of her seminal work, Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret premiering within the same week.

Early on in the interview, I ask about her first reaction to watching the adaptation of Margaret. She goes silent for a moment, and takes a big, deep breath. Tearing up, she says, “It just broke my heart in the best possible way.” Her voice cracking, she continues, “It’s the book—no one who likes the book will be disappointed. But it's so much more than the book, because you get to meet Margaret's mom.” (At this point, I’m crying, too.) “I’m the biggest fan of this movie you will ever meet.”

First published in 1970, Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret follows Margaret Simon as she navigates the general trials and tribulations of puberty. The 2023 film, written for the screen and directed by Kelly Fremon Craig, stars Abby Ryder Fortson as Margaret and Rachel McAdams as her mom, Barbara. The movie vividly captures the tender vulnerability of Blume’s novel and brings the viewer right back to when they read the book for the first time. It also expands greatly the character of Barbara, showing her struggles adjusting to suburban mom life.

I ask Blume, “If you could tell the Judy that published Margaret in 1970 that the book would be made into a major motion picture over 50 years later, what do you think her reaction would be?” She replies, “Are you crazy?!”

“I never thought beyond getting published,” Blume continues. “That was a huge thing. Please, please, please, someday let me get published, and then please, please let people read my books and maybe I'll hear from them… But have the most wonderful film made of it? Never. Never occurred to me.”

As her books soared in popularity, she took an adaptation of Margaret off the table, even as she green-lit projects based on other novels. (A TV film based on Forever... premiered in 1978; Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great in 1988; Fudge-a-Mania became a TV show in the 90s.) “I said, no, we're never making this one because I don't wanna ruin it. I don't wanna ruin it for the people who love it.” What changed her mind, Blume says, is that she realized “somebody's gonna make this movie after I'm dead. I think I'd rather be here still, and have the experience.”

The magic of Blume’s Margaret novel, director Kelly Fremon Craig tells T&C, is that “anybody who reads it, any decade, feels like it's about them. It’s about their contemporary experience. That's how I felt in 1990 when I read it at 11: I had no clue that it was written in 1970.” Craig read Blume “religiously” growing up, explaining, “I felt so adrift, awkward in my skin, unsure about my body and my friends—everything about myself I was unsure about. I felt like her books said, ‘We all feel that way.’ It helped to know I wasn’t the only one,” she says.

Craig pitched the adaptation to Blume by her writing a letter in which she poured her heart out, telling the author about all the ways Margaret struck her anew in the present day, including how “the uncertainty of adolescence triggers these larger existential questions.”

Though Margaret was written in 1970, the story feels as relevant as ever in 2023. “If you think to yourself, ‘Oh, I'm going to write this book and it's gonna be timeless,’ forget it!” Blume says. “It’s just what comes out from deep inside. I'm not an analytical person; I never analyzed what I was writing, I was just trying to tell the best story that I could.”

Blume's words still capture the emotions and struggles of tweens today. Benny Safdie, the filmmaker and actor who plays Margaret's father Herb in the film, says that reading the author's books has helped him understand his sons. “The way she describes their issues and feelings is so spot-on to reality,” he tells T&C. “The way that she enters the brains of people, and explains them in such a way that just feels so real, is like a magical superpower.”

Safdie, who has directed films such as Uncut Gems and Good Time with his brother, Josh Safdie, and appeared as an actor in films like Licorice Pizza and the upcoming Oppenheimer, describes Blume's work as “what you strive for as a creator.” He says, “If I'm writing something, or directing something, or even acting in something, the idea is you want it to be these real thoughts and feelings; the goal is realism. For her, she's tackling so many things that are on the surface simple, but also very complicated—and dealing with them from multiple points of view, within the same stories, in a way that's non-threatening.” He adds that Blume's books do “what any kind of great work of art does: it gives you insight into other people's points of view, and allows you to understand it.”

Perhaps this realism, grounded in what children actually experience, is what has made Blume's work remain so potent through the decades. “I never analyzed what I was writing,” Blume says, “I was just trying to tell the best story that I could.” Earlier this year, Blume said she thinks the Margaret movie is better than the book. (Craig’s reaction to hearing that praise? “It is so overwhelming, and the greatest compliment of my life.”)

While Blume is an open book speaking about the Margaret movie, she’s more reluctant to discuss the Judy Blume Forever documentary. “It's hard to talk about it—because it's my life and my work and I don't really like to talk about that,” Blume says. (Ahead of our conversation, Judy Blume Forever directors Davina Pardo and Leah Wolchok told me not to ask Blume what she thinks of her legacy. “She hates that question,” they warned.) The documentary, out now on Prime Video, grapples directly with Blume’s life and impact. After years of Pardo pitching her the idea, Blume finally committed to the project. “She said she loves persistence and determination.”

Going into the film, Pardo adds, “I knew that she was a trailblazer. I knew that she wrote about things that we weren't talking about with our parents—she wasn't afraid to talk about masturbation and sex. I didn't realize what a trailblazer she was in her life in every way. I didn't realize how deeply she was constantly pushing back against societal expectations. She was going head to head with right wing sensors all through the 80s. Her general badass approach to everything she did was a great surprise.”

Judy Blume Forever, notably, addresses Blume’s activism with regard to book bans. “She’s such a fierce advocate for the freedom to read and the freedom of expression,” Wolchok says. “You see the archive clip of her at a school board meeting, saying, ‘No one's thinking about the children here!’ She is such a defender of having respect for children, trusting children and trusting them that they can make decisions. That they have feelings that need to be honored.”

However reluctant she is to talk about her legacy vis-à-vis Judy Blume Forever, Blume lights up speaking about how the film focuses on her work fighting censorship. “A lot of attention in the documentary is paid to the book banning of the 80s, never knowing that by the time it was coming out we would be right back there,” she says. “I mean, it never went away completely. We were never rid of it totally. But this huge push to ban books, this need to decide what's right, not just for your kids, but for all kids… This is where we are today.”

Book banning “always felt relevant” to the film they were creating, Pardo explains. “We always knew we would talk to banned book authors—books have been banned continuously since the 80s, but it's definitely at a crest right now. That's heated up in a way that we didn't necessarily know was going to happen.”

Blume, who lives in Key West, is distressed as she asks me about what’s happening in her home state of Florida right now. Did you see the “legislator saying girls younger than fifth or sixth grade are not allowed to talk about periods?” she says. Yes, I had, I tell her. “What is with that? Come on!”

Blume continues, “You're not gonna stop kids from thinking. You're not gonna stop kids from wondering, from wanting to know, from wanting to talk about things that are important to them. You can't legislate that. That's crazy. It's beyond crazy; it's scary. It is really scary to think that people are thinking this way, to control what kids can read about, what they can know about, what they can ask questions about.”

It’s not just discussions of menstruation and puberty that Blume believes are important for kids—but conversations about all aspects of their life. While a recent interview with the Sunday Times implied she supported the controversial Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling’s transphobic views, Blume quickly clarified online, writing, in part, “I stand with the trans community and vehemently disagree with anyone who does not fully support equality and acceptance for LGBTQIA+ people. Anything to the contrary is total bullshit.”

The books at the center of bans today are often ones that feature frank discussions of race, sexuality, and gender identity. According to PEN America, the books at the top of banned lists in 2022 include Gender Queer: A Memoir by Maia Kobabe, a memoir about what it means to be nonbinary and asexual (which Blume recently read and called “wonderfully enlightening”) and All Boys Aren’t Blue: A Memoir-Manifesto by George M. Johnson, a series of essays about being a young Black queer man in America. Kids should get to read what they want, Blume believes. She’s not just advocating for books about puberty, but books about life. Reading, she says, “is how we learn empathy. We learn to be empathetic because we read books about people and see other things other than ourselves.”

What gives Blume hope are the kids, and adults, speaking out. “If we sit back, kids can lose their right to their freedoms to read, their freedoms to know,” she says. “We're much more aware now and much more willing to speak out.” This politically charged moment makes the environment in which Judy Blume Forever and Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret coming out (within one week of each other) feel right. “It wasn’t planned to be that way,” Blume says. “It’s strange.”

Strange, yes, but perhaps it’s what we need. Because though Blume never set out for her work to be timeless, or to spend decades advocating for letting children decide what they want to read, her work and advocacy remains vital today. “Judy represents something so honest and true, that it feels really right that she's having this moment,” Craig says. “My hope is that it means this next generation reads and loves her, and she just keeps on keeping on, especially now.”

Maybe her legacy is the power of her truth-telling—and the emotion she evokes in generations of women. Because even for those who aren’t criers, strong feelings are not an uncommon reaction to meeting Blume. “She was everything I hoped she would be,” Pardo tells T&C of meeting the famous author in person for the first time. “She's so warm and open. When you sit down with her, you immediately want to tell her everything. The same feeling you get reading her books—of safety and understanding and nonjudgmental-ness—is the feeling you get when you're with her.”

The two words “Judy Blume” don't even necessarily make you think of Judy Blume, the person; they conjure that precious time in childhood: right on the cusp of puberty and not being sure of what's next. “Women have such an emotional attachment to Judy because she reminds them of their childhoods,” Wolchok says. “They hear her name and it brings them back to the child they were—even without thinking of a specific character, a specific story, specific book.”

Watching Judy Blume Forever, and Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret, it's hard not to think about my own childhood, and the role Blume played in it with her books. Hers is a legacy of candor and of truth. Or as Judy Blume Forever's Wolchok put it: “Her legacy is a legacy of honesty: Honesty about your feelings, honesty about your relationships, honesty about your mistakes, honesty about the complicated essence of being a human.”

To that, I'll add my own honest (and teary) feelings: Thank god for Judy Blume.

Judy Blume Forever is now streaming on Prime Video. Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret premieres in theaters on Friday, April 28.

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