Judy Blume Doesn’t Miss Writing. She’s Not Afraid of Dying, Either
variety.comPrologue At the start of the 1950s, in the suburbs of Elizabeth, N.J., a nearly teenage Judy Blume found herself at odds with the rhythms of her body.
She hadn’t inherited her Aunt Gert’s large breasts. (“My mother worried terribly that I would take after my father’s sister, who had to have bras made to fit her,” says Judy, now 85. “I always say she worried them right off me!”) And she hadn’t yet started her period. (“I wanted it so desperately.
But when I finally got it, I couldn’t tell anybody, because I had told them I had gotten it in the sixth grade!”) She had discovered the joys of self-stimulation, but she was suffering from a lack of privacy. (“When I went to summer camp, it was like, ‘How am I gonna get through eight weeks here and never touch my special place?’”) There were consolations along the way.
Her friends had bigger chests than hers, sure, but they were kind and honest, and all just as keen as she was to discuss things like masturbation, even if they hadn’t learned the word yet.
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