CATY BORUM: Welcome to We Disrupt This Broadcast. I’m your host, Caty Borum, filling in for Gabe González. I’m also one of the executive producers behind your favorite podcast produced by the Peabody Awards and the Center for Media and Social Impact. Oh yes, I’m talking about this very podcast. Today’s first guest is a really special treat.
She’s a beloved book author whose intimate stories inspired millions of children and young people, especially girls to ask questions about their bodies and sexuality and their emotional lives and relationships during that tricky, horrible, weird time between, you know, being a kid and becoming a teen. I mean, did any of us know what we were doing or thinking in those confusing years around middle school?
It did feel like one particular writer really did get it and we loved her for it. And we got to talk to her. Oh yes, we’re talking about the legendary Judy Blume, author of books like Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret, Forever, Tiger Eyes, and so many others. And if you were a girl growing up in the last 40 years or so, these were essential reading books passed down from moms to girls and big brothers and sisters to little sisters and brothers everywhere.
And for any young reader who was a Judy Blume fan back in the day and didn’t know much about her, the 2023 documentary about her life titled Judy Bloom Forever took viewers on a pretty incredible journey to learn all the things. In the film, directors Davina Pardo and Leah Wolchok introduce us to Judy herself, from her earliest days as a writer and a young mom through the culture wars of the 1980s to book banning today.
In the film, they really show us all the ways she was this quiet revolutionary and wise big sister to so many of us. And in 2024, Judy Blume Forever won a Peabody Award in the documentary category. We hope that means that even more people will be inspired to learn about her and the incredible impact that she had in the past, present, and the future.
Are you there, God? If you are, please remember to subscribe to the podcast and don’t go anywhere. We’ll be right back with Judy Blume after the break.
CATY BORUM: Welcome back. I got to channel millions of former teen girls, and really anyone who found puberty confusing, when I interviewed Judy Blume. We talked about all the things, from the intimate relationship between authors and readers, book bans, why her biographer is probably mad at her, uh oh, and also the Barbie movie.
So, welcome and hello to Judy Blume.
JUDY BLUME: Well, thank you.
CATY BORUM: And Judy, it is just such an honor and so exciting for all of us that work on We Disrupt This Broadcast to talk to you. Okay, Judy Bloom. I want to start this conversation really in the spirit of Judy Bloom and your many, many intergenerational fans, with a question that comes from Abby O’Donnell, age 14.
What really inspired you to write about the things you wrote about for young people, but especially girls and young women? And I want to place this question really in proper and meaningful historic context. You came of age when women were really discouraged from talking about their emotions and their inner lives and their bodies. And so your books were really revolutionary, especially for young women.
JUDY BLUME: Yeah, I have to say first of all, just set the record straight, I had no idea what I was doing. Let’s understand that. You know, all these years later everybody is now telling me and the documentary showed me, Oh, look at that. Look what I was doing. But I as this young woman who had this kind of desperate need for creative work just started to write, I wrote about what I knew about.
And, you know, I was in my mid to late twenties. I had two little kids, but really the girl that I was was right there. You know, it was just yesterday that I had been that girl. It still is that way for me. So, and I was very lucky because I had friends and we talked to each other. We talked about a lot of intimate things before we even knew what we were talking about.
I mean, you know, we all had questions. A lot of us came up with the wrong answers to the questions, you know, things that had been heard. Oh, my babysitter told me this or, you know, crazy things.
CATY BORUM: Yeah. It’s so interesting, something that you just said that the documentary in a way kind of showed you a lens into the meaning that you had in people’s lives. I wonder if you can talk about that.
JUDY BLUME: You write a book, you’re telling a story first for yourself, and then you read in some review what you did. And sometimes it’s generous and sometimes it’s not. And you say, oh, really, is that what I was writing? And this is kind of the same thing. I’ve always thought that it’s an intimate kind of relationship between the book and the reader, in a way, me and the reader, through the characters in the book, letting the reader know that she or he or they were not alone. You know, you’re not the only one. You might feel that you are, but you’re not. And hopefully that would be comforting.
CATY BORUM: Well, I wanted to ask you, you know, one of the most affecting parts of the documentary about your life was how much we learned about all the letters that young people wrote to you. And I guess I wanted to start by saying like, I feel like all those people went on to become very successful because I might have wanted to write a letter to Judy Blume, but I would have never known how to do that.
But the piece that comes to life in the documentary is how much young people felt like you were this safe space to ask questions. The fact that they even said, you know, Dear Judy, how did it feel to get those letters? And were you surprised by really the depth and the sheer volume of them?
JUDY BLUME: Well, at first it was shocking, you know, I, I mean, when you sit down and you write your book, this was me anyway, my fantasy was, first, maybe someday I’ll get published. And then you get greedier and maybe someday somebody will really read this book. And then the greediest of all fantasies was that maybe someday I’ll hear from someone who has read one of my books.
CATY BORUM: Let’s listen to a clip from the documentary, Judy Blume Forever.
CLIP: Judy Blume Forever
I’ve always been emotional about their letters, that they would pour their hearts out in this way.
Dear Judy, please send me the facts of life in number order.
Dear Judy, I wanted to tell you that I have a million problems.
Today was the worst day of my entire life. Everything at school has gone wrong.
It isn’t easy being a little kid. It’s really not. Kids opened up to me in a way that I think they felt they couldn’t to their parents…
JUDY BLUME: So to receive those first letters was a huge surprise. And it became, ultimately, when you saw some of those boxes, I think you only see one box in the documentary, but there were hundreds of those boxes. And it became an overwhelming responsibility.
And for some years, It stopped me from writing. I couldn’t write because I was so, you know, overcome by their letters and what they were telling me. And so I went to a therapist who helped me be able to separate a little bit. And to be a supportive friend, a supportive adult friend. When I learned more about how to be a helper, I learned that I could contact professionals in their neighborhoods, you know, wherever they were living and tried to always send them something. You can call this number.
CATY BORUM: It was so clear in the documentary that the depth of the letters is such a testament to how much they each felt like you were writing to them.
JUDY BLUME: Yes, they trusted me because I do believe that it is easier to spill your guts to a stranger. But someone that you trust, someone that you don’t have to face at the breakfast table the next morning, you know, someone who can’t use any of this against you.
And so the act of taking up a pencil and writing it out. I mean, that’s what I’ve always said. And that’s what I still do. I like to have that pencil in my hand and I like to write it out by hand, whatever it is, if it’s bothering me, you know, just write it down, put it away, have a notebook, just, you know, keep it there. I’ve since burned those things. My biographer is not happy about that.
CATY BORUM: So I want to ask you about last summer’s unexpected feminist hit, Barbie, which was sort of this sneaky feminist manifesto that maybe no one saw coming. But there’s this scene in the movie, and I should say that I’ve seen this four times, I took my daughter, I went with women my age, I took my love, and there’s a scene in the film that makes me cry.
I think it’s the thesis of the film, and it’s the moment when she’s in the boardroom at Mattel, and real life Barbie is out asking questions about her life, and she’s surrounded by a group of men and they say, Barbie, can you just get back in the box? Can you just get back in the box and life will go back?
Right? And it’s such a literal, the most visual metaphor. And Barbie gets back in the Mattel box. And she stands there and as the plastic is about to go around her wrists, she breaks into a sprint. And in a way that scene reminded me when I was watching the documentary about your life, there’s the scene during the sort of culture wars of the 80s where a young Pat Buchanan turns to you and sort of firing questions at you.
And he says, Well, you look like a nice lady. And the sort of implication is like, as a nice lady, or Barbie, right? Should you be asking questions and rattling things? And I think I just wanted to know how that strikes you, that the idea that you’re a nice lady, what does a nice lady do or not do?
JUDY BLUME: I hate that. I don’t ever want to be called a nice lady.
CATY BORUM: Right.
JUDY BLUME: I was. That Barbie in the box in my own life I mean not Barbie, but yes, it was get back in the box Judy and be a good girl, and don’t break the rules. I mean that was my mother, my husband. That’s how it was. And writing I didn’t, I wasn’t aware of it really then but writing gave me a way out of the box. Writing let me come out of the box and never get back into it.
Writing changed my life. Writing gave me everything and totally changed my life. And we have to make it happen ourselves. We can’t wait for somebody else to. It’s great to know that there are other people out there marching and saying, this is what we believe. And you can say, yes, I believe that too, but you still have to be the one to get out of the box, jump out, cut free. Yeah.
CATY BORUM: I so agree with you in all the ways. I so agree. So I want to switch to something that the documentary touches on. And you’ve mentioned that book bans these days are even worse than the ones that we were in in the 1980s, particularly because these bans are being codified into law.
And I guess what we were curious about is not only to ask your perspective on why this is so dangerous, but what do you think people are afraid of? Thinking really specifically about the topics of your own books for kids, what are people so afraid of that they would ban the books?
JUDY BLUME: If you could see a picture of me now, my hands are up in the air, and I’m like, oh! It’s, you know, it’s, is it fear? I used to say it was fear, fear of, you know, I don’t want this to happen to my child. If my child doesn’t read about it or know about it, it’s never going to happen. I’ll never have to talk about it. Now, you know, I live in Key West, which we like to pretend is not in the state of Florida, but unfortunately it is.
And Florida is, you know, at the top of the book banning states. And what is it? I mean, it’s become political. I don’t know that it was so political in the 80s. It was this fear of having to do it. It’s like, I want to be the one to tell my child. And I would, in the days when I would actually argue about this was ridiculous.
CATY BORUM: Let’s listen to a clip from the doc.
CLIP: Judy Blume Forever
Now I looked at several of these Miss Blume, and one of them talks about masturbation. Another one talks about a little boy who’s a, who is window peeping on his neighbor, a little girl. The other one talks about somebody throwing up.
Throwing up is sex?
Well, it has to do with bodily functions. What is all this doing in a book for 10 year olds?
There is no preoccupation with it. I, uh, did you read the whole book, or did you just read pages that were paperclipped?
Pat Buchanan, coming after me, you know, it’s like he had a hammer. And it’s like, whoa, what is with you?
Why can’t 10 year olds, you write an interesting, exciting book for 10 year olds, without getting into a discussion of masturbation?
He was attacking me and reading pages out of context.
First of all, Deenie is not about masturbation. It’s about a girl with scoliosis.
And he kept going at me how that’s not normal and what a terrible thing. And finally, I said to him, Are you hung up about masturbation?
You are…
JUDY BLUME: Today, you know, they have so many words for it and they would say, you know, this person is trying to indoctrinate my children. This person is trying to turn my child into something. But you know, puberty is not a dirty subject, and it’s something that’s going to happen to every child, whether the parent likes it or not. And are you doing anything that’s going to help your kids? to prepare your kids to understand? Or are we going to go back to, you know, the women who wrote to me about getting their first periods in school and they didn’t know what was happening to them.
And one woman wrote about, she thought she was dying. And rather than tell her mother this, she hid the evidence because she didn’t want her mother to be worried that her daughter was dying. What a terrible thing to do when it’s natural and normal and something to celebrate, I think. So the book banners are just, I don’t even know what a safe book would be. You know, if you come into my bookstore, we have a little area that’s taped off, you know, where these are banned books, but really we could put that tape anywhere in the store, on any shelf, in any department, because books are there to make you think.
We want people to read books and think. And it’s as if thinking to those who would ban, they would ban thoughts if they could. I mean, remember the lawmaker in Florida who said no girls will be allowed to talk about menstruation on the school grounds, or even at the bus stop, or maybe ever.
CATY BORUM: It’s crazy.
JUDY BLUME: You know, how are you going to control that? What is that all about? It’s, I don’t know, it’s. Life is difficult enough to navigate without not being allowed to read. I just had a teacher at the store this week and I asked her how she was doing. She wasn’t in Florida. She was someplace else. And she said, Oh, well, you know, I don’t have a library anymore in my school.
She might’ve been the librarian. I don’t have a library in my school, there are no physical books that children can check out, but I have an online library and they can sign up and get a book, you know, an ebook.
But you know, kids still love to have that physical book. They love to hold onto that book. I do too. I mean, I understand and appreciate audio books very much and eBooks too, but to take away the physical books from a school rather than, you know, allow children to come in and freely choose books and check them out. That is, that is crazy. And that fear is crazy. And I don’t know where it’s all going to go.
CATY BORUM: I mean, I think, you know, in some ways it goes back to that Barbie box. I mean, not just for young women, of course, but the idea of getting back in the box means can you please just not ask questions and just do what you’re told?
JUDY BLUME: Exactly. Yes. Yeah.
CATY BORUM: So thinking about the trajectory of your writing life, and you ended up writing about so many different topics, but I would say, you know, from a reader’s perspective, the through line is this intimacy and this space that you create that feels very real. I wonder if you have any words of advice or inspiration for the Judy Blumes who may come in the future, who may face pressure and backlash?
JUDY BLUME: Oh, well, you can’t worry about that and write. You have to be free. You know, you have to give yourself that freedom. You have to kick the censor off one shoulder and kick the critic off the other.
And you can’t think about any, you really can’t think about anything while you’re writing, except be in that world that you’re creating with your characters. because your own fear will stop you from going where you need to go. So you read, I don’t know how you do it. I only know you can do it. And you do it because that’s your imagination.
You know, you can’t think about how this book is going to be received when you finish. I don’t know how I did that. I, you know what? I was a very fearful child. And I turned into a fearless writer. I just didn’t, whether I didn’t know enough to be worried or afraid, or I, you know, I just did what came out naturally and what needed to come out.
And without the fear, which is so interesting to me, having been, you know, a fearful child. And maybe even I have some fears and anxieties in my life now, but never when I’m writing. And so that’s another way that writing, you know, gave me everything, saved me.
CATY BORUM: Well, I love that. And what a great, inspiring way to end. Thank you so much for being here with us. And we’re all so grateful for your work and very grateful that a documentary exists that we can send people to learn more about you. So thank you, Judy Blume.
JUDY BLUME: Thank you so much. Thank you for having me and thank you for doing such a lovely job with me. Thank you.
CATY BORUM: That is a wrap on Judy Blume. And I’m here to say that she’s even more wonderful than we all even imagined. And that’s really saying something. So thank you again to Judy Blume for her time, stories and incredible wisdom. During the break, I’ll be looking at my banned books list and thinking about which ones I’m going to pass around. But when we come back, I chat with author Chelsey Goodan.
Welcome back to We Disrupt This Broadcast. I’m Caty Borum filling in for Gabe González. Up next, I talk with fellow Judy Blume fan and teenage girl whisperer Chelsey Goodan, author of the USA Today bestselling book Underestimated: the Wisdom and Power of Teenage Girls. We are so happy to have you, Chelsey.
CHELSEY GOODAN: Hi. Thank you. I couldn’t be happier to be here. Thank you for having me.
CATY BORUM: So I just want to jump in. You know, we know that you just watched the documentary Judy Blume Forever and you’re a fan just like us. So we wanted to ask you, why is it so important for teenage girls to actually own and tell the narrative of who they are instead of others telling them over and over again who they believe they might be?
CHELSEY GOODAN: I’m always saying phrase everything like a question when you’re engaging with teenage girls, like what do you think? You know, what do you think the solution is? And the girls have really smart answers. And that’s why my book’s named Underestimated, right? We are underestimating how much these girls can be a part of the conversation and give really valuable input, where then they can have agency for their own choices and really own them. And that is what empowerment is.
And it has so much to do with actually respecting their voice, letting them speak, and then letting them share their feelings too. People are really scared of big feelings. Right? Yet again, another thing teenage girls are characterized for, and that is something Judy Blume was like, bring the feelings, right? Like she honored the complexity and dynamic experience of a girl exploring her identity through her feelings, through her friends, through her sexuality and her body, like that is so valuable.
CATY BORUM: Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. And I think the idea of the cultural box, as it is imposed on young girls and young women, is really just enforcing the patriarchy, right? It’s the idea that if you keep yourself small without even knowing that you’re keeping yourself small, the system allows the power dynamics to stay exactly where they are, right?
CHELSEY GOODAN: So that is a huge thing girls bring up with me, which is this idea that girls are supposed to be humble and self deprecating and not have an ego or arrogance. Like we for some reason come so hard at girls at a young age about that totally make themselves small.
And you know I have a chapter all in power and how we’ve characterized it in a masculine narrative because men have historically been in power as domination, oppression, violence, status, wealth. And the girls that I work with are like, I don’t want to have power because they look at that and they’re like, I don’t want that, right? Like, that doesn’t include me. That hasn’t worked out well for us as a society. And that is kind of the box of power. And they’re like.
I talk about how can we redefine these? concepts to allow more space for women’s leadership, right? Which is often led by empathy and care and generosity and community building. And that’s what the teenage girls, when I ask them, what do you think the solution is? That’s the world they envision for us. If anything, you know, we need to be listening to them and going off of their ideas.
CATY BORUM: There’s actually really cool research about peace building and women’s leadership that around the world, if you actually look at patterns, regions and localities where women are the leaders that actually peace usually follows because the leadership style is totally different, right? So it’s just, you know, to me, it makes total sense. Like, why would you want to keep girls in a box? You keep them in a box if you’re afraid of their power, actually. Duh.
CHELSEY GOODAN: Yeah. You and I are so in alignment.
CATY BORUM: Yes! We’re going on tour!
CHELSEY GOODAN: Yes! Let’s take this show on the road!
CATY BORUM: So we know there’s a lot of challenges for teenage girls. What are maybe one of the top things that you hear from young girls in that way?
CHELSEY GOODAN: The number one thing girls tell me is that they feel judged. That everyone is judging them all the time. And it could be academic achievement, it could be their looks, you know, the list is endless. And it comes in really subtle ways. And they’ll feel judged too when we try to jump in and teach them.
Because they’re like, oh, my idea was bad, I guess. They feel misunderstood, which again is, back to Judy Blume’s books, like they felt seen in those books. And when you feel seen and understood and heard, that is the place of empowerment. And the main block is that judgment that we throw on them at every turn.
CATY BORUM: Yeah, that’s interesting. I’m just wondering how boys, if there is a parallel there?
CHELSEY GOODAN: So my, you know, I’ve worked with boys and one of the biggest differences I see is how they can make mistakes, and it’s no big deal. They make a mistake and they don’t absorb it into their identity as a failure. Whereas a teenage girl makes a mistake and she’s like, Oh my gosh, I’m never gonna do that again.
CATY BORUM: Yeah, I think this idea of rule following and following kind of like the factory line of being a perfect girl, I think is definitely something that we still see. So again, the fact that Judy Blume said, you know what? It just does not need to be that way. You can ask whatever you want, because you’re smart and capable.
CHELSEY GOODAN: And she shared about the letters that she received from all the kids. Oh my gosh, it made so much sense to me because she got to witness what I’ve witnessed, where I’ve been invited into this rare space of trust, where they share their innermost thoughts and feelings and they are complicated and complex and heartfelt.
CATY BORUM: Yes, totally agree. How do we as a culture help support these amazing young girls to continue sort of a journey of curiosity that Judy Blume helped to foster?
CHELSEY GOODAN: Judy did something so radical, which at the time, which was actually show a story of pleasure and love and romance and care. And she even said on the documentary that she wasn’t gonna choose a storyline of violence and punishment and control, you know, to share this story. What if we actually shared stories that were a positive experience with a girl’s body and sexuality? And that is still a radical thing today.
And the more we can give voice to how we can create change so girls can not be filled with fear would be amazing. What is it 2024? We’re still dealing with this. I mean, you and I are both like, I don’t know. Let’s get it out there because I mean, I’m a straight up radical just like Judy was. I was watching those interviews just being like, that’s been my situation.
CATY BORUM: Yes. Yay for radicalized women who just want equity. Well thank you so much for visiting us on the podcast. It was really a lot of fun and a great pleasure and I know that everyone that listens is going to learn a few things and maybe think about teenage girls in hopefully some new and robust ways.
CHELSEY GOODAN: I love it. Thank you so much.
CATY BORUM: Thinking about Judy Blume and Chelsey Goodan, you know, both of them are such empowered and empowering voices for young people, especially girls. And if only we lived in the kind of world they imagined for us, it would be so great. It strikes me how much we continue to need this steady drumbeat of cultural voices like theirs, really to constantly encourage girls to take up their full space and ask questions and stay out of that predetermined cultural box that can limit them, and all of us really.
And even though as women, we still grapple today with culturally designed limitations, the ones that have set out to define girlhood and adolescence and who we are as women, there’s so much more left to learn about building power for ourselves and others to make the changes we want to see in the world.
Standing in the truth of who we are, pushing back against narratives imposed on us by others and contributing our own big ideas that help women and girls feel seen and validated are all meaningful parts of doing the work. Thank you all for joining us for this special episode of We Disrupt This Broadcast. I’m Caty Borum, former teenage girl.
The Peabody Awards are decided unanimously. So to close out our episode, I bring you We Disrupt This Broadcast‘s unanimous decision where we unanimously pick the most disruptive line of the day.
JUDY BLUME: I don’t ever want to be called a nice lady.
CATY BORUM: Join us next time as we talk to Joe Brumm, creator of Bluey, one of the most popular, beloved and most important children’s shows around. We’ll talk about what goes into making a TV show hilarious for kids, and also parents, and why play is a central theme of the show.
JOE BRUMM: This is parenting and this is normal, and so hopefully when we get the real weird, you know, worrying stuff into the show, parents out there can just, I don’t know, they just, feel a little less alone.
CATY BORUM: Gabe, take it away with the credits.
Gabe Gonzalez: We Disrupt This Broadcast is a Peabody and Center for Media and Social Impact production hosted by me, Gabe González, with on air contributions from Caty Borum, Jeffrey Jones, and Joyelle Nicole Johnson. This show is brought to you by executive producers Caty Borum, Jeffrey Jones, and Bethany Hall.
Producer, Jordana Jason. Writers, Sasha Stewart, Jordana Jason. Bethany Hall, Jennifer Keishin-Armstrong and myself, Gabe González. Consulting producer, Jennifer Keishin-Armstrong. Associate producer, Bella Green. Research assistant, Blake Voyles. Graphic designer, Olivia Klaus. Operations producer, Varsha Ramani.
The marketing and communications team, Christine Drayer and Tunisha Singleton. From PRX, the team is Terrence Bernardo, Jennie Cataldo, Morgan Church, Edwin Ochoa, and Amber Walker. The executive producer of PRX Productions is Jocelyn Gonzalez.