Judy Blume’s Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret was published in 1970, when I was nine. By the time I was 12, not only had I read it, but every girl I knew had read it, too. We all asked our mothers to buy us “training bras” and dreamed of having our first periods. We also felt less alone dealing with the “mean girl/queen bee” problem endemic among tween girls. It was the ultimate “girls growing into women” book. Now, it’s a motion picture that’s not doing well, so the studio’s marketing department had a brainwave: Hire Dylan Mulvaney to market it.
From The Washington Examiner:
Controversial transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney has joined Lionsgate Films's promotion of Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret as the film adaptation of Judy Blume's seminal work continues to bomb at the box office.
Starring Rachel McAdams and Kathy Bates, the 2023 film retells the 1970 tale of the titular Judy Blume as she struggles through puberty and religion in New Jersey.
The picture appears to be well received as Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret has earned a 99% critical score and 94% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, but it has failed miserably to earn back its $30 million budget.
Raking in a mere $16 million since its April 28 release, the crew at Lionsgate has turned to Mulvaney to turn their luck around.
The paid partnership with Mulvaney saw the transgender activist sit down with Blume in an interview published to Mulvaney's TikTok account Saturday.
This is so offensive. Dylan Mulvaney is a mocking simulacrum of a girl. He never had a period, nor will he ever have a period, nor is he of the class of people that can have periods as a prelude to pregnancy. He never wondered what kind of breasts his body would develop, nor will he ever have breasts develop, nor is he of the class of people that can have breasts that feed a child.
Image: The original cover of Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. Fair Use.
Dylan Mulvaney is a man. He is a deluded or opportunistic man who never had a girlhood and never trembled on the brink of womanhood—the subjects that lie at the heart of Blume’s book.
And shame on Blume for going along with this charade. What an insult to her creation and the millions of biological girls who saw it as a wonderful guiding light. However, it appears that Blume is leftist and is willing to hop onto the LGBTQ+++ bandwagon:
Blume opened up about an initial rejection of her book and how she feels that what is happening today is far worse, appearing to allude to GOP efforts to keep LGBT-themed books out of the classrooms of young children.
"What I am saying now, having lived through the ‘80s with the book banning, what's going on now is scarier," she said.
I wonder if Blume knows what books parents want banned. In Illinois, some did a wonderful thing: They called the police on a teacher who handed her middle school students, This Book Is Gay, one of those frequently banned books. NBC reports on the story as if the teacher is a martyr to book-burning Nazis:
Over the years, Bonner has watched her students graduate and go to college, only to return a year later because, she says, “They had a tough time acclimating to bigger, more diverse spaces.”
“I wanted to do something to support them,” said Bonner, who has a 10-year-old son.
After listening to her students’ questions and interests, Bonner structured a curriculum that she says included “a diverse library of texts,” including books centering Black, Indigenous and LGBTQ characters and themes.
“I’ve been fortunate up until now to be supported by the communities that I’ve taught with,” Bonner says. “The signs (of a potential issue) started at the beginning of this school year ... and this heightened culture war that’s continuing to build nationwide.”
More than 1,600 books were banned during the 2021-2022 school year, according to a report from PEN America, a nonprofit group that advocates for free expression in literature.
What NBC ignore is that the book is a graphic sex guide instructing children in the finer points of anal and oral gay sex. Parents are correct that, cutsie pictures or not, as to children, it’s pornography.
I doubt Dylan Mulvaney will entice tween girls to see Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. And I sincerely hope that parents will henceforth keep Blume away from their children. She can’t be trusted.