“Does anyone know the word for stimulating our genitals?”: Judy Blume, Deenie, p. 105.

“The hot water was very relaxing and soon I began to enjoy it”: Ibid., p. 169.

“There’s a whole section on wet dreams and another on masturbation”: Judy Blume, Then Again, Maybe I Won’t (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Bradbury Press, 1970), p. 104.

In 1969, a group of women in their twenties and thirties: Details about the making of Our Bodies, Ourselves come from the documentary She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry, released in 2014.

“When the man and woman have been wriggling so hard”: Peter Mayle, Where Did I Come From? (Secaucus, NJ: Lyle Stuart Inc., 1973), no page numbers.

“There’s some joy and fun in that book”: Zoom interview with Cory Silverberg, October 26, 2023.

“It is also comfortably frank about the preoccupations of young teen-agers”: Judith Viorst, “Deenie,” New York Times, November 4, 1973.

“Instead of giving Deenie any personality or independent existence”: Kirkus Reviews, September 17, 1973. Accessed via the New York Public Library.

Judy dealt with bad reviews by scribbling: Judy Blume at the Arlington Public Library event on October 22, 2015. Accessed on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUDBcovfFjM.

“I had never heard the word masturbation when I was growing up”: Judy Blume, Letters to Judy, pp. 186–87.

“I wrote the truth, what I knew to be the truth”: Judy Blume in conversation with Samantha Bee at an event at the 92nd Street Y on June 2, 2015. Accessed on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7svP4zqCc0.

she casually asks Helen to loan her her “sex book”: Judy Blume, Deenie, p. 176.

“I know he was trying to feel me,” she says: Ibid., p. 164.

“This time when he kissed me, I concentrated on kissing him back”: Ibid., p. 183.

“Maybe that’s why my spine started growing crooked!”: Ibid., p. 105.

“It’s very common for girls as well as boys, beginning with adolescence”: Ibid., p. 106.

“Family life education was the first time that American educators”: JZ to RB, May 31, 2022.

“Those were called the ‘Big Four’ ”: Ibid., May 31, 2022.

“Once a young man touched himself in that way”: Jeffrey P. Moran, Teaching Sex: The Shaping of the Adolescent in the 20th Century (Boston: Harvard University Press, 2000), p. 8.

“girls who fell prey to self-abuse were clearly aberrant”: Ibid.

“For a long time there has been a certain ritual”: Andrew Hacker, “The Pill and Morality,” New York Times, November 21, 1965.

“If [the teacher] does that at PS3 down in the Village, she’ll be teacher of the year”: JZ to RB, May 31, 2022.

Professor and researcher Michelle Fine was “shocked”: Zoom interview with Michelle Fine, January 6, 2023.

“This was about, ‘you’re a victim, bad things will happen’ ”: Ibid., January 6, 2023.

“I just think people can’t say no if they can’t say yes”: Ibid., January 6, 2023.

“unacknowledged social ambivalence about female sexuality”: Michelle Fine, “Sexuality, Schooling, and Adolescent Females: The Missing Discourse of Desire,” Harvard Educational Review 58, no. 1 (February 1988): 29–53.

“I still go into classrooms where I’ll say the word ‘masturbation’ ”: Zoom interview with Rachel Lotus, November 8, 2023.

“I don’t think you’ll talk to any sex educator who doesn’t think that Judy Blume”: Ibid., November 8, 2023.

Chapter Ten

Virginity

“Nice girls didn’t go all the way”: Judy Blume, Letters to Judy, p. 211.

She gave Judy book ideas: Lee, Judy Blume’s Story, p. 77.

She thought Tony carried the raincoat to cover his face: Box 115 of the Judy Blume Papers at Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Accessed April 28, 2022.

“In these books, the boys had absolutely no feelings”: Weidt, Presenting Judy Blume, p. 50.

“I set out to teach very few things in my books”: Ibid., p. 51.

“When I was growing up, we had very firm rules”: Judy Blume, Letters to Judy, pp. 210–11.

“years of kissing experience”: Beverly Solochek, “Plotting the Real Teen Scene,” Daily News, September 3, 1976, p. C9.

Blume later elaborated in the Independent: William Leith, “Teen Spirit,” The Independent, July 18, 1999, pp. 11–13. Accessed through the New York Public Library.

“My friends and I played sexual games, sexual games between girlfriends”: Ibid.

“We are exactly the same size”: Judy Blume, Forever (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Bradbury Press, 1975). I worked from the 2014 reprint from Simon & Schuster, p. 13.

“He threatened that if I wouldn’t sleep with him”: Ibid., p. 15.

“Let’s save something for tomorrow”: Ibid., p. 21.

“In the old days girls were divided into two groups”: Ibid., p. 37.

“I’ve been thinking”: Ibid., p. 30.

“I’ve been doing a lot of thinking and have decided I don’t want”: Ibid., p. 184.

“Sybil Davison has a genius IQ”: Ibid., p. 1.

“whole experience was more than she bargained for”: Ibid., p. 184.

“that a girl like Sybil might have a genius IQ”: Weidt, Presenting Judy Blume, p. 50.

“Were you a virgin when you got married?”: Judy Blume, Forever, p. 83.

“Sex is a commitment…”: Ibid., p. 84.