Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret

Many little girls daydream about being grown-up and looking like the beautiful actresses and models in movies and magazines. Breasts, in particular, are often treated as a true measure of a woman’s worth, and from childhood, young girls are taught to compare the size of their chests to other girls. In Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, Margaret Ann Simon and her friends are similarly fixated on the idea of growing breasts and wearing bras to signify their status as young women. Margaret frets when Nancy Wheeler points out that Margaret is still flat-chested at the age of 11, and Nancy brags that she is already growing breasts. Margaret spends most of the novel pleading with God to help her grow so she doesn’t “feel like some kind of underdeveloped little kid” (7), and when she gets her first bra, Margaret feels overwhelmed and not at all like a grown-up.

When Margaret first sees Laura Danker on the first day of school, she is in awe and can tell right away that Laura wears a bra. Margaret can “see the outline of [Laura’s] bra through her blouse and [she] [can] also tell from the front that it wasn’t the smallest size” (30).