# Girls are still reading Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** books-writing-myths\ **Created:** [November 12, 2025, 10:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/girls-are-still-reading-are-you-there-god-its-me-margaret/1024801 "2025-11-12T10:36:05Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![susan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/susan/32/17537_2.png) [@susan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/susan)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2025, 2:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/girls-are-still-reading-are-you-there-god-its-me-margaret/1024801/81 "2025-11-15T02:24:33Z")
[https://www.pagewings.com/products/pagewings-banned-books-tour-unisex-washed-t-shirt](https://www.pagewings.com/products/pagewings-banned-books-tour-unisex-washed-t-shirt) [![](https://img-va.myshopline.com/image/store/1728439944784/--38002_1000x.jpg?w=1000&h=1000&q=80) ](https://img-va.myshopline.com/image/store/1728439944784/--38002_1000x.jpg?w=1000&h=1000&q=80) ---
**Author:** ![RivkahChaya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rivkahchaya/32/8919_2.png) [@RivkahChaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RivkahChaya)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2025, 2:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/girls-are-still-reading-are-you-there-god-its-me-margaret/1024801/82 "2025-11-15T14:26:15Z")
Wow! Thanks! ---
**Author:** ![RivkahChaya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rivkahchaya/32/8919_2.png) [@RivkahChaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RivkahChaya)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2025, 2:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/girls-are-still-reading-are-you-there-god-its-me-margaret/1024801/83 "2025-11-15T14:28:03Z")
> [@Babale](#): > > We had the same thing at my high school as well as my university library. I get the impression it’s not uncommon in California I went to high school in Indiana-- however, it was a university town that was heavily populated with transplants, and has never had a Republican mayor. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2026, 12:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/girls-are-still-reading-are-you-there-god-its-me-margaret/1024801/84 "2026-01-20T00:29:16Z")
We did that. We actually did that. While doing an exercise with our arms that we thought would improve the underlying chest muscles and therefore improve the projection of our breasts. Somewhere around seventh grade, and around 1964. We added another couple of lines to the chant; the bigger, the better, if you want to fit into [the housemother’s] sweater. > [@Cervaise](#): > > I accidentally read _Portnoy’s Complaint_ when I was like 12 or 13. I was on a camping trip, I was desperate for a book, and the little camp store had a tiny selection of battered used paperbacks. I chose PC more or less at random. When I was somewhere around that age, my parents and I went to visit some friends. In the bedroom they put me in for the night someone had left a copy of Justine. I concluded, after reading it for a while, that the author probably wasn’t getting any, and was therefore making up wilder and wilder stuff in an attempt to make up for lack of actual stimulation. I also concluded that I’d better not tell the grownups that I’d noticed the book. My parents in general did let me read whatever I wanted, but I think Justine would have been pushing it — when I was significantly younger a book titled “bawdy verses” or something similar vanished after I complained that I didn’t think they were funny, which was what I’d thought “bawdy” meant. There were a lot of books in our house and I routinely pulled books off the shelves and read them without paying any attention to what age group they were meant for. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2026, 12:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/girls-are-still-reading-are-you-there-god-its-me-margaret/1024801/85 "2026-01-20T00:44:33Z")
My civics teacher in junior high would always set aside one day of the week to let us work on homework or listen to her read a book. She probably said so at the time, but it wasn’t until decades later that I realized she was reading us books from the banned books list. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2026, 4:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/girls-are-still-reading-are-you-there-god-its-me-margaret/1024801/86 "2026-01-20T04:01:15Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#): > > Somewhere around seventh grade, and around 1964. > > We added another couple of lines to the chant; the bigger, the better, if you want to fit into [the housemother’s] sweater. About ten years later that was _“the bigger the better, the tighter the sweater, the boys depend on us!”_ ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2026, 4:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/girls-are-still-reading-are-you-there-god-its-me-margaret/1024801/87 "2026-01-20T04:24:26Z")
I learned it: the bigger the better The tighter the sweater The boys are depending on us! ---
**Author:** ![mattgg](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ccd318/32.png) [@mattgg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mattgg)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2026, 2:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/girls-are-still-reading-are-you-there-god-its-me-margaret/1024801/88 "2026-01-20T14:25:24Z")
> [@RivkahChaya](#): > > I asked if they thought it seemed old-fashioned and odd, without computers and cell phones, and they said no, they didn’t really notice, and then one said “The feelings are the same.” This isn’t giving the kids much credit. Would they watch Titanic and think, “This is dumb because with modern radar systems they never would have hit the iceberg”? I don’t think so. I suspect that some authors and filmmakers deliberately choose to set their stories and films in pre-internet, pre-cellphone times to avoid this very thing. Too often I watch something set in modern times and think, “None of this would have happened if someone had just made a simple phone call.” Set it in the 70s or 80s and you take that possibility away. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/girls-are-still-reading-are-you-there-god-its-me-margaret/1024801.md?page=4)