If you didn’t grow up on Judy Blume books, I’m so sorry. You should go back and read a few now, probably; it might retroactively make puberty 50 percent easier. She’s famous for her straightforwardness when it comes to touchy subjects like sex and periods, and as a reward for all that frank talk, her titles are still on the most-banned book lists.
Children’s book authors, while thought to perhaps be adorable and G-rated and talk like kindergarten teachers, are often fantastically weird and make for great interviewees (see Maurice Sendak). Blume is warm and sweet and really funny, and she also has a knack for being able to operate on a lot of levels with different people and still be genuine; I’ve seen her talk to a crowd and go from answering a five-year-old’s question directly to the kid to making a funny boob joke to the grownups.
In an interview yesterday with Rookie, she talks candidly about masturbation, sex, porn, and longing.
There are so many kinds of longing. The longing to fit in, the longing to figure it out, the emotional longing for friendship and being accepted—these are all as important as physical longing. Before all the hormones start raging, it’s the emotional longing that is most important, and boy, you have to learn to figure it out. In my day, the rules were there for us. Back then there was no abortion and no pill, and my friends and I knew that what we called “going all the way” could ruin our lives. It is not that we didn’t have physical sexual longing, but we went out with guys who understood that there were ways to satisfy—and it wasn’t oral sex. We kind of could be satisfied through touching; we could be physically satisfied with what we called petting. I went out with a lot of guys, and there was an understanding. I was never pushed to go all the way.
Really, really, really go read the whole interview here. You can follow her on Twitter @judyblume, where her bio reads “Are you there, Twitter? It’s me, Judy.”