Hi Everybody, I'm Miriam and I'm back with a Retro edition of Not Oprah's Book Club. The book I want to talk about today is over 30 years old.
I was home earlier this week at my mom's house where I grew up and I was looking at my bookshelf and saw this book, Forever by Judy Blume. This book always pops out at me because it was a pretty big deal when I read this in middle school so I wanted to talk about it today.
For those of you who don't know, its a book about a young girls first sexual experience, really her first romance at all. She's a senior in high school. "A moving story of the end of innocence" The book goes into a lot of detail with her experiences with her boyfriend Michael, losing her virginity, the trials and tribulations of her first sexual experience.
I remember buying this book at Barnes and Noble, actually my dad bought it for me (pretty innocent looking cover) and going home and reading the entire thing cover to cover in like three hours. It was big. I was the kind of kid who always read books about teen romance and was really really into that kind of thing. This book was amazing because it gave so much more detail than any other book I had read about sex and her first sexual experiences. I learned a ton.
I was about 12 or 13 probably, and I ended up taking the book to my middle school and passing it around to all my friends. You can actually see in the back here, where my friends who read it signed their names in the back. We also dog eared the "good parts" that were sexual.
This book was just a big deal for me in terms of opening my eyes to the details of what a relationship between a teenage boy or girl is like. Looking back there's a lot of limitations and she talks about that. The book was published in 1975, so she talks about how things have changed since then with the advent of HIV, and safe sex, and some of the concerns that these kids have are really different than kids today because of that.
Obviously it's pretty heteronormative, it's about a girl and a boy, but I was in the closet until I was about 20 so I read a lot about straight relationships growing up. I think the honesty of this book is what makes it such a classic and the reason why people keep reading it to this day.
Feel free to share your comments about this book in the thread!
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When I first read it (I think I was in the 5th grade), I took it to be the gospel on sex. Looking back at it though, it's just weird. What was the scene about putting aftershave on his balls all about?
Although it scandalized me at the age of 10 (I was HEARTBROKEN for them), I do appreciate the ending now. It seems like it's pretty realistic for many teens' first relationships - no dramatic, romantic happily ever after, just a breakup and moving on to someone new.
Oh, the memories! My mom bought me that book when I was ten or so, thinking it was one of Judy Blume's kids' novels.
I read and re-read it and passed it around to all of my friends. Sure, it's goofy, awkward, and weird -- but so are those early sexual experiences.
And kudos to JB for including discussions about condom use and orgasms -- how many girls' books, then or now, do that for us?
I lived and breathed this book when I was in junior high!
I remember hiding it because my friends all made fun of me for reading a "dirty" book and their parents were angry at my parents for buying it for me!
I remember being devastated at first finding out that not all books are fairy tales and that they break up at the end, but this sort of helped me through my first school yard breakups. I wasn't so blindsided by the fact that not all relationships are, well, forever.
And to Alixana, I still think about the aftershave on the balls part! I mean, they never explain it!
I'm in awe of anyone who's parents bought it for them. I was one of the recipients of the hidden copy that must have gone through thousands of hands in my junior high school. I was in junior high before personal computers, before MTV, before Victoria's secret "modeling shows". This was the most scandalous thing I had ever seen.
Warning, if you have fond memories of the book do not under any circumstances watch the movie.
There's a movie? Oh wow.
A girl in my middle school class brought that book to school every day in the 6th grade, and she also dog-eared the "good parts". I then took it out of the library and just kept renewing it because I didn't want to let it go. Thanks for the trip down memory lane!
After hearing tons of great things said about this book, I bought it about six months ago to read it.
I didn't like it. I don't know why, it just rubbed me the wrong way. Perhaps it dates itself, in my mind, and I'm a product of the 21st century. Whatever it was, I disliked it.
"...For those of you who don't know, its a book about a young girls first sexual experience, really her first romance at all. She's a senior in high school. 'A moving story of the end of innocence'..."
Is it just me or does whomever Miriam's quoting here describing the book seem a bit creepy to anyone else? I mean, describing a high school senior as a young girl (don't high school seniors tend to be among the oldest of children IRL?) and sex as "the end of innocence" (see "...if virginity is a proxy for youth and innocence then it may also mean easily controlled and manipulated..." at http://community.feministing.com/2009/01/who-is-bidding-on-natalie-dyla.html )?
"...The book was published in 1975, so she talks about how things have changed since then with the advent of HIV, and safe sex, and some of the concerns that these kids have are really different than kids today because of that..."
Is that stuff in an afterword to new editions of the book too? Cool!
The quote was from the front cover of my edition of the book, which is definitely somewhat dated, no doubt.
The rest is my quick attempt at transcribing my video. I did use the word "young" which probably indicates more about my age than anything else. You're right, a senior in high school isn't that young! When I read it initially I probably thought she was much older.
Looks like they've updated the cover (including the blurbs) for all the new editions and Blume has written updated forewards.
I remember reading all of Judy Blume's books and rereading, and rereading. Tiger Eyes was also one of my favorites.
My mom was the one who bought me Forever when i hit puberty, so i could learn about the sex in a realistic way.
I saw this book in Target (it has a new cover... i think mine was yellow and had a flower on it or something) the other day, quickly found a good part and read it to my s/o, ha.
I just need to say something--I am so excited that you chose Forever for the not Oprah's book club. I teach Adolescent lit to future teachers--and I always teach Forever. It is a groundbreaking text in that it foregrounds female sexual pleasure (albeit a bit un- realistically) it allows a young woman to have sex without being punished (which most YA lit does not) and it has a penis named Ralph! Forever also has a really interesting sequence when Kath makes her first trip to Planned Parenthood to obtain birth control. It's a very factual sequence and is good for young women and men to read. There is even a speculum!
In response to Mina's comments, the subtitle of the book is a marketing line. The book is now a cultural artifact, but is is representative of the sexual and social mores of the 1970s. It also challenges the idea that a young woman who is sexually active is damaged.
Interestingly, recently Forever has been marketed as an adult novel--I found it the other day in my local supermarket with the adult romance novels--the tag line is something like "do you remember your first romance?" So now they publishers are trying to get older female readers to read it for nostalgia--I think it's awesome.
So, Miriam, thank you so much for making my day by choosing Forever! Yippee!
'Forever' was a big hit with the girls in my middle school, too! I love it for the same reasons you do - it's remarkable that in 1971 Blume created a teenage girl with a sex life that didn't derail her academic performance or end in condemnation from her peers and no boyfriends ever again.
I had comprehensive sex ed in school, but Blume is the one adult who told us that sex could be pleasurable for girls and not just some kind of clinical act that could get you pregnant. I mean, we knew sex could feel good, but Blume actually discusses female orgasms in a book written for kids!
Blume also wrote a book with a preteen protagonist who masturbates in the bathtub. I don't remember if it was Deenie or one of her other books, but I know that when I read that scene, I immediately felt better because I had thought that masturbating made me depraved and sinful, thanks to my religious upbringing.