YMMV / Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret.

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Margaret was intended to be an awkward but relatable girl caught up in wanting to be grown up, but it's also easy to view Margaret as a mild Villain Protagonist and the book as a (sympathetic) portrayal of an Alpha Bitch and her Girl Posse due to Values Dissonance. The movie on the other hand has Margaret follow her Heel Realization with becoming less close to Nancy and eventually making an overture of friendship towards Laura.
  • Did Nancy straight-up lie about getting her period at first, or did she genuinely think she'd started it earlier than she had? Margaret assumes the former, and it wouldn't be out of character for Nancy to lie about something like that, but given the time period and how relatively sheltered the girls are, it's also plausible she mistook spotting or discharge for her period and didn't know what to expect from the real thing, hence why she totally freaked out when it happened.
• Anvilicious: Margaret's maternal grandparents (especially her maternal grandmother) are fanatical Christians who became estranged with their daughter because she married a Jewish man. It's implied that they are visiting Margaret's family more to convert Margaret and reconvert her mother rather than reconciling with them, and they barely acknowledge Herb. The movie makes them more sympathetic—they're still obviously Christian and discomforted by Sylvia's Jewish display at dinner (and fight with her over Margaret's faith), but seem honestly upset and ashamed by how they've acted and say they'll contact Barbara later before leaving, implying they want to stay in touch (and that their visit wasn't just a stop over to go to New York).
• Dawson Casting: Isol Young was about fifteen when she was cast as sixth grader Laura Danker; this is so Laura looks older and more developed than the other girls.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Elle Graham, known for playing Sara Hopper in Stranger Things, plays a character named Nancy Wheeler.
• Memetic Mutation: "I must increase my bust" caught on big time as a playground chant.
• Newer Than They Think: Many people promoted the movie as the first of Blume's books to be adapted to film. That honor actually goes to the film of the book Tiger Eyes, which came out in 2012.
• Once Original, Now Common: It is somewhat as a very tame Coming of Age book by today's standards, but the frank and open depictions of puberty (although common for Judy Blume books) and questioning of religion were seen as controversial and even obscene in the 1970s when the book was published.
• Squick: Laura at one point complains about boys and men staring at her breasts. Preteens and young teenagers (and indeed, Laura and Margaret themselves) are likely too young to realize the full implications of this. Adults, however...
• Tear Jerker: In the movie, Margaret was unfamiliar with her mother's family history, so Barbara sits her down and tells her for the first time about being disowned by her own parents, which is clearly a very difficult topic. Even after fourteen years it brings tears to her eyes. Margaret is horrified and tries to comfort her.
• Values Dissonance:
  • Mr. Benedict gawking over an elementary schooler was weird in the 1970s when the book was released and is set, but the characters never think to tell anyone about this. There's no way a teacher who's obviously attracted to 11-year-olds, no matter how much older they appear to look, would be allowed to teach anymore, especially when doing so their first year as a teacher. However, Margaret admits that she's never seen him gawking — it's just another story that Nancy gossips about with her posse, and Nancy isn't exactly a reliable source of information. This element is completely removed from the film adaptation, most likely to avoid arguments over whether Nancy's claims are true and thus whether Mr. Benedict is trustworthy.
  • The Free-Range Children nature of the characters can be a bit jarring. Parents are far less likely to let 11-year-olds go cross-state alone unescorted on a bus than they were in the early '70s.
  • The characters' views on religion, while not that rare in America, come off as dated. At the start of the 1970s, more Americans were devout and there wasn't much knowledge about religions other than Christianity and Judaism with the latter being treated as fringe and rarely seen. In her letter to Mr. Benedict, Margaret writes than she hasn't tried to be a Buddhist or a "Moslim"(sic) because she didn't know anyone of those faiths. These days, Margaret's parents choosing to raise her in a secular environment (and being in a mixed marriage) wouldn't be seen as surprising — it's steadily becoming the norm in a lot of areas.
  • Nancy shames Gretchen for eating too many Oreos because of her weight, shaming her into putting some back, and after Gretchen gets her period, she's told by her mom she'll have to watch her weight from now on. This body shaming for a girl at the early stages of puberty is completely dropped in the movie and Gretchen being slightly larger than her friends size-wise is never mentioned.
• Values Resonance:
  • In the years since the book's publication, Slut-Shaming has become less socially acceptable. There's also been a lot of discussion about how much of it stems from things that are completely out of someone's control, like how soon they enter puberty. Thus, the lesson Margaret learns about how wrong it is to belittle and mock Laura Danker for her body type, or make rude assumptions about her sexual history, is rather ahead of its time. The #MeToo movement also led to hundreds of thousands of women revealing that their first experience with sexual harassment and slut-shaming came when they were young teens, or even preteens, often with adult men being the perpetrators — just like what Laura goes through.
  • With more and more people in America becoming more relaxed about their religious views (or even deciding they don't have any at all) as well as mixed-faith families becoming more mainstream, Margaret's parents' decision to not have either parent convert and instead each keep their own faith (albeit casually), while raising their daughter without any religion with the intent of letting her decide for herself when gets older, is seen as a very sensible and open-minded way to go. Similarly, Margaret's exploration of different religions to try and figure out which one suits her best, ultimately deciding she doesn't need to belong to any specific faith to have a relationship with God, is a much more common sentiment today — how many people have you heard describe themselves as "spiritual, but not religious"?
  • Barbara's parents' religion-based rejection of their daughter is sadly still relevant. Though issues with marrying outside the faith are less common, they are still present, along with a host of other reasons; being gay or transgender, not agreeing with something about abortion, even political beliefs associated with a faith.
• The Woobie:
  • Norman Fishbein. He's a genuinely nice (if a bit nerdy and awkward) guy who has a very sweet crush on Margaret, but she wants nothing to do with him, partially because he's so unpopular (she is a preteen girl, after all).
  • Laura Danker, who deals with boys harassing her over her large breast size and the other girls envying and shaming her, which leads to nasty gossip about her being a slut. She is just an average 11-12 year old who attends mass and confession regularly, and in the movie she's shy and doesn't talk to anyone in part because of how she knows how others in class speak about her.
  • Margaret's mother Barbara, who gets added emphasis in the film. She is still clearly carrying quite a lot of pain from being disowned by her parents, and is civil but not close with her mother-in-law. She hopes her parents have changed and reaches out to them after Margaret asks about her grandparents. Despite this, she's a very kind woman doing her best in challenging circumstances. Perhaps too kind — volunteering for the PTO saddles her with the mind-bogglingly tedious task of cutting out thousands of fabric stars, calling for school financial donations, and to cover another volunteer's stars and agrees despite clearly longing to put that time and effort into more creative outlets. As such, her decision to quit at the end is very understandable.

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