Take It From a Late Bloomer: Stop Comparing Yourself to Other People Your Age

I’ve been thinking about milestones, those life events we’re all supposed to experience as we journey into (and through) adulthood. In the film Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, Kelly Fremon Craig’s recent adaptation of Judy Blume’s classic coming-of-age novel, 11-year-old Margaret (Abby Ryder Fortson) is desperate to reach one milestone in particular: her period. “I’d die if I didn’t get it before 16!” she wails to her mother (an iridescent Rachel McAdams). “Honey, you’ll get it exactly when you’re supposed to get it,” is her reply. This, truly, is precious wisdom, but it’s wisdom that’s difficult to accept when it feels like your peers are leaving you behind. I know, because, like Margaret, I was a late bloomer.

Margaret lives in 1970s American suburbia, while I came of age in the 2000s English countryside, but despite the difference in time and place, there’s so much about her experience that’s familiar. Like Margaret, I tried out pads far in advance of any actual need for them, and, like Margaret, I persuaded my mum to buy me a bra long before it was strictly necessary, then proceeded, as she does, to experiment with different looks by stuffing it with rolled-up socks. I can also very clearly remember my friends and I practicing the “I must, I must, I must increase my bust!” exercise—a playground classic if ever there was one.

It didn’t work, of course. At 14, I remained “flat,” as Margaret is pronounced by her blonde frenemy Nancy (I also had a blonde frenemy), and I still didn’t have my period. I remember being at a friend’s house when hers arrived: she was in the year below me at school, and asked how I’d gone about telling my mum when it happened to me. I had to explain that it hadn’t yet; she was surprised (though not unkind) and I was mortified. It was one thing to be the last girl in my year to “come on” (as we called it), but to be overtaken by those in the year below? Humiliating.

I didn’t lose my virginity until I was 21, something I used to be extremely self-conscious about. These days, I’d argue that the whole notion of “virginity” is a damaging social construct which has no biological basis and which incorrectly privileges one kind of sex over others. Back then, though, I was really hung up about it: I used to sincerely think it might never happen, that I was a freak no one would ever want. It’s why I can so deeply relate to Margaret’s frustrated and desperate prayer to “just let me grow and get my period, just let me be regular and normal like everybody else, please, please, please.”