>>REVIEW
HOW SASSY CHANGED MY LIFE: A LOVE LETTER TO THE GREATEST TEEN MAGAZINE OF ALL TIME
(Douglas & McIntyre/Faber & Faber, 144 pp.)
The first time I read Sassy magazine, I was 13. I had my mouth frozen after a particularly taxing day at the dentist, and my mom had gone to the corner store to get me a few magazines to cheer me up. Enclosed in the plastic bag were three glossies, Seventeen, YM and Sassy. Looking back, it was the perfect introduction to the magazine. In comparison, Seventeen and YM looked downright archaic, with their "prom queen" vision of high school life. Sassy had gritty fashions, off-the-cuff snarky writing and a coolness that seemed attainable, unlike the Cover Girl perfection touted as the norm by those other mags.
Sassy was something I could relate to. I wasn’t the most popular kid in my class, but I wasn’t a dork either. It seemed to encapsulate the indefinable – that made it perfect for an impressionable teenager like myself, just aching for an identity all my own. Sassy had found me at just the right time hormonally and politically. The late ’80s were begging for a grrl revolution and once the swelling went down, I told all my friends to buy the magazine.
The book How Sassy Changed My Life is a love letter of sorts, chronicling the iconic teen magazine’s rise and fall, from a punchy upstart to its bloated demise. It goes into detail about the magazine’s beginnings – how the infamous editor Jane Pratt was hired, Christina Kelly’s love-hate relationship with pop culture and the equally cool staff of writers who tackled issues that were taboo in other magazines, like sex (i.e. as in how to have it), homosexuality and suicide. The magazine was also dedicated to investigative journalism – relatively unseen before or since in other teen magazines. It’s probably the reason why so many women decided to go into journalism in the first place and without it magazines such as Bust or Bitch would not exist.
Sassy also helped an entire generation of women reclaim feminism. Instead of it being a dirty word and something to run away from, it made being a feminist sound as if it was our birthright. Its mandate was simple and helped propel girl culture into the mainstream. It unabashedly promoted an alternative lifestyle and embraced the obscure and unappreciated. Without it, I doubt I would have dared to wear a velvet body suit and Doc Martens to my Christian Living class. Being a bit of an oddball was seen as a virtue.
Sassy provided teenage girls living in unglamorous locales a taste of the big city and urban culture, providing info on zines, bands and creative fashion tips. However, after reading this book, it also made me remember why I stopped reading Sassy at 16. Thanks to the magazine, I had the confidence in myself to know what I found cool and engaging and eventually found the "holier-than-thou" writing a bit tiring. It was a great primer, no doubt about it. However, I began seeking out indie culture on my own and deciding what I liked for myself. After awhile, Sassy’s content became watered-down. Once Kurt and Courtney made it onto the cover, the jig was up. It not only smelt like teen spirit, but the magazine had compromised its content.
The book also looks at the darker side of Sassy – the fame-seeking Pratt, Kelly’s often harsh tone and jealous streak and the magazine’s disgruntled employees. It looks at the advertising pressure the magazine went through due to its racier subject matter that eventually led to its demise. When the magazine was sold to a conservative publisher, it folded shortly after, but not before becoming the thing it initially fought against – a magazine with diet tips and prom advice. In its own way, the book is a great examination of the publishing world and the realities of working in the magazine industry.
However, the beacon for all things cool is still fondly remembered. Without it, I probably wouldn’t have fallen for the skateboarder rebel, listened to Pavement and Girls Against Boys (both were at one time featured in the "Cute Band Alert" column), read the zine Ben is Dead, pondered marrying Johnny Depp and/or shaved my head. Sassy was a rite of passage for girls growing up in the late ’80s and early ’90s – and one that sadly can never be repeated or duplicated. |
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