How Sassy Changed My Life: A Love
Letter to the Greatest Teen Magazine
of All Time by Marisa Meltzer
Once Upon A Time
For a generation of teenage girls, Sassy magazine was nothing short of
revolutionary—so much so that its audience, which stretched from tweens
to twentysomething women, remains obsessed with it to this day and back
issues are sold for hefty sums on the Internet. For its brief but brilliant run
from 1988 to 1994, Sassy was the arbiter of all that was hip and cool,
inspiring a dogged devotion from its readers while almost single-handedly
bringing the idea of girl culture to the mainstream. In the process, Sassy
changed the face of teen magazines in the United States, paved the way
for the unedited voice of blogs, and influenced the current crop of smart
women’s zines, such as Bust and Bitch, that currently hold sway.

How Sassy Changed My Life will present for the first time the inside story
of the magazine’s rise and fall while celebrating its unique vision and
lasting impact. Through interviews with the staff, columnists, and favorite
personalities we are brought behind the scenes from its launch to its final
issue and witness its unique fusion of feminism and femininity, its frank
commentary on taboo topics like teen sex and suicide, its battles with
advertisers and the religious right, and the ascension of its writers from
anonymous staffers to celebrities in their own right.
Personal Review: How Sassy Changed My Life: A Love Letter to
the Greatest Teen Magazine of All Time by Marisa Meltzer
Long, long ago (not really, just the early 1990's, but it feels like forever!),
there was the most fantastic teen magazine ever: SASSY!!! For girls like
myself (this is William's wife Jen writing, by the way, in case anyone is
wondering "Huh?") who were not the upper class WASPs of America with
money to burn, perfect tans and bleached hair and New Kids lust, Sassy
was such an amazing outlit for our social, political, and emotional
frustrations. I was a girl who didn't gave a darn about 90210, Debbie
Gibson, Prada, Calvin Klein, social conformity, and Sassy really helped to
open up a whole nother world. The staff at Sassy became like our cooler
older sisters in the hip underground: they knew all of the cool bands,
fashions, actors, etc before the mainstream media had a clue. Also, I must
add, that Sassy was the first place where I had read about Wicca which is
now my spiritual path in life. In a time which I was an outcast demiJew
interested in paganism and Buddhism but forced to going to a very
Conservative Catholic school full of the standard cheerleader types (their
solution to life was just to follow whatever nonsense the nuns and their
parents proclaimed, no matter how braindead, and never to think for
themselves), Sassy was literally a Goddess send where I finally felt
connected.
On another note, I was very happy to see that they added a bit about how
many girls felt alienated by the ultra- underground and alternative aspects
of Sassy. Towards the end of the magazine, it seemed to me (and after
reading, I'm glad I'm not the only one) that if you liked any song that
managed to get on the radio, any show that had appeared in TV Guide, or
wanted to dye your hair with Clairol instead of funky Kool Aid colours, then
you were deemed terminally uphip (I remember as if it were yesterday how
they trashed my then favourite band Roxette). I think that that
exclusiveness, rather than any boycotts about the sex columns, were the
cause of Sassy's demise. Still, it was an amazing magazine and so uplift
and often soulsearching for its readers and sadly no magazine has come
close to filling that void for today's young women (although B*tch is great.
Check it out if you can).
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