Sassin' back to the Sassy book
This past spring, two smart, Sassy-smitten New York writers named Kara Jesella and Marisa Meltzer came out with a heartfelt tribute to the iconic 90's teen magazine. As a former Sassy reader (but alas, with my pom-poms, perm and obsessive need to please, never truly a Sassy girl), I devoured "How Sassy Changed My Life" with the same passion with which I used to page through the original. While the writers gave a great history of the magazine's rise and fall (which included some--but not enough--gossipy tidbits about boldface-name former staffers like Jane Pratt and Christina Kelly), the book still felt thin, small and a little unsatisfying. In the recent issue of literary journal n+1, Carlene Bauer does an excellent job of explaining how the writers--and the magazine they idolized--fell short. Carlene, a proud graduate of both the "Sprigged Muslin School (see Laura Ingalls Wilder, L. M. Montgomery)" and the house of punk, is a friend of mine now, but damn, do I wish I'd known her in high school! I'm sure we would have had a lot to talk about (I, too, was irked by Debbie Gibson and Dirty Dancing). At the very least, she could have talked me out of that perm.