How Sassy Changed My Life: A Love Letter to the Greatest Teen Magazine of All Time

By Marisa Meltzer and Kara Jesella

Book Overview

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.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0571211852
• ISBN13: 9780571211852
• Release Date: April 2007
• Publisher: Farrar, Strauss & Giroux-3pl
• Length: 144 Pages
• Weight: 0.73 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 8.4" x 10.7"

Customer Reviews

Once Upon A Time

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...

Media Revolution Girl Style

Before female adolescents in America had Oakland/Portland's Bitch or Chicago's VenusZine for feminism 101, there was New York City's Sassy. In How Sassy Changed My Life, readers are given a magazine-size book that reads like a nostalgic love letter chronicling one of women's crucial marks in journalism's history. Known as the 80s lovechild of founder Sandra Yates of Australia's Dolly and then 24-year-old Jane Pratt, the youngest...

A celebration of the magazine which influenced a generation of liberal, activist young women

The central thesis of How Sassy Changed My Life is that the one-of-a-kind teen magazine created a club of kindred spirits during its short 6-year tenure, and that it has had a lasting effect on a generation (or two) of American women. Authors Jesella and Meltzer write "Upon meeting a fellow Sassy fan, we feel like we understand something essential about that person: their life philosophy, what their politics might be like,...

Wonderful---went WAY my expectations!

Wow. I bought this book thinking it would be nothing more than a sort of trip down memory lane about my fave magazine growing up. While it was definitely this, it also covered every aspect of the magazine's history, and discussed subjects like Sassy's sometimes cooler-that-thou-ness, or criticisms that it was not ethnically diverse enough. And I loved reading about the culture at the Sassy office and beyond. It is also...

Sassy take me away

Having been a die-hard Sassy fan from its inception. this book had a lot to live up to. And in my opinion, it goes above and beyond what I had expected. Read this book and relive the sassiest days of your life.