SASSY!

Several weeks ago I was gifted a dozen issues of SASSY magazine ranging in dates from 1990-1993.

It's hard for me to explain what an amazing gift this was. To do so I would have to explain what an impact SASSY had on my life circa 1990-1993.... and that impact was huge. SASSY made me feel less alone. And it made me feel like it was ok to be smart. It made me feel like high school was high school but what came next would be amazing. In some ways it was sort of a real time "it gets better" project for smart quirky girls caught in really traditional lives. And what's amazing to me is all the ways I must have been influenced by SASSY that I didn't even realize and can only see now.

I read SASSY each night while giving Nora a bath. She likes to be left alone to play for several minutes before I wash her and brush her teeth so I sit on her princess potty/stool and flip through a magazine that I originally read on my top bunk 20 years ago. It's sort of a surreal mux up of things.

I've re-discovered some amazing things:

• Unknowns Angelina Jolie and Chloe Sevigny in anonymous fashion spreads.
• Gwenyth Paltrow in an Esprit Ad Campaign. (Remember Esprit?!)
• Hugh Gallagher's College Essay.
• The "After a while you learn" poem (of questionable providence).
• I also saw a profile of a woman I worked with in 2001 in New York City ... I really wish she would have told me that she had been profiled by SASSY so I could have worshiped her even more!

But there are other things I'm learning too that are a bit more surprising... like the aggressively personal, hip and somewhat snarky "we know best, you should just trust us" attitude is more annoying than I remember. They are super-mean to their interview subjects (like Christian Slater and (my personal friend) Milla Jovovich) and then feign surprise when they get called on it. I remember thinking that was cool at the time. It isn't (and not just because I've had lunch with Milla!).

Basically I feel like I've been given a glimpse of what it must have been like to be my parents. They must have flipped through the magazine each month when it was delivered to the house or when I left them on the kitchen table. They must have felt the same level of discomfort with the tone and attitude and they must have hated hearing me quote and ape it. So as I sit watching my 2.5 year old boss around her foam letters "RED Z, you go THERE!" I wonder what is going to influence her and how I'm going to feel about it.

I wouldn't have wanted to have forgo SASSY's influence on me, but a little less snark would have been nice (from me and from them, I suppose).