I still miss Sassy magazine

When I was in my early teens, I fell completely in love with Sassy magazine. It was totally different from anything I had ever read before. They featured music I had never heard of, clothes I would actually wear, segments on people my age doing cool stuff, all in a tone that was so genuine and down-to earth. I read every single word of every single issue, including the captions for products and masthead because if anyone can make that interesting, Sassy writers could. Then Sassy died a pretty sudden death (I come to find out now it was because of Focus on the Family objecting to their Sex Ed content). It got sold and the format changed. I remember complaining about it to Dawn Summers for months.

Then, years later, Jane magazine premiered. I subscribed to it for a year before realizing that it really, really sucked. It was like the girls from Sassy, who had always told their readers to be themselves and not try to be like everybody else, grew up and became obsessed with fitting in.

Media Bistro has a great piece on why Jane never lived up to Sassy. Read the whole thing if you were once a Sassy lover but the reason can be summed up with this:

If Sassy felt, as Kim Gordon has said, "like it was written by your hip older sister," Jane felt like it was being written by your "groovy" middle-aged aunt, the one who's wearing high-end daisy dukes this summer and boring you with tales of stressful manicures, all the while assuring you how full and exciting her life is.