[awkward teenagers:hardly a new thing]
Thursday, 21 October 2021 09:39![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
roaming_kate23Lord knows I was an awkward teenager-and I’ve talked about that a lot on here-how I was one of the few people in my school who liked Duran Duran.
We’re talking more the late 80’s 90’s today. Sassy magazine specifically.I read a lot of comments saying “I lived in a flyover state and I felt like I didn’t fit in anywhere and Sassy magazine was great for that.” Yeah, OK but there were some problematic issues with Sassy. I admire their attempts to bring second wave feminism to a large audience but,IMO they went overboard with it at times-especially in the case of Riot Grrl where Sassy came in and was acting proprietary over it. Going on about “media overkill”..pot, meet kettle much?they were hardly the only ones overkilling coverage-not even close-but it became a bit precious at one point and then it just all fell apart, and I’ve heard more than one Riot Grrl band member say that Sassy had a lot to do with why Riot Grrl went the way it did. And I’m sure that the Sassy staff know/knew this and were not happy with it But it’s hardly Riot Grrl.
Yes, corporate teen magazines could do a whole lot better when it comes to diversity and at a certain point it did get better.Seventeen tried to horn in on the Riot Grrl trend and got laughed at-especially by the staff of Sassy magazine and a few others. Sassy wasn’t perfect. There were things I liked about it, but the constant bashing of their competition grated, big time. Sassy never was up to the sales level of their “rival” magazines and that(among other things) is what led to its demise(eventually..the HQ moved to the West Coast and became what fans called “Faux Sassy”. The new staff were kinda passive aggressive and posted excerpts of the hate mail that they got after things switched over. I think Faux Sassy hung around for only a few months before it was gone.
That is why I find the nostalgia for Sassy a bit of a headscratcher.
We’re talking more the late 80’s 90’s today. Sassy magazine specifically.I read a lot of comments saying “I lived in a flyover state and I felt like I didn’t fit in anywhere and Sassy magazine was great for that.” Yeah, OK but there were some problematic issues with Sassy. I admire their attempts to bring second wave feminism to a large audience but,IMO they went overboard with it at times-especially in the case of Riot Grrl where Sassy came in and was acting proprietary over it. Going on about “media overkill”..pot, meet kettle much?they were hardly the only ones overkilling coverage-not even close-but it became a bit precious at one point and then it just all fell apart, and I’ve heard more than one Riot Grrl band member say that Sassy had a lot to do with why Riot Grrl went the way it did. And I’m sure that the Sassy staff know/knew this and were not happy with it But it’s hardly Riot Grrl.
Yes, corporate teen magazines could do a whole lot better when it comes to diversity and at a certain point it did get better.Seventeen tried to horn in on the Riot Grrl trend and got laughed at-especially by the staff of Sassy magazine and a few others. Sassy wasn’t perfect. There were things I liked about it, but the constant bashing of their competition grated, big time. Sassy never was up to the sales level of their “rival” magazines and that(among other things) is what led to its demise(eventually..the HQ moved to the West Coast and became what fans called “Faux Sassy”. The new staff were kinda passive aggressive and posted excerpts of the hate mail that they got after things switched over. I think Faux Sassy hung around for only a few months before it was gone.
That is why I find the nostalgia for Sassy a bit of a headscratcher.
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