Are You Sassy?
Remember Sassy magazine? The little inside notes, the sardonic voice, the amazing pulse of an under-appreciated cultural uprising, it was all there in the glossy pages of Sassy. It’s almost like Karen Catchpole, Christina Kelly, Catherine Gysin and Mike Flaherty were bloggers a decade early. I don’t think the staff understood it at the time, but when the evil overlords churned 90% of the cool hip staff and started popping out a fluffy lame Seventeen-wannabe, it was the subcultural equivalent to the 1914 assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.
I’m guessing that a lot of us had Sassy moments that impacted your impressionable years. For me, when I read something that Mike Flaherty said about Roseann Barr being a “fat ugly cow”, something broke inside my brain. I wrote a seething letter to the editor, taking him and the magazine to task for preaching acceptance and then spewing that level of body hate. It was the first time I had ever dared to defend my body–my fatness–and it felt like the most dangerous thing in the world. Mike called me personally to apologize and then they published a version of the letter (although with a softened comment about still trying to lose weight) in their March 1990 issue. I used the payment to fly to NYC and hang out in the Sassy offices with Christina, Mike and then spanking-new writer Kim France (now EIC of Lucky), pretty much making me the luckiest teenager in America for a short few hours.
One of the things I remember most about those two afternoons was how Christina told me to keep writing and keep questioning shit. Christina took her own advice. Check it out:
In Jane Brody’s column about BMI on Tuesday, she, or some hack doctor she quotes, says that it’s thoroughly possible for a 125 pound, 5 foot 5 inch woman to be fat. Shut the front door. Jane, this is frigging impossible. I am resisting the impulse to say you are going senile.
An ad for a plastic surgeon in The Montclair Times today asks, “Do you suffer from cellulite?” Suffering? Really? I’m almost speechless. There is a lot of suffering in this world, to be sure, very little of it from cellulite.
Tabitha Soren (former MTV News correspondent back when MTV was still relevant) said “Sassy has changed my life by making me hopeful that society’s stereotypes of the ideal physical female are unrealistic and terribly outdated. Sassy celebrates women who are real people that exist in the real world, not plastic surgery victims.” It doesn’t happen often but it’s absolutely amazing when you see that your idols are still exactly who you thought they were, more than twenty years later.
Rock n roll, Christina Kelly. You’re still the coolest girl I’ve ever met.
Posted by Weetabix
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It was poorly phrased, but I actually can see what they’re trying to say about the 5’5″ 125 lb woman being “fat.”
It’s basically the same way that even the mainstream media admits that BMI is useless among weightlifters and pro-athletes. (The whole “muscle weighs more than fat” principle.)
The woman in the example who’s not “overweight” could still have a “too high” body fat percentage.
And, of course, it’s important to give people who thought they were a socially acceptable size something new to worry about because it’s not enough just to be skinny anymore, now the person needs to be muscular.
I thought about it as dealing with body fat percentage as well, but more in a “weight doesn’t mean health” way.
For someone to have high body fat at 5’5″ and 125 pounds they would have to have very little muscle. I have a friend like that, she can’t walk a mile without feeling like she’s going to die.
That’s what I thought of when I read that statement. And honestly, I wish that was more common knowledge. That visually slim does not necessarily equal fit. I have a good friend who’s 5’9 and 125ish, but can’t run a block without having to take a break. A person who technically has a “normal” BMI, but has a high body fat percentage is really no different than a person who’s overweight with the same bf percentage. Visually different, but pretty similar health-wise.
I do want to correct and say that muscle does not weigh more than fat. 1lb of muscle weighs the same as 1lb of fat (just like 1000lbs of feathers and 1000lbs of bricks weight the same). Muscle is more DENSE and less MASSIVE than fat, aka that same pound of muscle will occupy a smaller space.
I’m also not sure what Christina’s problem was. People can have high body fat, low muscle and still come within “normal” weight ranges. It might have been said a little clumsily – “you don’t have to *look* fat to *be* fat!” – but there was no need to insult the writer. (Yes, saying you’re resisting the temptatation counts.) It’s an important thing for a doctor to say.
Oh, lord was I ever a Sassy girl. I lived and breathed for that magazine and one Christmas my mom bought me a Sassy sweatshirt with red and green paint drips. Loved it.
But one day as I’m out with one of my impossibly-skinny-even-though-she-eats-twice-what-I-do friends, and she calls me Fat and Sassy for wearing the sweatshirt. I had never heard the term usually used in reference to pregnant women, but it sunk my heart. I couldn’t wear the sweatshirt again because in my head, I knew everyone who saw it was surely whispering “fat and sassy” to themselves about me.
I hate how even the best stuff somehow found a way to tear into my pre-teen self esteem.
Weetabix, I am the most jealous woman in all the land. I adored Sassy and always wanted to go to their offices.
I will be forever disappointed I was just an itty bitty bit too young to be interested in Sassy before it ceased to be, I was 12 when it stopped being published, meaning I just missed it, and read Teen instead.
I was just a hair too young for Sassy. I was 12 or 13 when it stopped, and had only started reading teen magazines a year or so before. I wonder if I might have spared some of the horrors of teenage life if a magazine like that had survived long enough for me to read it. I can’t put into words how jealous I am that women barely 5 years older than I am had such a great publication to look up to, and I was stuck with YM.
I still miss Sassy so much, and wish I hadn’t decluttered all the back issues I had. I loved that magazine.
I loved Sassy so much. I still have a few cherished issues I’ve been hauling around with me every time I’ve moved in the past 20 years (and that is a LOT of moves). I remember it breaking my heart when it became just another teen mag.
Through multiple moves, I’ve weeded out most of my old mags, but kept Sassy issues. I just can’t let them go-I have so many positive memories from them. They rock. I too am totally envious that you got to go to their offices. I still envision Jane wearing the daisy dress she wore in the REM video…