Ypulse Interview: Kara Jesella and Marisa Meltzer
Posted by anastasia on 05-02-2007
Unfortunately I kind of missed the Sassy era — I'm either too old or was just too out of it when Sassy had its heyday. I read Seventeen when I was 12 or 13 and then pretty much stopped reading teen mags all together. But in many ways I was a "Sassy" kind of girl — I loved punk music, wore lots of vintage, went to loads of all ages shows and later became very politically active in high school. I have met so many cool, creative women over the years who told me: "Sassy was my bible." And having worked on a non-profit teen magazine trying to be an alternative to what mainstream teen mags were offering, Sassy was always talked about as a case study in how far you could push the envelope and survive (or not) in the commercial magazine publishing world.
All to say I am very excited to read Kara Jesella and Marisa Meltzer's new book: How Sassy Changed My Life: A Love Letter to the Greatest Teen Magazine of All Time. Kara and Marisa also participated in the New York Ypulse Mashup (scroll down for the audio podcast) on the "Future of Teen Magazines" this fall. We have three of these books to give away to lucky Ypulse readers. Just be the first three readers to answer this question in the comments: How did Sassy change your life? And we'll mail you a copy. And now…the interview.
Ypulse: What made you two "Sassy" girls as opposed to girls who read the other popular teen mags at the time?
Marisa Meltzer: Just on a personal note, I think I always felt like a bit on an outsider in school. I wasn't friendless, but I also wasn’t ever going to be elected Homecoming Queen and I loved that Sassy acknowledged that high school didn't have to be your golden years.
Kara Jesella: We didn't have a homecoming queen, but I did go to 4 proms my senior year of high school (this might be my only chance as an adult to brag about this, so please bear with me)! Still, I felt like an outsider, too, and I was really unhappy in high school. I was interested in books and feminism and culture and getting out of my small town. I was also really interested in fashion and makeup. Sassy was about all of these things and Seventeen and the others were not.
YP: What was the most unexpected discovery about Sassy lore you made while researching the book?
KJ: There were so many! I was surprised to find out how little advertisers understood teenagers back in the '80s and '90s. They didn't really believe teen girls had any purchasing power beyond makeup. A lot of advertisers weren't particularly supportive of Sassy and a lot didn't seem to understand that even if the girls who read Sassy didn't want the same all-American fashion that the girls at Seventeen wanted it didn't mean they didn't want to buy things. I think there may be a lot of Sassy readers who still wear Doc Marten-esque shoes.
MM: Researching the Seventeen archives was really eye-opening, too. I don't think we quite understood how groundbreaking Sassy was until we looked at the late-'80s issues of Seventeen it was up against, which were packed with diet tips and wedding editorial.
Newsletter readers: Visit Ypulse for the rest of the interview.
YP: Which teen magazine (if there is one) do you think comes closest to embodying the spirit of Sassy? (or is it a website?) Where do today's Sassy girls go for the same type of vibe?
KJ: The Sassy vibe was smart and funny and snarky and cool and creative and I don't know that there is a single source for the content or vibe of Sassy today. But I think Sassy's spirit is alive and well in blogs and on YouTube. Nylon — a magazine that a lot of teens read — has a very joyful, non-dictatorial approach to makeup and fashion (I worked there a number of years back and was really, really influenced by Sassy, and my former assistant, a real Sassy fan who once worked for Sassy's own Mary Clarke, is the beauty director there now). Some teen girls read magazines like Bust, Bitch, and Venus, all of which were founded by Sassy fans.
YP: How was the process of co-authoring the book? Did you two always agree on everything ;-)?
KJ: A lot easier than you would think. Marisa and I were already used to working together as editor and writer because she wrote features for me when I worked at Teen Vogue. We spent a lot of time drinking tea and eating scones and discussing the finer points of What Now (one of Sassy’s most famous columns). It was pretty great to geek out with someone who loves Sassy as much as I do. And I'm sure it saved my non-Sassy reading boyfriend some grief.
YP: Who was (or were) your favorite Sassy editor(s) and why?
KJ: Most readers had a Sassy crush, but I liked everyone. I felt like each of them embodied a different part of my own personality.
MM: The first thing I read in any given issue was Christina Kelly's column, What Now, which became my teenage Bible of coolness. I loved her dry sense of humor and her impeccable taste in music, zines, and boys.
YP: What was your favorite Sassy issue and why?
KJ: I loved so many issues — I don't remember NOT liking any — but like almost every other fan, I have a special place in my heart for the issue with Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love on the cover. Sassy was the first publication to have the newly married couple on their cover and the profile inside is a classic. Courtney apologizes for having a zit and Kurt replies "zits are beauty marks." Teenagers around the world swooned…
MM: I have to say that my least favorite issues might have been the Reader-Produced Issues (which were so ahead of their time, in terms of reader-generated content) not because they were bad — they were not — but because I would miss hearing from all the staff members for a month.
YP: What do you hope readers will take away from this book?
KJ: I hope that readers will see how important pop culture can be in the way it shapes teen girls. And I hope that people will realize how smart and thoughtful teen girls really are. As Marisa and I have met readers who were Sassy fans in their youth, we're always struck by how viscerally they remember the magazine and by the extent to which it shaped their lives — from instilling a penchant for Doc Martens to helping them develop a sense of justice and morality.
YP: Anything else you want Ypulse readers to know about (hint: upcoming book readings)?
KJ & MM: Here are our upcoming tour dates:
NEW YORK CITY
Wednesday, May 2
7:00 PM to 8:30 PM
Talk/Q&A/Signing
BARNES & NOBLE
4 Astor Place
Tuesday, May 8
7:00 PM
Talk/Q&A/Signing
BLUESTOCKINGS BOOKSTORE
172 Allen Street
PHILADELPHIA
SAT MAY 5
Mew Gallery
906 Christian Street
6:00
215-625-2424
SEATTLE
Thursday, May 17
7:00 PM to 8:30 PM
Talk/Q&A/Signing
UNIVERSITY BOOKSTORE
4326 University Way NE
PORTLAND, OR
Monday, May 21
7:30 PM to 8:30 PM
Talk/Q&A/Signing
Powell’s on Hawthorne
3723 SE Hawthorne Blvd
CHICAGO
Thursday, May 31
9:30 PM
Reading/Bands/DJs
A party with Venus Zine
The Hideout
1354 w wabansia chicago il 60622
773.227.4433
May 2nd, 2007 at 12:24 pm
How Sassy changed (influenced) your life….
Sassy for me was, or is sort of a ghost of a magazine. I grew up with YM, Seventeen, and Teen People, but remember my older cousins looking at me while reading these zines and shaking their heads, as if to say…"she doesn't know what she's missing" Soon after all the stares I finally headed to the library, dug up some old issues and realized, I've been getting the tail-end of what a "girl magazine" is sincerely about….today I don't have any real favorites, but thanks goodness for archives…Sassy in a way offered me an the option of what I should like as opposed to sitting me down and just telling me
May 2nd, 2007 at 2:49 pm
I distinctly remember the day, in fifth grade, when the lyrics to Losing My Religion came included with my Sassy. I then remember showing up at school the next day (Northern California) so proud to show off my new knowledge that Losing my Religion was a Southern phrase and getting a few cool points for a few hours from the 3 other elementary school kids who knew who REM was. I still have cut outs from the magazine from high school - a hilarious photo spread of silly model poses, a few poems I can recite by heart - that I have carried with me from dorm room to tiny apartment…to slightly larger apartment. I devoured every issue until Teen came along and transformed my beloved mag into a slimmer, glossier version that didn't make any sense. The editors of Sassy held my dream jobs, and probably influenced influenced my foray into indie fashion pr - they definately influenced my desire to explore identity through clothing, music… The Sassy DIY aesthetic definitely inspired me to create communities in college, and later, online, where I could find and relish in Sassy-style friendships.
May 4th, 2007 at 8:05 am
Sassy absolutely changed my life, in a number of ways.
1) My first high school best friend and I bonded instantly over a shared love of the magazine. I thought she was so cool for having the first issue… I didn't catch on until issue 2.
2) Said friend and I made a pilgrimage to NY and bumrushed the Sassy offices. Karen Catchpole let us in and walked us around, because she is amazing and kind. It was electrifying to see the inside of a magazine office, even though looking back it's hilarious that i was like "wow, real cubicles!"
3) I ended up majoring in writing and publishing intending first to work for Sassy, and then after its demise, to start a girls' magazine just like Sassy. (I write for The N now instead… close enough!)
4) This is convoluted but, I also became OBSESSED with dirt ("Sassy for boys") when that came out. I worked at a magazine stand and read lots of skate mags too (because in my thirst for stuff that was about LIFE and not makeup and boys, they hit the spot even harder than Sassy did — a problem in girls' publishing I have always wanted to correct). So I was immersed in boy culture through transworld, thrasher, and dirt. Later in life, that background and my thorough familiarity with dirt — following lew, spike, and andy's careers like a hawk — was i'm pretty sure one of the reasons I ended up getting hired to edit grandroyal.com, which was my first non-internship writing job and changed my entire career (thank god, since i was a quality assurance engineer at AOL before that).
GIMME MY BOOK!