FROM FISTFIGHTS TO FEMINISM BACK TO FISTFIGHTS AGAIN

“You will cold-cock a bitch. That’s why I like you.”
“You know I will slice a razor into that puta’s eyetooth.”
Not two hours after having the above IM conversation with my Powerbroker, I attended a party for a book about the magazine that introduced me to third wave feminism. What can I say – you can teach a shark a dolphin’s tricks, but at heart she stays a shark. Nevertheless, grrrrl power was in full effect: your new bedside tome How Sassy Changed My Life: A Love Letter to the Greatest Teen Magazine of All Time by Kara Jesella and Marisa Meltzer has dropped. The party was in a Lower East Side bar, populated with well-heeled, well exfoliated magazine chicas and post-grunge literary dudes. The DJs were playing all ’90s classic rock – Bikini Kill, Bratmobile, Sonic Youth, Chia Pet. Some fellow I briefly made out with in the front seat of a Honda Civic in 1999 was in attendance. IT FELT LIKE HIGH SCHOOL. This fact was both comforting and uncomfortable. But more importantly – in addition to Kara and Marisa, who looked radiant (and adorable in accidentally matching ensembles) – Sassy staffers were in the building.
At this point in my capacity as a journalist, I am in general unfazed when it comes to talking to musicians, artists, writers and actors I greatly admire – but I can honestly say Christina Kelly, brain-genius of Sassy magazine, the person I looked up to most in the 10th grade, made me totally nervous. Not in a famous person way – it was more like the nervous you get when you are adopted and on your way to meet your biological parents. I felt like when my cousin came back from her first trip to Mexico as an adult and was like “I FINALLY KNOW FROM WHENCE I CAME.”
Like getting a really good look at who you once were, with the perspective of time and registering: “Oh. Here is a gauge.” Stand back, stand back. Maybe because in 1992 I was reading her words from the middle of my room in Wyoming and going “She is the only person who understands.” I was like, “IF IT WEREN’T FOR YOU I WOULDNT KNOW ABOUT LOS BROS HERNANDEZ. I WOULDN’T KNOW I COULD MAKE A FANZINE.” My cultural options were SO limited (to Herb Alpert and Esther Hobart Morris, basically) and Christina Kelly’s “What Now” section was the world unfolding to me. In a very subtle way, it helped me to know I had options.
(DISCOVER HOW COMMON THE ABOVE ANECDOTE IS (i believe that is called “cultural impact”) AMONG A CERTAIN STRATA OF FEMALES IN THE BOOK “How Sassy Changed My Life” by authors Marisa Meltzer and Kara Jesella.)
ANYWAY. I have not yet read the final version of the book, but I know that Kara and Marisa are true about their love for Sassy magazine, they are feminists, they are both excellent journalists, and I can’t wait to get to it. You should buy it now if you have any interest at all in:
MAGAZINES
JOURNALISM
THE ’90S
FEMINISM
GOSSIP
INTRA-OFFICE POLITICS
IAN SVENONIOUS’ HAIRLINE (SEE “THE ’90S”)
ummm… what else? SPIKE JONZE? check. TRIBE CALLED QUEST? check. CHLOE SEVIGNY’S FIRST INTERNSHIP? check. LEARNING HOW TO MAKE A CUTE DRESS OUT OF A PILLOWCASE? say word.