Without fail, the women I truly connect with have a common thread. These are the women with whom I feel a certain kinship, the women who love Betsey Johnson's designs, even though we can'??t pull them off; women who wear funky clothes and consider themselves a bit indie rocker chic, even when the only room they rock is a boardroom; women who share my slight crush on John Cusack, even though he'??s started to look a bit like his face is crumpling, as though he is a red dwarf star about to collapse in upon itself and create a black hole. And the common thread? Without fail, at some point, we learn that we spent the years between 1988 and 1994 with our noses buried in the pages of Sassy Magazine.

These are women who know Christina Kelly not for her work on Elle Girl but because she told us about Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love way before they made the radar. She introduced the word "??daggy"? into the American slang vernacular (although it never really stuck). These are the women who know exactly what I'm talking about when I say that I need a pair of Kim France pants to go under my shorter skirts.

So imagine my delight when a friend sent me the book, How Sassy Changed My Life. Delightful behind the scenes info, office gossip about who was really running the show, the scoop on Jane Pratt's desire for fame and fortune, and more info about what happened that turned original Sassy to the scary, teen-magazine-esque Stepford Sassy that eventually died a slow and agonizing death.

Sassy totally did change my own life. The March 1990 issue contains a It Happened To Me essay written by yours truly that represents the first time anyone had ever given me money for something I had cranked out on my little electronic Brother word processor. In actuality, I never really expected an answer to the irritated letter I had sent to the Sassy crew, responding to staffer Mike Flaherty'??s comment about "Roseanne 'Big Fat Cow' Barr," much less a personal phone call from Mike, apologizing and asking if it would be okay if they turned my letter into a column about what it was like being fat. The resulting column sort of looked like my original letter, but was filled with direct quotes from a two-hour conversation with Mike, and completely ignored the two paragraph diatribe about how Sassy prides itself on using diverse models yet--regardless of the color of their skin--they were always, without fail, size six or under; and how much I wanted someone to show me places I could shop; and how just because I was a size 20 didn't mean that I wanted to dress like my grandmother. Reviewers of the book nail it: "Editors paid lip service to diversity, but Sassy was mostly a club for white girls with small troubles." Make that thin white girls--I had also included my weight in the post, but apparently 268 pounds seemed like science fiction, so they gave me a little editorial liposuction and dropped me down to 228.

Mike had offered to give a tour of the Sassy Times Square offices if I ever happened to be in the neighborhood, so I used my $300 Sassy paycheck for a plane ticket and spent my first college spring break in NYC and met Christina, Kim France, Jane Pratt and the gang. My fondest memory was a delightful afternoon hanging out in the art department with Mike and Neill, laughing about the most recent episodes of Geraldo Rivera (whose studio was right across the street). And while they may have smoothed over the article for mass consumption, the March 1990 issue generated the most reader mail they had received at that point for a single It Happened To Me. 

Aside from Jane Pratt's assertion that I had potential as a writer, Sassy gave me, along with a generation of women, the understanding that yes, sexuality was important, and yes, we were more than what we wore and who we married and, damn it, get out there and change the world in as many ways possible--even if it's just by being your fabulous self. If you loved Sassy way back when, I highly recommend you pick up the rest of the story. And then go digging through your parents' attic for your old issues. Because we don't care how squishy John Cusack looks now, Lloyd Dobler was fine.--Weetabix