Studying Sassy: Prologue

It was all happenstance, how Sassy magazine even came up in conversation that night in Chinatown over all the kinds of meat in gloppy sauces. Matt wanted to know if I thought I might have saved, in a stack somewhere in my parent’s office (nee my childhood bedroom), the Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love issue. I said I probably had. Within a week or so, the box arrived in the mail. I sorted through and organized, month by month, almost 4 complete years of my adolescence (minus an issue or two) and the plan began to take shape……

I’ve been in a dark space, and trying to clear the air with myself about myself. The early 1990’s were a time when I was raw, and malleable, and open to interpretation about who I might be. Sassy represented a type of girl who wasn’t afraid to fly a freak flag. She was strong, and stood up for things she felt deeply. If she couldn’t find what she was looking for, she made it. She was all the kinds of awesome I wanted to embody. And, for a while anyway, I did.

I am ready to reintroduce myself to that girl, who could get up in front of the whole school and say out loud words she had written. The girl who still played with dolls, secretly, so that she could sew them clothes and create elaborate homes for them out of cardboard and clay. A girl who loved hearing about other strong girls, and wanted to band with them to try and change the world. A girl who thought that there were all different kinds of cool, and just as many ways to fit in.

The plan is simply this:

Each month, I will use the corresponding issue of Sassy magazine as my guide, and try to relearn what made me… Me. We begin with January, 1991.