Listen To Sassy: Life In The 90s

Sassy's second birthday coincides with prom, and this issue is on it, showing you how to get ready (with...a bodybuilding magazine?) and one ad full of Merry Go Round's weirdest dresses. There's also a great spread on Audrey Hepburn as a fashion muse, and a weird spread on environmentally conscious fashion that doesn't quite think things through. We're also learning which natural beauty products p...

Are you still calling all guys "Fred"s? Did you hoard your Debbie Gibson autobiography or are you one of the people selling it for three figures on eBay? Can you pick Stephen Baldwin out of a lineup? Did you thrill to Mama, There's A Man In Your Bed? DO YOU THINK THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS ARE GOOD?! ...This is not actually a quiz; we're just letting you know some of the questions you may ask yourself a...

Sassy embarks upon its third year with a fun, kicky feature on a girl whose parents committed her to a mental institution for what sure seem like spurious reasons. Christina gets heteronormative about one-night-stands, starting with the assumption that you, a girl, might not want to have one. A list of the 20 coolest women hasn't aged well the whole way through (although "Mom" probably still rocks...

First off, we take February 1990 "Rate Your Willpower" quiz. If you think you may know what kind of tangents that leads us to, you are almost certainly wrong. Then we play your latest voicemails, in which you tell us about your own experiments with Sassy's beauty hacks, your musings about which kind of medical procedure would be least terrible if interrupted by an earthquake, what it's like to get...

After blowing past cover girl Gina Marie DeGiovanni, we delve into the Fashion (Etc.) of the February 1990 issue. Give your preppy basics some edge! Canoodle with your boyfriend while you're both swathed in embroidery! Dump a bottle of cranberry juice on your head and see what happens! Also: Christina tries a bunch of beauty treatments; you get the best red lipstick recommendations at all price po...

The February 1990 What Now claims to be a "Low-Venom Edition," then lashes out at Combos and Child's Play for no good reason on the very same page, so we're not sure what to believe. (We aren't going to "bail" on it, though we now know that's a slang term we could use if we did!) After we learn about Alyssa Milano's Japanese pop album, illicit Norwegian skateboard imports, and so much more, it's o...

Thirteen months have gone by since Sassy crowned Rinnan its first Sassiest Girl In America, so it's time to pick a new one from a notably smaller field of finalists. Did we agree with the judges' choice? (Would we bring it up here if we did?) Catherine reports on a woman who was divorced before she was old enough to vote. Kim France makes her debut with a confusing piece on "dude defects." Karen t...

Yes, we know it's spring and we're talking about the winter holidays, but that's just how things shake out sometimes. After the "Rate Your Ho-Ho-Ho-ness" quiz discussion takes a surprisingly contentious turn, we play some of your latest calls! Topics include but are not limited to: Cher, Tori Spelling, the redheaded guy from Workaholics, Comedy Central, Cher, chambray, Fuddrucker's, Skyline Chili,...

One decade's ending and another one's starting: maybe your old aesthetic should end and you should try out a new one? The December 1989/January 1990 double issue has some ideas! What if you dressed like Lucille Ball, or a crow? What if you glued sequins to a t-shirt, or your face? What if you gave yourself dreadlocks??? ...Actually, don't do that one. Elsewhere, readers are calling out fur that tu...

The pop culture topics of the December 1989/January 1990 issue fall into a few clear categories. Want to learn about age-appropriate boys? There are What Now items on Fred Savage and Jared Rushton. Want to get confused by feelings of horniness for unbelievably hot men? There's a shirtless Patrick Swayze and Billy Wirth, the latter apparently One To Watch. Want to be really mean about people who ar...

Sassy's first and only double issue kicks off with a classic bummer: the story of teenager Billy Rosebud, whose murder cops only bothered to look into after his own family spent years doing most of the investigating for them. From there, things lighten up, as Karen tells us what to expect from a gynecologist appointment, Christina walks us through a truly cathartic crying fit, and Mary Kaye attemp...

Having skipped the October Slumber Party episode in late 2022, we're bringing you a SUPER-SIZED installment featuring our results in not one but TWO quizzes: Rate Your Self-Destructiveness from the October 1989 issue, and Rate Your Mall Knowledge from November 1989. Then it's on to several months' worth of calls on such subjects as whether physical therapy is a scam, how to lord a birthstone ring...

Having bid adieu to our dear guest co-hosts Kim and Megan, we welcome back Pam for the November 1989 Fashion Etc. episode. Fashion spreads tell us how to dress like a pilgrim, or a rodeo queen (?), or in a jacket. Karen does an exposé on how worthless your expensive modeling school education actually is. The lone beauty story tries to show us what...smells......look like. There's also beauty gadge...

Megan and Kim wind up their guest-co-hosting gigs with a bumper crop of pop culture topics. What Now takes us through The Keeper, "Bettys," acceptable crush objects Simon de la Brosse and Ethan Hawke, and Unacceptable crush object Leaf Phoenix. We attempt to understand the plot of Nightmare On Elm Street 5 and the appeal of Queen Of Hearts. We celebrate Mike's extremely correct five-star review of...

Megan and Kim return to help us cover all the Teen Life topics of the November 1989 issue! After racing through the lead bummer feature about the passes rich white criminals get, we discuss some solid advice from Christina on what to do -- and, more importantly, what NOT to do -- when you get dumped. The winners of a photography contest surprise us with their competence. Some guys DON'T surprise u...

While Pam continues globe-trotting, we are joined by guest co-hosts Megan McCafferty and Kim Reed for a discussion of the fashion (etc.) of the October 1989 issue! We're painting our feet, squinting at boots, sewing crap to the bottom of our blazers...okay, we're only doing some of that -- but we're talking about all of it. Prepare yourself for a deep dive on the "Welcome To Bedrock" fashion story...

Pam is overseas and Kim Reed's internet has been destroyed, but guest co-host Megan McCafferty is here! And eager to dig in on October 1989's pop culture topics. Her beloved Keith Coogan gets a mention in a What Now blurb about Star Search! Her object of teenage obsession, River Phoenix, gets a whole page to proselytize to Christina about animal rights! And there's more: we also cover Gleaming The...

For once, the lead feature is not heavy with tragedy -- it's just a little research piece on stats about teens in the U.S. compared to other countries. Do WE find a way to end on a bummer note anyway? ...Sorry, but yes, we do. We also discuss a piece that claims to help you "blow off" a reputation you might not want, and a collection of Sassy staffers' most horrifying and graphic period stories. B...

The September 1989 issue truly gets to the heart of what 90% of Sassy readers (give or take) were obsessing about: Rate Your Guy Appeal. How strong should you come on to a hypothetical Danish exchange student? Take the quiz and compare your results to ours. Then it's on to your latest voicemails, covering subjects ranging from how to interact with Northern Irish children; whether Bonhomme is a for...

What's your look going to be when you head back to school this year? Horse girl? All-red Christmas elf? Sticking buttons on all your garments, until they inevitably fall off in a trail behind you? Sassy is here for ALL these ideas! We also learn about tiny jewelry, models so "quirky" they actually look smart, some truly demented ads, and the arrival of a Fashion Editor, at last. Put down your glue...

The September 1989 issue gives us much to discuss in the world of pop culture. Is "well-gutted" a valid Sassy Glossary entry when "gutted" is just fine on its own? Should men pay for dates? How much can we discuss the TV adaptation of The Outsiders that won't be out for several months? How much baseline knowledge should a Gen Xer have about the Indigo Girls? How much worse is The Batman (2022) tha...

Time to go back to school (in 1989) with the Teen Life topics of the September issue! Catherine goes to Northern Ireland to report on The Troubles and gets real poetic about it. Christina relays tales of raging jealousy with the tiniest nod to more productive ways their subjects could have handled themselves. Your co-hosts are divided on "Grace," this month's fiction story. It Happened To Me's con...

Was this the right week for us to Rate Our Moodiness, as the August 1989 issue invited us to do? Given what we were dealing with, maybe not! (Content warning: hip talk.) Then we move on to some of your latest voicemails, which cover matters as diverse as John Mellencamp's dating history and cross-country appeal; avant-garde uses for Sun-in; an extremely romantic-sounding job playing piano in the Y...

It's time for back-to-school shopping, so we're going back to basics, with fashion stories on jeans and sweaters. There's also a suggestion that you sew 1000 teeny-tiny beads on a dress, but who has the time? In the beauty lane, we're learning about traditionally male grooming products and tips and all about kingpin hats, the down sides of manicures, how to match your foundation color AND dig in o...

How many calories in every hamburger McDonald's has ever sold? Was Booker the right career move for Richard Grieco? All this and more is covered in What Now. Watch it has, among others, a correct rating for Do The Right Thing and a wildly unfair rating for The Tall Guy. Listen Up finds us divided on The Ramones' "Pet Sematary," but united on 10,000 Maniacs. Dave agrees that Billy Zane is One To Wa...