In terms of its articles relating to sex, relationships, boys, how was Sassy different from other teen magazines?
Kara Jesella: Sassy took a very different approach to sex and dating than other teen magazines. Seventeen, which was the grande dame of the teen category, regularly devoted column inches to sexual issues from STDs to how to prevent the “swept away” phenomenon that kept girls from protecting themselves upon first intercourse, but its stories were very clinical, very journalistic, and very moralistic. Sassy spoke to the same issues, but in a much friendlier, down-to-earth tone. It used the real language that teenage girls use—it dared to say “blow job”—and it didn’t tell girls they had to say no to experimentation. It gave them all the information and then left it up to them to decide. American Sexuality: In what ways did Sassy girls symbolize the late 1980s and early ’90s? Kara Jesella: Girls didn’t get much respect up until the ’ 90s. The culture was interested in them mainly as future consumers and even feminist women, who had worked so hard to garner their rights and the respect of m
