My love is bigger than your love.

How Sassy changed my life:

1) 1991: my sister and I see a girl by the pop machine at our new high school and she was wearing the skirt made of neckties from Sassy's You Make It column. We were staring at her in awe when she turned and, according to Little Sister, "gave me a dirty look." Who was that Sassy lassie, with kool-aid-burgundy hair I was convinced she ratted? My Super Best Friend since 1994! Sister and I called her the Tie Skirt Girl until she and I discovered a mutual love of sewing and laughing at least partially attributable to Sassy.

2) Yesterday while waiting for the "How Sassy Changed My Life" reading they were playing the Vaselines. Pow. I was walking into BeeBop Records in Toledo, nearly dying of shame and desire, and buying college rock at the age of 13 because Christina Kelly told me to in Listen Up. The Vaselines were awesome, I really hated Eugenius, there were hundreds of tapes and records purchased from bad jobs and money stolen from my mother so that by the time "Stepford Sassy" took over, I was sad but not shaken, having found a place in the subculture that went beyond Sassy and into vinyl and zines and punk rock shows.

One of the authors brought up the irony of so much Sassy nostalgia: we liked the magazine, hated our lives. I look back at a chubby girl in clothes she made herself buying records and reading books that were ridiculously precocious and I'm thinking how awesome I was, how valuable I was, despite being troubled and obese and living in a one bedroom apartment in Toledo with my depressed and unemployed father. All the time I was aware of how even the outside had an inside and convinced, to my core, that I would never know the inside of anything.

2007: Fluffyhair and I are at the Hideout, cute as fuck and loving life, as she turns 30. I've been 30 for seven months and the wonder is unceasing. We are the women our 13-year-old selves dreamt of being, saw in Sassy, and made ourselves into while totally unaware. That's fucking tragic. And fucking awesome.