Sassy, brassy and classy, it's Jane

Arizona Daily Wildcat

Back in the days when my weekly allowance was equally split between Diet Cokes and cosmetics from my local Revco, I was a Sassy girl.

See, one day Sassy appeared among the Seventeen and Tiger Beat magazines. Sassy was not like the others. She was smart and snotty and cooler than anyone else. She introduced Doc Martens to the American teenage public at large. She showed prom dresses you'd actually wear.

Then, alas, Sassy was bought out and got stupid and then disappeared altogether. I pity today's teen girls, stuck with only the remaining insipid magazines aimed at their demographics.

I, however, moved into a new demographic, where I was given access to a whole new realm of magazines.

They, unfortunately, were also, for the most part, stupid. Yes, I read them all: Cosmopolitan, Mademoiselle, Elle, Glamour. But I'm still in an iffy place, not quite young professional, not quite našve college student.

What am I to do?

Salvation has appeared, my sisters.

Jane Pratt, founder and former editor-in-chief of Sassy has returned (after a couple of failed TV talk shows) with Jane.

(It takes a special kind of hubris to name an entire magazine after yourself. But I guess you can do that more easily when your name is Jane rather than, say, Tanya. Jane mentions in her editor's letter that she wanted to call it Girlie. I would have bought that too.)

So here we have the premiere issue of Jane and it's . . . pretty damn good.

The Sassy sensibility is continued in many ways. One of the most obvious is the identification of staff members. Every magazine nowadays has their list of contributors, complete with photos and mini-bios, but here it's more than that. Mentions of other staffers appear in articles, so the reader begins to feel she knows them. And maybe she does. Christina Kelly, a former Sassy writer, returns and a few other names on the masthead look familiar.

Jane has the usual assortment of girl-mag features and articles, but with a Sassy-er spin. The fitness section is called "Athletic Guinea Pig." They sent their writer out to learn how to kick-box. The food section, "Eat," shows you how to eat well for a week on $49.90.

The articles run the gamut from "I Wish I Had Your Hair," (a guide to getting the perfect locks), to "Breaking Up With Prozac," and "No Women Allowed," (the inside scoop on the Promise Keepers movement).

There are, of course, the requisite fashion layouts, but here's one weird thing: There is no airbrushing. You may think this is not so strange, but after Vogue after Vogue of perfect-skinned models with shockingly white eyes and teeth, it's interesting to see blotchy-cheeked girls with bags under their eyes. I'm not passing judgment; it's just an interesting angle in fashion photography.

Oh, there's fiction, too. Missing from too many mainstream publications today, I'm glad to see it making a comeback somewhere. Maybe someday my friends will be able to make a living with those creative writing degrees.

Jane is a strange sort of homecoming for me and all those other Sassy girls out there. Jane is packed chock full o' adds, so hopefully it'll be around for a while. Plus it's cheap, just a buck ninety-five. Try to ignore Drew Barrymore on the cover. The rest of the 236 pages far outweigh her six pages of irritating groovy-coy, earth-girl-spriteness.