I feel like I missed but bc I have no idea what Sassy was!

I subscribed to and loved Seventeen and Yound Miss in high school (and Tiger Beat was my “teen People”).

I loved Sassy! Sometime around 93-94 (I think?) they wrote an article that really stuck with me and I still think about it often. It was about Clay county, KY and how a lot of teen girls there get married. I remember one girl was married to a much older guy (like in his 70's or 80s?) and described his double wide trailer as "the fanciest place she had ever been in."

Anonymous wrote::I used to be a designer at seventeen.
Early sassy was the best. The rest were trash designed to make young women feel bad about themselves, so they would be good little consumers of products to help make them feel better.

I don’t recall ever feeling bad about myself reading them! I enjoyed the ride. And a lot of us loved the makeup ads! I certainly did. I mean compare them to the ugly Dove ads we now see with every thing hanging out (even though I myself am fat and jiggle everywhere). But those ads are turn offs to me. I want to aspire to beautiful. Anyway I loved the makeup ads and experimented with finding myself with colors and style. Good times!

omg i lived off of Seventeen, YM, and Sassy. Marie Claire and Glamour were later like senior year of high school. And Cosmo (I would read my older sister's) back in those days was the racier of the bunch. lol. I so wish there was an equivalent to YM/Seventeen that my daughter could read. Those magazines were formative for me in learning about style and make-up, health-related/relationship topics, learning about issues of the time impacting young women. My teen gets random bits of information from tiktok and that's just not the same and has zero substance.

Anonymous wrote:Obviously the Internet fills the same purpose for kids (and advertisers!) nowadays… But I wonder if this is one of those situations where a real, paper, monthly magazine would end up feeling cool and different to today’s teens. Like vinyl records, ha.

I agree with this. I wish an actual teen magazine other than Girls World would make a come back. There is so much noise online and that universe is so fragmented. A magazine would get my kids attention if it were well thought out and cool. A novelty to them!

I read 17 in the 80's. I had a job in the 90's working as the exec asst for the buyer for a large chain. She saw me reading all the teen magazines she got as part of her job and said "Oh, I hate reading those -- do you want to start reading them as part of your job but I need to stay on top of what they say are the trends. Just put a sticky on anything you think I should see." So I would spend hours a day flipping through all those magazines while I waited for her phone to ring and I would tell people she wasn't available and could I take a message. Such a good job. Except for the pay and benefits.

Anonymous wrote:My daughter loved these Brio magazines for teen girls:

https://www.focusonthefamily.com/parenting/brio-magazine/

Disgusting! I hope you’re being sarcastic.

Anonymous wrote:I miss Sassy. Seventeen was hot makeup company garbage.

I totally agree! People are trashing Instagram but those 90s teen girl mags were basically all “this is what is wrong with your appearance and this is what you need to buy to fix it!” And the cringe teenspeak invented by adults, like rockin and rad. Good riddance!

I have been really impressed by teen Vogue over the last few years, though.

Obviously the Internet fills the same purpose for kids (and advertisers!) nowadays… But I wonder if this is one of those situations where a real, paper, monthly magazine would end up feeling cool and different to today’s teens. Like vinyl records, ha.

If you loved these magazines in their heyday you must follow @thankyouatoosa on instagram. You will love the acct, its a blast from the past and they post pages from all of these 90s/00s mags.

I guess I’m looking fir Marie Claire (the way it was) but for younger teens? I don’t know…

:I used to be a designer at seventeen.
Early sassy was the best. The rest were trash designed to make young women feel bad about themselves, so they would be good little consumers of products to help make them feel better.

I’ll not looking for religious magazines for my daughter at all. Just something fun, classy, with an international focus, a bit of decorum in life. I’m not looking for wholesome, just cool and fun and aware. Like Sassy, Jane and Seventeen mags did before. This is sorely missing from the online mags of today for teens.

Anonymous wrote:My daughter loved these Brio magazines for teen girls:

https://www.focusonthefamily.com/parenting/brio-magazine/

LOLno.

My friends and I sometimes spent middle school indoor recess in the media center reading Teen and YM.