To kick off the new year, Sassy wants you to wear pastels, catalog fashions, jean jackets, white t-shirts, and an alice band you made yourself. It also wants you to shave your legs, fix your skin, and buy the right bra. If you're in L.A.? You're doing everything right. As for the Etc., we've got a sneaky claim about mono (but whose?), a whole new computer program to design the magazine in (so many fonts!), and a staff retreat that is something Jane Pratt should put on as a Sassy fantasy camp TODAY. Put on your shorteralls: your latest episode is here!

🗒 Full episode notes can be found on this episode's page on our website

🖼️ Check out this episode's Visual Aids

☎️ Call The Hotline! Leave your questions, comments and Sassy stories on the hotline at 720-SASSY-GO or record directly on our site

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🎧 It Is January 1991

🎧 Fashion Feature: Slowly Fade To Pale

🎧 Fashion Feature: Cataloged

🎧 Fashion Feature: Keepers

🎧 What Next: Pastel On… Pastel On… Pastel On…

🎧 Worn Out: Los Angeles, CA

🎧 Making It: Instant Alice Band

🎧 We Wear It

🎧 Beauty Feature: Your 10 Biggest Skin Problems Annihilated

🎧 About Face

🎧 We Try It: Many Foundations

🎧 Zits And Stuff

🎧 Then & Now: From Russia With Really Really Bad Hair

🎧 Sassy Ads

🎧 Diary: I Like Trees As Much As The Next Guy, But

🎧 Say What

🎧 Inside Out

🎧 Goodbye For Now

😭 "What The World Needs Now Is A Revival Of 1-900-9099-CRY" at Boing Boing

📸 Sassy January 1991 cover photographer Lee Page

🔀 "Cross Processing Film - A Complete Guide" at The Darkroom

👕 A $56 white t-shirt

👖 Aaardvark's Odd Ark on Yelp

👛 "September 1, 1994 - Shirley Temple's Pussy" from Raw magazine at Below Empty

💇🏻‍♀️ Henry Margu at Best Wig Outlet

🧢 Baseball Cap With Hair at Headcovers Unlimited

🎸 Adult SNL Wayne Campbell Wig and Hat at Candy Apple Costumes

☀️ ColorStay Longer Makeup SPF 15 at Revlon

🎯 Dr. Jart+ Cicapair Tiger Grass Color Correcting Treatment SPF 30

🫥 Dr. Hauschka concealer

✅ "Corrector For Large Or Separated Ears" on Etsy

🥗 "Vinegar And Brown Paper" on Urban Herbology

🪣 Jack And Jill on Wikipedia

👨‍🎨 The Painters Coat In Indigo Cream Sashiko at Imogene + Willie

🔥 Extra Hot Great on Patreon

🙆🏻‍♀️ Yekaterina Chilichkina on Sputnik MediaBank

📒 Yekaterina on the cover of Soviet Life on eBay

👸🏻 Yekaterina from the Miss Europe competition, at Sputnik MediaBank

🐦 Yekaterina talking about the competition on Twitter

📷 Joanna Agnieszka Janiec on Instagram

📖 "Sporny" at the Cambridge Dictionary

📻 KEBS Radio Records Music at Perfect Duluth Day

🇳🇱 Tara's Going Dutch review at Cracked

💗 Instruments Of A Beating Heart on YouTube

How many offspring can cockroaches produce? Why should you keep sending postcards? Why were weird hats having a moment in 1991? Believe it or not, these are all questions that get explored in our January 1991 POP CULTURE episode -- but we do cover more expected topics -- shocking omissions from Karen's reviews of Mermaids and Listen Without Prejudice; not-so-shocking half-assery from Neill in his INXS album review; a One To Watch who wasn't; and much more. Put on YOUR dumbest hat and listen in!

🗒 Full episode notes can be found on this episode's page on our website

🖼️ Check out this episode's Visual Aids

☎️ Call The Hotline! Leave your questions, comments and Sassy stories on the hotline at 720-SASSY-GO or record directly on our site

🦋 @ListenToSassy on Bluesky

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🧑‍💻 Visit our website ListenToSassy.com

🛍️ Shop the LTS Store

🎧 It Is January 1991

🎧 What Now

🎧 Watch It

🎧 Listen Up

🎧 One To Watch

🎧 Goodbye For Now

👁️ "You Are The Everything" from REM's Tourfilm

🎸 "How The Biggest Rock Band In The World Disappeared" by our friend Will Leitch at The Washington Post

🔄 Donate to the Anti-Recidivism Coalition

🏢 "Here's How This A-List Actor Landed the Role of a Building In 'Severance' Season 2" at Collider

🦔 "'Sonic The Hedgehog 3' Teleports Keanu Reeves' [sic] Career Box Office Total Into Space" at Collider

🎤 Vintage 1990 Seiko Carry A Tune Music Machine on eBay

📖 Slang U on Amazon

🤮 "Sylvester Stallone, Mel Gibson, And Jon Voight Named Hollywood's 'Special Ambassadors' By Trump" at The Hollywood Reporter

🔄 Donate to the Anti-Recidivism Coalition

🥮 "Biscuit's In The House" on YouTube

📸 Tobi Vail on Instagram

🎶 "Tobi Vail: Kurt Cobain's Girlfriend And The Muse Behind Nevermind" At Musiclipse

🌾 The Field on YouTube

🧜‍♀️ Mermaids on Fubo

📺 Orcboxer's "Poob" post on Tumblr

👽 Meet The Applegates on The Roku Channel

🔄 Donate to the Anti-Recidivism Coalition

👨🏻‍🎤 INXS's "By My Side" on YouTube

🍝 Christopher Serrone on IMDb

🤩 "He Was The Teenage Star Of Goodfellas Who Played A 13-year-old Mobster..." at The Daily Mail

🧫 "How David Lynch Invented Me" by Kyle MacLachlan in the New York Times

🧯 Mutual Aid Los Angeles Network

🔄 Donate to the Anti-Recidivism Coalition

🔄 Donate to the Anti-Recidivism Coalition

The tale of "Eat Through Austin," the domestic follow-up vacation to Dave, Pam and Tara's trip to the Big Island of Hawai'i as told on the old podcast Overwhelming Positivity. We'll back next time with more actual Listen To Sassy stuff.

🗒 Full episode notes can be found on this episode's page on our website

🖼️ Check out this episode's Visual Aids

☎️ Call The Hotline! Leave your questions, comments and Sassy stories on the hotline at 720-SASSY-GO or record directly on our site

🦋 @ListenToSassy on Bluesky

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🎧 Three Types Of Cookies

Back in 2009 Tara, Pam and Dave went to the Big Island of Hawai'i. It was a time. We recorded an episode of the Overwhelming Positivity podcast while we were there. A lot happened.

🗒 Full episode notes can be found on this episode's page on our website

🖼️ Check out this episode's Visual Aids

☎️ Call The Hotline! Leave your questions, comments and Sassy stories on the hotline at 720-SASSY-GO or record directly on our site

🦋 @ListenToSassy on Bluesky

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🧑‍💻 Visit our website ListenToSassy.com

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🎧 Tandoori Lady

It's a new year in the Sassy timeline, and you know what that means: time to crown a new Sassiest Girl In America! The latest crop of hopefuls descend on New York (thanks to Clairol and L.A. Gear), and apparently don't slow down for photos because other than the winner on the cover, all you get are silver dollar-sized, super-processed photos of them. (If this is what we have to look forward to from the magazine's new redesign, its first since its launch almost three years ago: boo.) Elsewhere, we hear first-person testimony from staffers' bouts of depression, a wildly sexist feature on why boys find YOU scary, an excellent short story from copy assistant Jessica Vitkus, the incongruous choice of Nick Cave as What He Said's celebrity boy, and much more. You're going to need your reading glasses and a flashlight to make out what's on some of these pages, so you might as well just let us tell you about it all instead!

🗒 Full episode notes can be found on this episode's page on our website

🖼️ Check out this episode's Visual Aids

☎️ Call The Hotline! Leave your questions, comments and Sassy stories on the hotline at 720-SASSY-GO or record directly on our site

🦋 @ListenToSassy on Bluesky

📷 @ListenToSassy on Instagram

🧑‍💻 Visit our website ListenToSassy.com

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🎧 It Is January 1991

🎧 Feature: Spying On The Sassiest Girls In America

🎧 Feature: Why Boys Think You’re So Scary

🎧 Feature: When We Were Depressed

🎧 Fiction: Chicago

🎧 Body Talk

🎧 It Happened To Me: Pen Pal Stopped Writing

🎧 What He Said: What’s Your Type?

🎧 Help

🎧 Help For Him

🎧 Stuff You Wrote

🎧 Goodbye For Now

🐳 Tom Carvel on Wikipedia

🏫 "Smart Business with a Social Conscience" and Columbia College Today

🧑🏻‍💼 Wah Chen on LinkedIn

⚖️ Traprock Center for Peace & Justice

🏪 Sandra Yeh on Yelp

⛑️ "10 Disturbing Things ProPublica/NPR Learned Investigating the Red Cross' [sic] Sandy Relief Efforts" at ProPublica

💰 "How the Red Cross Raised Half a Billion Dollars for Haiti and Build Six Homes" at ProPublica

😡 "Red Cross Endorsed Top Official Despite Sexual Misconduct Claims, ProPublica Reports" at NPR

📜 Dawn Wilkinson on Wikipedia

📸 Dawn Wilkinson on Instagram

🎬 Derek Madison on IMDb

🍎 Christian Cervegnano on BitbyBit

💻 Terry Miura's website

Some of the readers in charge of fashion freak it, like stylist Daisy von Furth's fun and quirky denim looks. Others, like Shelly Franklin, went to a Gap and grabbed the first seven garments she saw. The two co-exist uneasily over 12 pages in the December 1990 issue's one and only fashion feature. (Which stylist did you prefer? Tell us at 720-SASSY-GO!) Beyond that, we get a makeup enthusiast getting mentored by an expert; an essay about how weight-related beauty standards change over time, an absolutely cuckoo Making It project, and much much more. Put down your new-fangled bath puff and listen!

🗒 Full episode notes can be found on this episode's page on our website

🖼️ Check out this episode's Visual Aids

☎️ Call The Hotline! Leave your questions, comments and Sassy stories on the hotline at 720-SASSY-GO or record directly on our site

🦋 @ListenToSassy on Bluesky

📷 @ListenToSassy on Instagram

🧑‍💻 Visit our website ListenToSassy.com

🛍️ Shop the LTS Store

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🎧 It Is December 1990

🎧 Fashion Feature: Denim

🎧 Making It: Outerunderwear

🎧 Beauty Feature: I Hate My Body

🎧 Beauty Feature: Real Professional

🎧 About Face

🎧 Remember When

🎧 We Try It

🎧 Sassy Ads

🎧 Diary: Strange Things Afoot At 1 Times Square

🎧 Say What

🎧 Goodbye For Now

🎁 Give the Listen To Sassy Club as a gift on Patreon

🌎 Deborah Jaffe's website

💻 Carter B. Smith's website

📸 Victoria Ventanini on Instagram

💍 "Weddings: Vows; Katie Weinberg and Patrick Schumacher" at the New York Times

💿 Letha Rodman Melchior on Forced Exposure

🪈 U By Kotex

😎 Summer Lopez on Amazon

⛱️ Her Own Summer

🌊 Summer Lopez's "cold case crime novel," Murder On Big Water: A Sierra Cold Case Crime

Our second episode on Sassy's first reader-produced issue covers its pop culture topics. Whose mom surprisingly liked Das Damen? Is "gnard" going to catch on as a slang term? And is Nathan Limbaugh...okay? There's also movie reviews, a One To Watch who may or may not be, a profile of Faith No More's Mike Patton, and a bushel AND a peck of a Mystic, CT scribe named Eva Peck. Put down your Factsheet Five for just a second and listen!

🗒 Full episode notes can be found on this episode's page on our website

🖼️ Check out this episode's Visual Aids

☎️ Call The Hotline! Leave your questions, comments and Sassy stories on the hotline at 720-SASSY-GO or record directly on our site

🦋 @ListenToSassy on Bluesky

📷 @ListenToSassy on Instagram

🧑‍💻 Visit our website ListenToSassy.com

🛍️ Shop the LTS Store

📖 Full cover-to-cover magazine PDFs

💬 Chat with us and your fellow listeners on Discord

🐣 Get episodes earlier than the general public

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🤩 Join the Listen To Sassy Club today!

💖 Already a club member? Check out the Pinned Patreon Primer Post.

🎧 It Is December 1990

🎧 What Now

🎧 Watch It

🎧 Listen Up

🎧 One To Watch

🎧 Goodbye For Now

🎧 Fudge

👧🏻 "'Emily The Strange' Animated Movie In The Works From Warner Bros., Bad Robot" at The Hollywood Reporter

🪑 "Remembering Trivet's Antiques In Cincinnati" at That 70's [sic] blog

🛹 "The X-Girl Factor: How The Cult '90s Label Set The Standard For Skater-Girl Style" at Vogue

🌭 "Mr. Show - Titanica [sic] Visits A Fan" on YouTube

👖 Das Damen at Trouser Press

📢 "SST Vets Das Damen Announce First Shows In 30+ Years" at Brooklyn Vegan

📷 Das Damen on Instagram

🚏 Reprodepot on Etsy

📷 Djerba Goldfinger on Instagram

🔦 Volunteer application at the Olympics website

🚫 NOlympics L.A.

5️⃣ Factsheet Five on Wikipedia

💿 Nathan Limbaugh on Discogs

🎞️ Peter Sobczynski at RogerEbert

🏔️ The Two Jakes on Paramount+

🌚 Darkman on AMC+

🚮 Men At Work on Fubo

🎥 "Hollywood's Brat Pack" at New York magazine

🗑️ Men At Work on Wikipedia

🐸 Toad The Wet Sprocket's website

🗺️ Tara's Somebody Somewhere S03 review at Cracked

🚶‍♂️ Tara's review of Seth Meyers: Dad Man Walking at Cracked

The staff at Sassy had impeccable instincts for building its community -- and in the days when doing so required going to the post office to put actual paper goods in the actual mail, too -- and there's no better proof of their success than its first-ever reader-produced issue. The proof that some 80+ real readers made the issue happen is that...you know, the photos are kind of dark. Also that a lead feature about parents doing cocaine and the effect of their drug use on their 10-year-old son showing a few more gaps than we typically like to see in a piece purporting to be factual. But is the nitpicking by at least one of your co-hosts due in large part to the fact that she's jealous of all her then-peers who, unlike her, WEREN'T too scared to apply? Yes, yes it is. The readers bring us all the usual departments, plus a new one (Green Gossip) and the return of On The Road and a super-sized Stuff WE Wrote: join us as we leap in to the Teen Life topics of the December 1990 issue!

🗒 Full episode notes can be found on this episode's page on our website

🖼️ Check out this episode's Visual Aids

☎️ Call The Hotline! Leave your questions, comments and Sassy stories on the hotline at 720-SASSY-GO or record directly on our site

🦋 @ListenToSassy on Bluesky

📷 @ListenToSassy on Instagram

🧑‍💻 Visit our website ListenToSassy.com

🛍️ Shop the LTS Store

📖 Full cover-to-cover magazine PDFs

💬 Chat with us and your fellow listeners on Discord

🐣 Get episodes earlier than the general public

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🤩 Join the Listen To Sassy Club today!

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🎧 It Is December 1990

🎧 Feature: When Mom And Dad Snort Coke

🎧 Feature: Black Armbands And Bart Simpson

🎧 Body Talk

🎧 Green Gossip

🎧 What He Said: When Do You Consider Yourself “Taken”?

🎧 On The Road: Vancouver, BC

🎧 Help

🎧 Help For Him

🎧 It Happened To Me: Magazine Taken Over By Readers

🎧 Comic Strip: Stereotype Gripe

🎧 Horror-Scope

🎧 Stuff We Wrote

🎧 Goodbye For Now

🎧 Women's Section

💬 "Free Speech In High School" at TheFire

☮️ "From black armbands to the Supreme Court: Mary Beth Tinker and student free speech rights" at TheFire

🐊 "'No hoodies, no Crocs': Bessemer City High announces dress code requirements for new school year" at WBRC

👗 "Why dress codes are a violation of Title IX" at Lake Oswego Review

📹 The case involving middle school girls who were taped while changing clothes in a locker room, at FindLaw

🌞 "Revealed: The Worst Cities to Live in the U.S. for Your Skin" at Newsweek

📜 Judy Budnitz on Wikipedia

📖 "Miranda July: By the Book" at the New York Times

🖥️ Teresa McWhirter's website

🔫 "My Mom Shot Me" at Vice

🌴 The Again With This podcast on Patreon

How spacy are we? According to Sassy's November 1990 quiz, the answer is "possibly a lot spacier than some of us would care to admit" or "just about as spacy as we thought." Then, because we spaced on our last combined Slumber Party episode, we go back in time to take the September quiz and Rate [Our] Boy-Obsessiveness. (If you predicted that Pam's score would require a whole different scale, good job: you've REALLY been listening.) Then we move on to some of your latest calls, which cover topics including how a driver's ed teacher might work smarter, not harder; how to ruin a pair of overalls with a single trip to the bathroom; and how messy a woman's first-date meal can be without driving her beau away. Don't space out: listen now!

🗒 Full episode notes can be found on this episode's page on our website

☎️ Call The Hotline! Leave your questions, comments and Sassy stories on the hotline at 720-SASSY-GO or record directly on our site

🦋 @ListenToSassy on Bluesky

📷 @ListenToSassy on Instagram

🧑‍💻 Visit our website ListenToSassy.com

🛍️ Shop the LTS Store

📖 Full cover-to-cover magazine PDFs

💬 Chat with us and your fellow listeners on Discord

🐣 Get episodes earlier than the general public

🚫 Ad free episodes with chapter markers

🤩 Join the Listen To Sassy Club today!

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🎧 It Is November 1990

🎧 Quiz: How Spacy Are You?

🎧 Quiz: Rate You Boy-Obsessiveness

🎧 From The Hotline

🎧 Goodbye For Now

😵‍💫 The November 1990 Quiz: How Spacy Are You?

🤩 The September 1990 Quiz: Rate Your Boy-Obsessiveness

🗿 Does Tampax Rock? by Small Town Titans on TikTok

🐐 Lubricated Goat on In The Raw, on YouTube

📹 In The Raw documentary on YouTube

🌃 Tara on Saturday Night's Not Ready For Primetime Players, ranked by verisimilitude

The weather's getting chillier, and the fashion (etc.) of the November 1990 knows it. Hence a whole story about brown coats, and a spread to help you source all the goth-y looks your black heart desires. Mary brings us a report on her time auditing classes at the Vidal Sassoon Academy and actually getting to cut real (mannequin) hair. Jane tells a confusing story about getting mugged, a pet store owner's daughter sticks up for her mom (we're not having it), and much much more in an episode that REALLY smells like Teen Spirit!

🗒 Full episode notes can be found on this episode's page on our website

🖼️ Check out this episode's Visual Aids

☎️ Call The Hotline! Leave your questions, comments and Sassy stories on the hotline at 720-SASSY-GO or record directly on our site

🦋 @ListenToSassy on Bluesky

📷 @ListenToSassy on Instagram

🧑‍💻 Visit our website ListenToSassy.com

🛍️ Shop the LTS Store

📖 Full cover-to-cover magazine PDFs

💬 Chat with us and your fellow listeners on Discord

🐣 Get episodes earlier than the general public

🚫 Ad free episodes with chapter markers

🤩 Join the Listen To Sassy Club today!

💖 Already a club member? Check out the Pinned Patreon Primer Post.

🎧 It Is November 1990

🎧 Fashion Feature: Coatings

🎧 Fashion Feature: Wicked

🎧 Beauty Feature: I Was A Beauty School Dropout

🎧 About Face

🎧 Sassy Ads

🎧 Sassy Club

🎧 Say What

🎧 Inside Out: Ooh, It’s A Little Baby Sassy!

🎧 Goodbye For Now

🎧 Goodbye Forever

📸 Maybe or maybe not the Joe Hill who shot the November 1990 cover

🤳 The Joe Hill linked above, on Instagram

🌐 Probably our Markus Morianz's website

✂️ Sassoon Academy

👃 Le Scent on eBay

🧴 Perfume applicators on Etsy

😷 Teen Spirit Pink Crush at Walmart

📖 The March 2023 Vanity Fair article about Jane Pratt's newsletter DeedDa

🗺️ "Where Is DeedDa?" at Dirt