Is Jane sassy?: One Sassy reader works her nerves

I loved Sassy. I was Sassy. So when I heard that Jane Pratt, the editor-in-chief of Sassy was coming out with a new magazine, I was ecstatic. A couple of friends even called me to share in the good news. So I hunted down a copy of Jane and decided to see how it compares.

Okay. So I wasn't thrilled with the magazine's look. It resembles Vogue and Cosmo because it's got about the same thickness and the same obnoxious number of advertisements that are all very glamorous, even if they're not all for Calvin Klein. And the titles of the articles that they put on the cover like "Sex to Write Home About" and "I Want Her Hair!" seemed a bit too superficial to be in Sassy, so I was skeptical about its contents. But even with my skepticism I still hoped that through the seemingly drab titles of articles there would be some remnants of the old Sassy I loved.

The table of contents was my first source of relief. I recognized the familiar subtitles: Features, Regulars, Beauty, Fashion. And as I glanced through the articles I was thrilled to see some of the same regular ones like "Diary," "It Happened to Me," and the monthly fiction article provided by one of the readers. Life might be good after all.

But enough with titles. I wanted meat! Something to back up or contradict my hopes for Jane. So I read it. Let's just say I had mixed feelings. I found the article on getting what you want in bed highly Cosmo-ish, and it blocked all objectivity in my opinion during my reading of the next few articles. Their fashion section was also quite a bit lacking. It seemed like the photographers were attempting to make the mag artsy (which is great) but it shouldn't be at the expense of actually seeing the clothes. I was thrilled to see an article titled "I Hate the Spice Girls," and I became nostalgic for the "Working Our Nerves" articles in Sassy, where the author vented on whatever bothered her at the moment. But when I turned to the actual article, I found about two sentences on why she hates the Spice Girls and two full pages on her life as a DJ (which bored me). Oh, and they had an article written by Courtney Cox. She was even included in the masthead's "Extended Family" contributors section. Enough said.

But there are a few redeeming qualities in this magazine. The style and humor used are almost comparable to my old friend Sassy. I reminisced about the good ol' days when I read the sentence in an article about the Lilith Fair: "It is nice to see so many women on the charts, even if some are whiny coffeehouse wrenches like Jewel." Classic Sassy bitterness. Of course, maybe that's because it was written by a former Sassy writer, Christina Kelly. She joins Karen Cohen and Mark "Lew" Lewman as the few writers that made the transition from Sassy to Jane.

Consensus? It is definitely not Sassy. Nothing will ever be Sassy. But give it a chance.