Omphaloskeptical meme
So, I’m home sick today. I think my body was just tired of all the work and decided to wave the white flag.
When I’m home sick, I spend a lot of time free-associating. Since I had just finished reading How Sassy Changed My Life: A Love Letter to the Greatest Teen Magazine of All Time last night, Sassy was on my mind. I honestly think that it was one of the biggest non-person influences on me during my early teens. It gave me a vocabulary to understand my ideas on feminism and self-esteem. It showed me that there were girls like me everywhere that also didn’t want to think of other girls as the enemy and boys as the ultimate prize in life, that what I had to contribute to the world, not just in the future, but as a teen-aged girl, could be valuable.
And truly, I know how lame that sounds to anyone that was not a Sassy reader, but if you were a reader at just the right age, you’d get me.
So I was thinking that I’d make a list of the top five movies/books/magazines/tv shows/songs that had a direct impact on me when I was in my tweens to teens. Now, I’m not talking about movies I liked or my favorite songs; no, I am talking about things that actually changed something about me, whether it was how I behaved, who I decided were attractive, how much I wallowed in my room thinking no one understood me, how I decided to join a club or movement, how I decided to stop judging others, whatever.
Here’s my list:
- Somebody, song by Depeche Mode
- The Breakfast Club, movie
- Sassy, magazine
- The Outsiders, book & movie
- The Bluest Eye, book
I could probably come up with a much bigger list, but having to stop at top five really forced me to give it some thought. Each of those things has left an indelible mark on who I am. Or perhaps they resonated with me so much because of who I already was, or who I was on my way to becoming.
Either way, I am glad those things were in my life at the time that they were. If I were to stumble across them now for the first time, I’m sure that they would have a different sort of impact on me than they had, but the first time around, it fit a perfect groove in me.
Crap, now I want to add Love Story to the list.
Anyway, it’s your turn.
* A Separate Peace, John Knowles – made me think about motivations, both conscious and otherwise, and how we act on them.
* Creep, Radiohead – Yeah, it’s totally “done,” but back when I first heard the song, it wasn’t popular, and it felt like it was the right song for me.
* Calvin & Hobbes, Bill Watterson – I can’t really point to anything specific, but Calvin & Hobbes was either a perfect reflection of how I saw the world, or it defined it.
* Star Wars – As silly as it is, it was the iconic representation of the Hero story for my generation. And then George fucked it all up.
* The Transformers – I can’t imagine specifically how it shaped my life, only that I’m certain it did. That my worldview at a critical age was shaped by a half-hour advertisement is terrifying to me now, I’m glad that Optimus Prime was a good role model. Or, at least as good a role model as a truck could be.
I was a Sassy reader but I think I was little too young for it to have an impact on me. By the time I was able to be impacted I was reading YM because I liked to think of myself as “Young and Modern”.
– “Megan the Klutz”: This kind of ridiculous book about a teenage girl who is very awkward but winds up getting the boy and becoming popular. I read it when I was going through the awkward stage at 9 or 10 and it made me realize that one day I would outgrow that stage. And I did.
– “Beverly Hills 90210”: I loved that show and watched every single episode even into the weird adult years. When it first started I was only 10 and I liked to picture myself older and able to discuss the serious subjects from the show. I didn’t realize at the time that the actors we’re all in their 20s and that no teenager actually talks like that. But it made me hope for a time when I would be able to intelligently discuss issues that mattered and basically made me a high school activist.
– “Silence of the Lambs”: After watching that movie over and over I realized that I wanted to be Clarice. That right there changed my outlook on my future and shaped my future studies. Of course, I’m not doing that now but still have dreams that I could’ve been great at it. 🙁
– “Seventeen Magazine”: Of course no one who reads Seventeen is actually 17 so I was in my early teens and used to love reading the fiction stories which were either romance or issue related. I think this magazine prepared me for sex more than anything and also made me very comfortable with it. In high school I was the only one out of my friends who was able to talk about it and not get freaked out. Maybe I just had a lot of prudish friends or maybe I was just a slut. 😉
My fifth item would be R-rated movies. I have watched R-rated movies my whole life and because I was exposed to “bad language”, “sex” and other things R-rated movies offer I think that has made me more tolerant and accepting of all walks of life. There is not much that offends me and I like it that way. Just never tell me that you think cheerleading is not a sport or else I’ll kill you. 🙂
Popular Science: There were always a few issues of Popular Science lying around at my dad’s house when I visited him on weekends. Nothing had a bigger impact on my imagination and interest in science in my early years than those magazines.
The Transformers: As corny as it sounds, I think Optimus Prime probably has a lot to do with my views of right and wrong. For me, the world is divided very cleanly down the middle into Autobots (liberals) who make a point to help those less fortunate than themselves, and Decepticons (conservatives) who seek personal gain at the expense of those less fortunate than themselves.
Stephen King books: I don’t read much fiction these days, but at the peak of my reading habit I read mostly Stephen King. It was during this time I started to read more actively than passively. Not just taking the story as it was given to me, but trying to understand the decisions that were made in writing it, and from that maybe derive some sort of meaning. I’m sure it would’ve happened sooner or later with any other series of books, but Mr. King made it really easy for a 10 year old kid to get into.
Pretty Hate Machine: There are two eras in music appreciation for me. Before PHM when all I listened to was the shit played on the radio, and after when I realized there was much more (and better) out there that never got any radio play.
Clerks: I’ve made this analogy a few times to friends, but I don’t know if I’ve ever written it down. Clerks is the Mona Lisa of early 1990s film. The Mona Lisa, like many works of art, is great because it’s very representative of it’s time. This is how I feel about Clerks. Granted, much of it probably has to do with personal experience, but nothing takes me back to 1994 like Clerks does.
I had a subscription to YM too. 😀 I used to read the embarrassing stories first, before anything else.
Did you read YM after Christina Kelly became editor-in-chief and instituted a no-diet-story rule? She was one of my favorite writers/editors in Sassy, and she apparently instituted that rule in every teen magazine she went to — I think she also worked at ElleGirl at some point.
I know 90210 seems cheesy as a memory to many people, but it was the first teen tv show that dealt with anything close to real issues in a serious manner, so I know what you mean. They went further than the “good girl” turning down alcohol at parties or the “good guy” not cheating on a test, or other such stereotypical situations.
Ditto on the comment about no seventeen year old ever reading Seventeen — I remember being about 13 or 14 when I read it too! 🙂 I heard that some of the best up-and-coming (well, I guess they have arrived now :D) authors wrote for the fiction section.
I always looked up to Optimus Prime as the ultimate model of good. I wanted to be him or wanted him to be my dad.
The “Encyclopedia Brown” book series was one of my favorites growing up. I read every single one, or at least all the ones my parents bought for me. They helped introduce me to the concept of critical thinking and problem solving, and it goes without saying that having a smart nerdy character as the hero was very uplifting for a smart nerdy kid.
(They also bought me a few of the “Sweet Valley High” books, which were so vacuous and pointless next to the “Encyclopedia Brown” books that I couldn’t even finish reading one. That experience may have taught me that there are such things as books that aren’t good.)
“Alien”: I was allowed to watch this movie when I was pretty young. (R rated movies were fine, as long as there wasn’t any sexual content. Sometimes my parents would edit out sexual content on VHS copies of R rated movies and then let me watch them. Makes for very strange experiences when I see these same movies, unedited, later in life.) I have idealized the Ripley character ever since. Strong, beautiful, ordinary but determined and powerful when faced with an extreme situation. Same experience with the Sarah Connor character in “The Terminator.”
Forgot 21 Jump Street.
Just to be a little more embarrassing about my Sassy love, I might as well admit the following things:
– I fancied myself a riot grrrl at the end of high school and early college but was too shy to tell anyone, which totally defeats the purpose. Also, I didn’t have the clothes, attitude, or indie music cred to make that work. Alas, my philosophy was in the right place.
– I crush on indie boys more than the Hollywood pretty boys and always have.
– I had a really healthy attitude toward sex and people who had sex, rather than thinking of them in pejorative terms as people are likely to in high school, especially regarding girls, even though I wasn’t one of them. And again, even though I was a goody-two-shoe, I persisted in talking about the importance of safer sex until the cows came home.