Jane Magazine

Jane magazine, for those of you who don't follow the woman's magazine world, recently folded. It had a irreverent tone, quirky articles, and thumbed its nose at more staid examples of the genre.

(For example, one article that made fun of those sex tips that say things like, "Wear your favorite pair of shoes to bed." The author then proceeded to detail the hilarity that followed after wearing a pair of beat up Chuck Taylors between the sheets.)

I think I got my Jane subscription through those transfer of my father's frequent flier miles into tangible rewards. Each month, I would cart the newest issue upstairs and read it in bed, drinking a can of diet Pepsi. On my trip to China, I brought a few extra copies to give my cousins.

I had been exposed to almost every kind of teen magazine and my primary complaint is that they're geared to an aspirational, insecure preteen who has to take quizzes on whether they're a bad girlfriend or if that cute boy likes them. The only one I could stand was ElleGirl (now also defunct, I sense a pattern). Teen Vogue's articles were nauseatingly generic and written for an IQ of 85. Women's magazines, on the other hand, seemed to be aimed more at people in their late 20's and 30's, and I felt like I was eavesdropping on maturity.

So of course, I gravitated to Jane and its demographic of "single, 20 year old women." I was 16, precocious in some ways and underdeveloped in others. Maybe I didn't need to make rent yet, but it didn't take age to gawk at the infamous Dov Charney of American Apparel fame in one well-known article.

What did I love about Jane? I'm too young to remember its predecessor, Sassy, also started by the same editor-in-chief. But it brilliantly fulfilled a gap between too mainstream and grown up (Glamour, Cosmopolitan, Vogue) and the sheer idiocy that was teen magazines (Seventeen, Teen Vogue, and yes, CosmoGIRL!). Its tone was hip and smart alecky, it never suggested I should get a boob job, and the articles sounded like they were written by fun, real people. Instead of makeovers, they did "makeunders" where they took an overprocessed, war-painted Darryl Hannah-in-Blade Runner type and took away her contouring blush. The brilliant makeunder of all? Jenna Jameson, porn wunderkind, exposing her freckles, looking frighteningly like a naturally pretty woman.

When Brandon Holley took over the editor in chief position and a redesign followed, my subscription lapsed. I found the new design chaotic, like a digested rainbow had attacked the glossy pages. I didn't pursue my dad for another year of Jane, and gradually, I forgot the happy feeling when I opened my mailbox to another issue. I had been vaguely planning to pursue an internship there, but with that plan dashed now, I'm wondering about the alternatives.

Jane, I will miss you.