Last weekend, a bunch of lady friends and I vegged out by the pool, lazily flipping through a stack of old Sassy magazines. One of us had cleverly hung on to her teenage pile, resulting in the perfect summer afternoon of nostalgic media debate. On the agenda: ’90s fashion, teen angst flashbacks, and how the clever, groundbreaking stylings of Sassy were ground to a halt by conservatism. We also reminisced about YM and Seventeen—the first lightweight, the second staid, both shaken up at the time by Sassy’s rabid popularity.

So, I thought I’d flip through a recent copy of Seventeen and see what teen girls are being told by magazines these days. My first thought is: I am so not a teen. I have no idea who any of these celebrities are. I’m happy to see a Latina on the cover, but I couldn’t tell you one…tv show?…that Selena Gomez has been in.

Good things: Decent diversity in both ads and editorial, with plenty of “real girl” comments and pics sprinkled throughout. While user interactivity is a 21st century no-brainer, I’m still saying Sassy’s reader integration is another reason actual teens are in Seventeen today. Another sign of my aged disconnect is an inability to tell if the clothes here are reasonably priced. Teen-wise, $30 seems decent for a jacket, and none of the jeans are over $80. Barely anything tops $100—this seems realistic to me, but I’m sure many parents would beg to differ. Old-fashioned “magazine” “articles” are scarce, but the two first-person pieces are genuinely moving—a girl whose sports coach secretly filmed her naked, and another struggling with self-harm. The tips on avoiding these problems are a little light, but the stories seem relatable. A one-page short story contest winner by a reader named Kelly Reardon is really tight and quite good.

Things I don’t like: So. Much. Product. I mean SO much. I remember 1990s Seventeen as being quieter, with longer articles. All in all, I consider this less of a general interest mag than a fashion mag, so I shudder to think what Teen Vogue is like. There are pages and pages and PAGES and PAGES of clothes and makeup in here. I’m glad there’s a reference to pepperoni being “weird and full of preservatives” in a healthy lunch chart, but it’s hypocritical when every other page encourages under-18s to regularly smear chemicals on their faces. A new makeup look for every day of the week? I know mags need to please advertisers, but this excessive coverage (no pun intended) hardly has teens’ best interests in mind. Aside from the two first-person pieces, there’s hardly anything “real” here—no politics or environmental articles at all, no A&E coverage aside from pics of celebs’ cool outfits and smooching shots.

Design: neon onslaught. Aside from copious amounts of actual advertorial, plenty of the editorial pages look exactly like ads. Having nail polish spills on the masthead is kinda cool though.

Biggest problem: no grit. Namely, no sex. This is what brought Sassy down—despite having 800,000 subscribers, the magazine lost all of its advertising due to a Moral Majority-orchestrated letter writing campaign. A decade later, publishers have learned their lesson, and the September 2009 issue of Seventeen exists in a world without teen sex. There are a few mentions of french kissing, and one dude says he’s ashamed of his “boners.” No safe sex, no GLBT anything. One mention that being drunk is lame, and then nothing on drugs, either. In an age where teens are supposedly done with dating and rely entirely on no-strings-attached “hookups,” when abstinence-only sex ed is a reality and drugs I’ve never even heard of seem to pop up daily, this is a huge hole. This negligence leaves teens to learn about these things from more nefarious sources, and that is a sad story for everyone.

Verdict: 15 years after Sassy died, everyone is still afraid to treat teenage girls like real people.