Christa Donner was a huge fan of Sassy magazine when she was growing up in Fort Wayne, Indiana. “Through them I found out about zine culture, riot grrls, and bands like Sonic Youth,” says the 29-year-old visual artist, who now edits the zine Ladyfriend. In 1993, Donner sent in some head shots and illustrations in the hopes of being included in the magazine’s reader-produced issue. The guest staff passed on her drawings but picked her as a cover girl. “I was a teenager, and it seemed like a dream come true,” says Donner. “It seems kind of ironic now.”
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By the time the issue actually hit the stands Donner was a freshman at the Memphis College of Art and hoped people she knew wouldn’t see it. “I was just starting to realize how the mass media was affecting me and my friends, and my role in that if I was going to be modeling,” she says. “I wanted to become well-known for something I accomplished rather than something that was due to luck or a coincidence.”
Since then she’s published bian-nually, compiling theme issues around such topics as shoes, age, driving, and hair (first-person accounts included “Salon Receptionist Hell” and “Bald as a Baby,” the latter by a woman who’d gone through chemotherapy).
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Yvette Marie Dostatni.
