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The Yale Alumni Magazine is owned and operated by Yale Alumni Publications, Inc., a nonprofit corporation independent of Yale University. The content of the magazine and its website is the responsibility of the editors and does not necessarily reflect the views of Yale or its officers. |
Given the dangers now associated with sexual activity, parents of undergraduates are no doubt calmed by this aphorism: “Sex kills, so come to Yale and live forever.” But it turns out that the University is no monastery. “I have some bad news,” says Natalie Krinsky ’04. “Your children talk about sex all the time—and they do more than talk.” Krinsky should know. Author of a weekly column, “Sex and the (Elm) City,” that first appeared in the Yale Daily News last October 26, her contributions to the paper’s Friday “Scene” section have become required reading for undergraduates. The column is a romp through bedrooms and social situations in which the writer, a red-haired history major with an irrepressible giggle, tells all—at least, about herself. Krinsky names parts but not partners, actions but not other actors. Such candor has not made the writer’s mother exactly happy, and her father, who often hears about his daughter’s adventures from Wall Street colleagues who read the YDN online, is “trying to be supportive,” she says. The writer and her colleagues talk publicly about intimacies that in other times would have been shared only with one’s intimates. After a column was published last December, the author discovered just how many “intimates” she had. The subject was a discussion about how to handle a matter of sexual etiquette (interested readers can see the article at yaledailynews.com/article.asp?AID=17519), and the response was a tidal wave. The story has generated over 250,000 “hits” from all corners of the World Wide Web—far more than anything in the YDN—and Krinsky became “The Natalie Show,” a bonafide Yale phenomenon. “I’m really popular,” she giggles. “I’ve become an icon on campus, and I love it.” Well, parts of it. Krinsky’s fame may have resulted in a stream of people who want to confide in her. But confidantes are not boyfriends, who have tended to steer clear for fear of winding up in the newspaper, and not all correspondents are congratulatory. In fact, some of the response to her stories about undergraduate escapades has been downright brutal. Krinsky has been told that she has set the women’s movement back 100 years and chastised for not paying proper heed to the risks of pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. And there were attacks that were far more personal. These hurt. “My first reaction was tears, and my second was, I’ll never write this again and put myself out in this way,” she says. “But it was too late.” Krinsky has since come to terms with something every published author learns to deal with. “People may have a tough time separating who I am from what I write, but the ‘Natalie’ in this column is a persona,” she says. “It’s not who I really am.” Still, playing the part has been worthwhile. “It’s sparked my interest in a writing career,” says Krinsky, whose work earned her a summer job with Bloomberg News in New York City. And she plans to be back at the YDN next fall, covering the old turf as well as, perhaps, something new. “Maybe this summer I’ll fall in love,” she wrote in her last column. Fans anxiously await the tale. |
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©1992–2012, Yale Alumni Publications, Inc. All rights reserved. Yale Alumni Magazine, P.O. Box 1905, New Haven, CT 06509-1905, USA. yam@yale.edu |
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