Ari has edited New York Magazine's Sex Diaries since April 2007. Each month she reads a dozen New Yorkers' private journals, and publishes four. The process has overhauled her understanding of what makes people tick, and changed her life. 
How One Becomes Editor of the Sex Diaries I suspect that I often get hired to write stories because the editors are too embarrassed to ask anyone else (examples: the story testing out different deodorants, or the time an editor asked me to hire a male prostitute.) The Sex Diaries possibly began in this category. In April 2007, the lovely then-New York Magazine editor Adam Fisher hired me to edit a collection of 6 diaries as the cover story of the Sex Issue. As an afterthought, the website published a handful of extra diaries. Within two weeks, it was clear that the Diaries were an online phenomenon. Diarists wrote all the things they wouldn't tell their best friend about, for an anonymous audience to eat up behind private workday computer screens. Diary submissions surged. The city that sleeps around apparently had something to say about it. So now, each week, an anonymous New Yorker posts an account of his or her life behind closed doors, including all sexual and relationship thoughts, behavior and arousals. Most weeks I poke and prod at them to be more honest, and to pretty please do it in a way that's printable. The diaries are unique not just in opening a window into people's behaviors, but why. Diaries are an inner monologue, a document of what someone is thinking. I've come to think of them as a collection of psychological snapshots--the concerns, desires, fears and neuroses that are otherwise muted. It's all the stuff that everyone thinks about while pounding the pavement all day long, and never verbalizes. Each diary is one New Yorker's moment in time, week after week.  |
 
 Public Service Announcement of the Month: I'm perturbed by those new Gillette razor ads advertising how to shave down below. Aside from the fact that anyone who needs to watch an how-to video has bigger fish fry, I recently interviewed a lovely gynecologist named Adelaine Nardone, who explained that the purpose of hair down there is protection--it protects the skin and the genitals, catching creepy crawlies. The vast majority of customers likely shave, oh, say, 2 hours before a date. Which literally opens the pores, making them more vulnerable to STDs. Awesome, Gillette. Keep that one in mind.  |
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© Copyright 2010 Arianne Cohen, except where otherwise indicated. All Rights Reserved. Photos by Jason Kinney.
© Copyright 2010 Arianne Cohen, except where otherwise indicated. All Rights Reserved. Photos by Jason Kinney.
