Chelsea Krost

Having been booked to discuss teen drug and alcohol use on Anderson, tampons on Tyra and her own career on Today, Chelsea Krost, at age 21, has a sizzle reel that TV personalities twice her age would envy.

When asked by Today guest co-host Andy Cohen, in 2011, how someone with a nascent media career could possibly address the panoply of real concerns teens face, Ms. Krost replied, “I don’t say I’m an expert. I say I’m a teenager who can just really relate to all the other teens out there.”

The relatability part is, of course, open for discussion, but the expert part? She definitely says she’s an expert.

“My expertise,” she told The Observer recently, “is that I’m a chameleon. I could talk to Tyra Banks, Anderson [Cooper], Hoda [Kotb] on the Today show, but then I could be relating to the people where, literally, their feet are in their own feces in Africa, in the slums.”

“Once people meet me,” said Ms. Krost, “they realize that I can really be articulate in many facets of the world: entertainment, or philanthropy, or something practical, like cyberbullying or whatever. I really don’t think there’s anything I can’t do.”

As a post-teen, Ms. Krost had to change directions slightly: no longer a natural expert on teenagers, she morphed into an expert on all things millennial. As Ms. Krost put it during a local Fox segment in San Diego wherein two psychology experts congratulated her on her strong understanding of current dating tropes, “Who better to talk about the millennials than a millennial?”

A couple weeks ago, we dropped by her Upper East Side apartment, which was in a state of mild disarray in advance of a planned move. Ms. Krost, who is possessed of dark hair and a strong Selena Gomez aspect, wore a sleeveless white eyelet frock. Her eyes hold on you while she speaks; she never even glances at her phone, set on a table behind her, even though it beeps about every three minutes with a new message. A single book was displayed, cover-out: Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die. A framed photo depicted Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. A Life magazine with Marilyn Monroe on the cover sat on the coffee table. In the corner lay a stack of her memoirs, one of which she gave us.

What is a millennial, we inquired, aside from the purely generational designation for people in their late teens and 20s?

“I think our generation is the most different out of every generation. Every generation has differences. But I think our generation differs so drastically because the world changes so fast today. ... People don’t function the same because now the iPhone exists, because Twitter exists, because Facebook exists.”

Ms. Krost’s manager, Josselyne Herman, told us that she came up with her client’s two-word hook: “millennial expert.” There had never been a millennial expert before. “It was a unique branding title. Language creates reality.” (Somewhere the ghost of Derrida raises an eyebrow.)

Ms. Krost originally came to our attention when The Observer received an email from her publicist, wondering if we were planning back-to-school coverage. (We weren’t.) Her client could advise our readers on how to avoid “the dreaded freshman 15.”

(Quoted in the email, Ms. Krost notes that she gained only ten pounds her freshman year. Even that, though, was surprising. “I was working out all the time, totally into fitness, and realized I had more body fat than I thought I did.”)

Chelsea Krost on 'Today'

Such an approach clears the bar for many bookers, it would seem; and in person, Ms. Krost is compellingly charismatic in the way people successful on TV are.

Indeed, the switch from teenager expert to millennial expert prompted big changes for Ms. Krost: first, she had to alter the title of the AM radio show she’d hosted since age 16, Teen Talk Live, having received what she characterized to us as scathing criticism. The program was renamed, unsurprisingly, The Chelsea Krost Show. “I was like, wow, you literally have nothing better to do than focus on my 20 years of age? So, to come back at everybody, I decided to write a book called Nineteen. I was stepping into my 20s with this open diary, per se, of my journey from 16 to 19.”

The book, Nineteen: A Reflection of My Teenage Experience in an Extraordinary Life: What I Have Learned, and What I Have to Share, is intended both to list Ms. Krost’s wide range of experiences and to convey the breadth of current affairs on which she can plausibly comment. (Talk-show bookers, take note!) The chapter on her time in Africa, “CHARITY—My Drug of Choice,” precedes a short memoir of Ms. Krost’s time as Kotex’s youth ambassador.

“Every chapter is a different topic,” she told us. “Bullying. Mean girls. Body image. Nutrition. Sexting. Philanthropy. Every chapter is something I’ve discussed with the media as well as ample other millennials, and then personal experience.” The book, published by Jacquie Jordan Inc., is blurbed by Randy Weddle, the television instructor at Boca Raton’s Spanish River High School, as well as by Ms. Krost’s own editor.

Ms. Krost’s broad range of interests come naturally. She noted that her parents have always called her an old soul. “There are things I know and understand, from a very young age,” she explained, “and don’t understand why I know them, but I just do.”

It’s easy to get Ms. Krost talking about the issues of the day, a practice she undertakes by merging anecdotal experience with sweeping social statements. For instance, she has strong beliefs on the dangers of technology. “People need to learn how to use technology for the right reasons, for networking and growing in their career, and not as a tool to hurt people. So I’m constantly speaking on behalf of bullying. I was also bullied, so it’s very personal."

Perhaps her ease in speaking extemporaneously comes from getting started on-air so very early. Ms. Krost quickly became too big a fish for her high school broadcasting department. “Only seniors were allowed on the morning announcements,” she recalled proudly. “I changed that. I was the first sophomore on the morning announcements.”

It was time to set her sights on a bigger goal. In the era of Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie, Ms. Krost saw an opportunity to speak for the young people, to communicate that not all members of her (very loosely defined) generation were self-centered, egotistical, seeking fame for its own sake. Imagine!

“It was a very confusing time,” Ms. Krost remembered, of Paris Hilton’s moment in the spotlight.

She pitched an AM radio station on her concept, as well as on specific issues of consequence to the millennial generation, brainstormed with her mother in a spiral-bound notebook. When the station manager told her that AM radio was a medium catering to a 60-and-older audience, Ms. Krost was undaunted. “Exactly what you said is why you need me,” she countered. “I’m going to bring a whole new demographic to your station and make AM radio cool again.”

She hadn’t expected to be signed, or to end up with her own show. Nor did she expect to start out on a media career of any consequence, producing segments and building a network of contacts. (“When I talk about plastic surgery,” she said of an early producing epiphany, “I need a plastic surgeon on the show.”)

“I literally thought it was going to be something that got me into college,” Ms. Krost, currently a rising senior at Marymount Manhattan, added.

There’s one matter Ms. Krost generally refuses to talk about: politics. Why cut off a segment of your audience? is her reasoning. But she is particularly proud of her reporting on Occupy Wall Street. Heading to Zuccotti Park to produce a video segment, she called her father. “I told my dad if I get arrested, it’s for a great cause. But they support me in whatever I do, so, you know, whatever.”

As for her experience of Occupy, Ms. Krost notes that “Occupy Wall Street was invigorating, it was uplifting, it showed spirit toward people coming together and trying to voice a change. But: I did not see an overall message. I think it was more of them trying to make a statement than trying to get a concrete resolution.” Her piece for the Huffington Post, “I’m Proud to be Part of Occupy Wall Street,” ends with a message of hope. “My best wishes go out to those standing up for their rights and also fighting for better things to come within the millennial generation!”

We also asked Ms. Krost about the so-called War on Women, a wedge issue in the 2012 campaign. She declared that she is not a feminist, because she doesn’t think boys suck. (She’s known her current boyfriend since the eighth grade.) However, she has been inspired by the struggles of women in Saudi Arabia; she believes in Girl Power; and she suspects the state of the nation might have been better had Hillary Clinton been elected.

“Women can multitask better,” she explained. “I think multitasking equals success. You have to be able to balance multiple things in order to achieve your goals. You can’t focus on one thing forever. You can’t. So, learning how to multitask is probably the biggest life lesson.”

Ms. Krost’s family has provided the support she needs to sustain herself through a punishing schedule. “My mom has been my best friend my entire life. My dad is my rock. My brother is also my best friend. My grandparents—I tell them everything.” They even supported her in her first experience of journalism, making a documentary about the effects of Hurricane Frances while stuck with no power at her childhood home in Delray Beach, Fla. (Prior to her amateur meteorological journalism, she’d previously wanted to be a veterinarian, but despite her love of animals, she says, “math and science are not my thing.”)

Ms. Krost now sees no one in her path. “I am waiting to hear somebody else like me, to rival me in a way, to say ‘It’s being done, Chelsea,’ and there’s no one else like me,” she said. “If there were someone else doing what I’m doing, they’d probably be in New York, California, or Miami, and I run all of those markets.” Given her success in San Diego, Ms. Krost refers to herself as “bi-coastal.”

She reported, perhaps predictably, that she’s after a large platform all her own, to be the next Oprah Winfrey, “but with a twist. As amazing as Oprah is, she was always untouchable, she’s like a god, and I want to be very touchable—and not in, like, a pedophile way.”

And how does she plan to do that? “I think I’m going to grow with the millennial age group and mindset,” she mused. “As we get older, we get wiser. But I would love to branch out into a full-time correspondent role in lifestyle and entertainment.”

In which the voices of their generations (or two voices...of two generations) discuss

SEX

Gen X: This deal between Hannah and Adam, help me out. Is this like the “fuck buddy” thing I have heard so much about? Or is it Friends with Benefits? Or is it maybe the famed NSA?

Gen Y: Isn’t that the government? They are friends with benefits, I think that's pretty clear. Or no. Fuck buddies. That's what we call them, because they aren't friends.

Gen X: Ah...

Gen Y: They don't move in the same social circle, so they are fuck buddies. That is the definitive word on their relationship until he asks her to marry him. (SPOILER ALERT?)

Gen X: Ha. So this is a real thing you kids do? I'm intrigued. How does such a relationship work? I just really want to understand...

Gen Y: Well, you see them around. And you text. Usually, this is where most sexting happens, because girls want to prove they are down with it and guys are testing the boundaries of what is sexually acceptable without doing it with a girl they like too much and are therefore fearful of upsetting.

Gen X: Let’s talk about the bad sex controversy. How bad is this bad sex? And is consensual sex ever really all that bad? Like, compared to no sex at all?

Gen Y: She likes it. What makes it bad? It's awkward and it's uncomfortable for us to watch but to jump to the "she's having abusive sex because she has low self-esteem" is kind of...I don't know, too pat? I feel like even if everything else in her life was going great, Hannah would still like Adam, and he does seem genuinely interested in her at moments, and far be it for us to judge other people's fuck-buddies. He might also be the only person in her life calling her out on bullshit.

Gen X: I have to agree on this. I find Frank Bruni and Katie Roiphe, both of whom seem to be a little traumatized by these sex scenes, suspiciously over-eager to denounce this terrible sex. My theory is that this is generational. The problem is, we're old. We're not young and hot like you kids. So all we've got is, we basically have figured out how to do it. Saying the sex in Girls is horrible and dispiriting is a way of saying, “I have great sex all the time and I love it.” The more fumbling and awkward this Gen Y sex is, the less despondent middle-aged shlubs have to feel.

Gen Y: You figured out how to have sex that looks good on TV? I think you are in the wrong business, then.

Gen X: Well, it would look good in theory if we were somewhat more trim. Maybe? I mean, no. But I think the subtext in that criticism is, “We may be old but at least we know whether to move back and forth!”

Gen Y: Realistically, most people's sex would look awkward and weird to anyone watching. She's showing something different than normal TV sex, which is frightening to people, because it's not sexy-sex. The thing is, people love to talk about Lena being so "brave" for always putting herself in awkward sex scenes in her own movies. The last time anyone was that "brave" was Jason Segel going full-frontal flaccid in Forgetting Sarah Marshall, and that was not in a sexual context.

So I guess what I'm trying to say is: fuck the haters. Literally. and Awkardly. Because that's what sex is. Girls sex is 100 times more authentic than any sex I've ever seen on tv or online, and that includes porn.

FINANCES

Gen X: I’ve got to say, I graduated amid a terrible economy, too. I didn’t even know it. It wasn’t treated as a national emergency, and unlike now, the society as a whole made no expression of concern about what kids my age were going to do. They called us slackers. It was ugly for awhile, but we worked it out. The idea of taking money from our parents was unthinkable. This was the Die Yuppie Scum era. We’d sooner have found a squat. (Although my folks did pay for me to go to NYU, which was very generous of them.)

I wound up taking some pretty bad jobs, including a very brief stint at a “mens’ sophisticate” magazine. Totally bleak, but I learned Quark and how to write fake sex confessions on deadline. What I want to know is, is everyone your age really having your “groovy lifestyles” bankrolled by mom and dad? Have you kids no shame?

Gen Y: I feel a mix between Adam and Hannah's character here. Like no, I don't take my parents money! I mean, my dad's checks helped SUBSIDIZE me when I was laid off from blogging at Jossip but I totally paid him back later, I think?

Gen X: You also hustled up some money working for this website ASSME.org that I used to run. You were a go-getter. And the link is now dead because basically I remain a slacker.

Gen Y: True! A friend is in a similar situation, having just graduated, and without her parents help she wouldn't have landed a paying job after months of unpaid internships. So, in response: yes, we take your money after you just bankrolled our liberal arts education. But it will pay off dividends when we give you a shout-out in our memoir.

Gen X: If you treat us anything like Lena Dunham is treating Hannah's parents, no thanks!

PARENTS

Gen Y: Wait, those parents were AWFUL. The mom from Freaks and Geeks has gotten so mean!

Gen X: What assholes. I don't buy them for a second, do you?

Gen Y: Nobody's parents are BOTH professors. And if they are, they aren't getting a lakehouse. Also, professor parents wouldn't just cut you off like that. You can tell the dad is wavering, as he should be.

Gen X: I think cutting someone off without any notice after two years of paying the full freight is a stretch.

Gen Y: Yeah, and it IS cheaper to be on a family cell phone plan!

Gen X: True, although not if she's doing a lot of streaming...

Gen Y: Right: it's like, what's the mitgating circumstances? They came to town just to give her horrible news? Do they expect her to move back in with them, which would be the other option?

Gen X: I do think Lena Dunham is trying to have it both ways in this scene. Hannah is written as self-absorbed and spoiled, but she's turned the parents into monsters as a way of rationalizing Hannah's behavior.

Gen Y: Maybe it's a scare tactic: sink or swim. Although we definitely see that push hurting Hannah in terms of her internship.

INTERNSHIPS

Gen X: I wouldn't have ever considered taking an internship after college. I'm not sure that was so common in years past. We worked at porn magazines instead. Admittedly, I've hired and exploited a few interns over the years. But they can be more work than they’re worth.

Gen Y: How believable was that? That an employer would fire you from an internship? (I already know the answer to that question, by the way, as I have been relieved of many internship duties.) It's true about Photoshop though.

Gen X: Those Asians with their Photoshop!

Gen Y: Why doesn't anyone tell you in college that Photoshop will be the ONE THING you need in the real world?

Gen X: I think Hannah’s employer is another example of a thinly drawn character whose only purpose is to make her seem more likeable, which to me shows a loss of nerve on Dunham's part.

Gen Y: I mean, he's played for humorous effect...I don't think it's a "loss of nerve," because look, the show is a comedy and not a documentary or a Herzog film. And it's true that if you hit up employers for jobs after interning, they'll be like "Why buy the cow?"

Gen X: In terms of sex, it is practically a documentary or a Herzog film! That aspect is plenty nervy. But Dunham is more willing to show her character's supposed physical flaws than her moral or emotional ones.

Gen Y: You sound like you should write her memoir, Aaron.

Gen X: I think she's nailed the sense of entitlement, though. It’s pretty clear that in more than a year as an intern, she hasn't done much to make herself necessary to the company. Still, she expects to be given a job just because she wants one. The guy is an asshole, but a year seems like plenty of time to figure out a way to become useful.

Gen Y: True. She hadn't been doing their twitter feed? What WAS she doing? The entitlement is true to life. I've been in so many fights with roommates waiting for their parents' checks to clear for their rent.

Gen X: We've had interns here at the Observer who were hired full time, and others who weren't but really wanted to be. It's hard to disappoint people, but even the Gen Y kids aren't quite full enough of themselves to believe, like Hannah does, that just asking is enough.

Gen Y: Sure she could have started that Twitter feed on her own. That would have shown motivation.

Gen X: I do think the internship scene tells us something about Hannah that will hopefully be explored a bit more, which is that despite being the smartest person in the series, she's got some tremendous blind spots and has not quite earned that beleaguered attitude of hers.

Gen Y: Agreed.

GIRLFRIENDS

Gen Y: But moving on: what's really unbelievable is that she's been living with her best friend for two years and they don’t hate each other. I lived with my only two female friends in one apartment after college. Guess how many of them I still talk to? And/or haven't blocked on Facebook?

Gen X: I love it how you girls all wake up spooning each other. I think I saw a post on your Tumblr where you and your sister were doing that.

Gen Y: Yes, but we're sisters. Also, we don't shower together.

Gen X: How about shaving your legs?

Gen Y: Nope. But we had a small tub. Also, even though we lived together, my sister never plodded around the house in her underwear when my boyfriend was over.

Gen X: And did your boyfriend walk into the bathroom all the time, then stand there awkwardly watching the girls take pregnancy tests or whatever? Is that a thing nowadays?

Gen Y: To be fair, he was high. On that stuff I've never even heard of! Opium twigs?

Gen X: Opium tea. A nice touch. I thought.

Gen Y: Is that really legal?

Gen X: We should see if you can actually buy that in the flower district.

Gen Y: Shit, I'll be down in Chinatown, catch you tomorrow.

Gen X: Send an intern. Maybe they can figure out how to make a living!

Gen Y: (I'm actually going to Chinatown tomorrow, I can check.)

Gen X: I think it would be more on West 28th street, Chelsea. You might be thinking of Chinatown in, like, 1895?

Gen Y: Haha. Right. Where there are opium basements and sometimes Sherlock Holmes is there.

Gen X: I did like that shout-out to Twix. But back to sharing the bathtub...

Gen Y: Girls might do that. Depending on how long they've known each other? I guess? At Oberlin (where Lena went), I remember this one chick always inviting me over for baths. And not in a gay way.

Gen X: The pilot has two bathroom scenes in one half hour—both with two girls and then a guy coming in.

Gen Y: Same guy. Charlie, you need to learn how to knock! I hate scenes where girls pee in front of each other and hand toilet paper over. They did that in Empire Records too.

Gen X: I suppose the bathroom scenes are the modern equivalent of "powdering our noses" in the little girls room.

Gen Y: Sure.

Gen X: But also sort of infantilizing.

Gen Y: I do love how nonsexual it is though.

Gen X: Maybe it’s Dunham's way of showing "realness." Because toilets are real and don't tend to show up on TV that often. “It's HBO, let's show them peeing.”

Gen Y: It takes away the fantasy of what happens when girls bathe together? Or pee together? It's weird that Marnie would watch Jessa pee when she seems so uptight. It just seems like a strange time to lecture.

Gen X: Agreed. Marnie would not hang out in there. And not to get too graphic, but Jessa seems to be sitting down for a long time. Until she mentions the pregnancy I had to wonder what exactly, you know, she was doing...

Gen Y: Lol. We don’t know Marnie and Jessa's relationship.

Gen X: I can accept that girls pee together, fine. But do they also do the other thing? Or would they say, hey, like, I'm going to do more than pee right now, so let's continue this chat later?

Gen Y: Aaron, I hate to dispel your male fantasy, but girls do not shit in front of each other, no matter how much opium Twix they are on.

Gen X: Good to know!

NAMECHECKS

Gen Y:  I have to say, I am very confused as to how good an actress Zosia Mamet is.

Gen X: I love her. But then I am a closet connoisseur of uptalk. I think we will have to redefine "Mamet-speak."

Gen Y: I loved her in Mad Men. But this weird JAP-py infantilization thing creeped me out.

Gen X: She is sort of the only character who is clearly defined out of the gate—you might say cartoonishly so. But the show does suffer a bit from the modern affliction of having just about every character sound the same.

Gen Y: Also I don't think we needed that Sex in the City reference, because the show is obviously trying to set itself apart from that, while recognizing that it will inevitably get compared to it. But a lot of people go OMG! It's trying to be Sex and the City!

Gen X: I also have to wonder about the Mary Tyler Moore reference. First, because it made no sense: in fact the show does not sound at all strange through a wall, or at least no stranger than anything else. But also because MTM is the pinnacle of situation comedy and to invoke it in the first episode of any show is simply madness.

Gen Y: Someone did compare Lena to Rhoda. Wasn't Rhoda the sister?

Gen X: Are you kidding? No! Rhoda was the friend. I couldn't help thinking of the pilot of that show, when Mary interviews with Lou Grant, which is perhaps my favorite sit-com moment ever.

Gen Y: YouTube'ing it!