Belle de Jour

Dr. Brooke Magnanti

Congratulations and solidarity across the Blogosphere to Dr. Brooke Magnanti who has outed herself as the blogger and former Escort girl “Belle de Jour.” Magnanti has said in her coming out interview with The Times, the former paper of record, that she has an ‘ex-boyfriend with a big mouth’ and that she had decided to go public before the decision was forced on her. Presumably this is “The Boy” who made frequent appearances in her Blog. Again, let’s assume that the ex-boyfriend hadn’t already contacted the Sunday Times. What we do know is that her “outing” was not entirely consensual. Last Friday police had to be called to her workplace at Bristol University to remove “journalists” from the Daily Mail. Good to see that the standards for which the Daily Heil is famous are being maintained. Nor does the Times seem a good choice of a paper to spill the beans to as it has a disgraceful reputation at harassing anonymous bloggers having shabbily outed Zoe Margolis as “Girl with a one track mind”

(http://girlwithaonetrackmind.blogspot.com/ )

and Richard Horton as the policeman Blogger “Night Jack.”

(http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2009/06/survival-guide-for-decent-folk.html )

Not for nothing do those of us on the Blogosphere look at Blogging as “Freedom FROM the Press!”



"@miketd Actually, we went to the Times willingly, after the Mail had their reporters warned off my work premises by the police.
10:46 AM Nov 15th from web
Reply belledejour_uk
Belle de Jour" A Tweet on Belle's Twitter Page

Despite considerable media scepticism and the surreal identification of Toby Young (shudder of shudders) as the author Belle de Jour was real after all. The Internet’s most famous anonymous sex blogger – turned best-selling author – turned internationally successful TV series – has finally outed herself in the UK’s Sunday Times. No doubt this is not entirely what she wanted; particularly for her Jewish mother from whom she acquired a deep aversion from being in debt which she said led to her working as her escort and from her family on the Gulf Coast of Florida where she grew up.



As Belle says herself;

"People lead complicated lives. I'm not the only person walking around who's an ex-call-girl, believe me. And you can't say I'm not real, and that my experience isn't real, because here I am." Quiet so.



From her interview with the Times’ India Knight, we learn that Belle is in fact Dr Brooke Magnanti a specialist in developmental neurotoxicology and cancer epidemiology. Her identity has been one of the great literary mysteries of the decade after the publication of bestselling books about her secret life as a prostitute. Six years ago, in the final stages of her PhD thesis, she ran out of money and turned to prostitution through a London escort agency, charging £300 an hour to make ends meet, in a manner of speaking. Add in the fact that Magnanti was already a reasonably well known science blogger and ‘The Secret Diary of a London Call Girl was born and was adapted into books and a television drama starring Billie Piper.



Indeed the Blog was the precursor for everything which followed winning the 2003 Guardian Blog Award when she was still “on active service”, so to speak, and the citation is worth recalling;

“The winner in this category however is Belle de Jour, the diary of a London call girl. There's obviously a prurient and titillating element, but the quality of her writing took her blog well beyond that. Some judges were concerned it was a work of fiction, but even if it is, it remains an impressive piece of writing.”

As Bruce Sterling, one of the judges said: "Archly transgressive, anonymous hooker is definitely manipulating the blog medium, word by word, sentence by sentence far more effectively than any of her competitors. It's not merely the titillating striptease aspects that are working for her, but her willingness to use this new form of vanity publishing to throw open a great big global window on activities previously considered unmentionable ... She is in a league by herself as a blogger."

Despite Belle’s growing fame and the determined efforts of journalists around the world to out her, Belle’s anonymity remained intact – mainly thanks to a complex series of agents and shell companies that allowed her to receive payment for her work without compromising her identity. Even her agent didn’t know her real name until this week when Belle herself chose to out herself, granting an interview to Knight, one of her harshest critics.


Belle de Jour book

There has been huge speculation about Belle’s real identity, including a theory that she was a well-known author because of the quality of her writing. The blog and books were also criticised for suggesting prostitution could be glamorous. Her pseudonym recalls the 1928 novel Belle de jour by Joseph Kessel and the 1967 film of the same name starring Catherine Deneuve, directed by Luis Buñuel. In French "Belle de Jour" is an expression translating literally as "beauty of [the] day," as opposed to "femme de nuit" or "belle de nuit," women of the night (common references to prostitutes). "Belle de jour" is a play on the phrase, possibly a reference to the daylight rendez-vous made by some call girls, including Belle de Jour herself. Belle de Jour is also of course a beautiful flower which blooms in daylight but retreats in darkness.



No doubt her going public will lead to an outpouring of HyperGuffitis about the rights and wrongs of prostitution, so let’s “hear” this comment left by a fellow sex worker on the Times article;

“As a fellow escort I'm so pleased that Dr. Magnanti has come out of the closet. She's taking one for the team. It's about time that the public starts seeing other sides of prostitution. There's a lot of dysfunction in this industry that needs to be cleaned up, but as you can see from Dr. Magnanti's experiences, there's no need to eradicate the industry altogether. Instead we need to bring the sex industry over ground so it doesn't have to become involved with trafficking, drugs, gangs, etc. in the underground. A step in the right direction!”

There is the nub, by having essentially hypocritical criminalisation of elements of prostitution (This of course from a Labour Government which has shamelessly accommodated the Lobbyists on Gambling and rolled over to the Alcohol industry) society has driven something underground which will never go away and indeed, many sociologists would argue, should never go away. By criminalising it we have effectively driven parts of it into the hands of criminals and have denied protection and inclusion to sex workers who are forced into a clandestine and covert existence. I remember being on a trip to Austria some years ago in the sleepy small town of St. Georgen-im-Attergau in the Salzkammergut. The tour guide told us the building down the road with the Jupiter beer sign outside was not a cosy local tavern but was in fact the (legal) town brothel. He mentioned this because the hotel had to “rescue” an elderly English couple who stumbled into this “cosy” tavern some weeks earlier and had ordered, and been politely served, two beers. The brothel had rung the hotel as they didn’t know how to explain to the elderly tourists the primary purpose of the joint. Some months ago in Rhodes Town in Greece I was shown the still extant red light district which has been catering (including On a Sunday despite what Melina Mercouri said) for clientele since before the First Crusade. This is legal in Greece and each house had the calling cards outside which gives us the expression “call girl.”



Austria and Greece where prostitution is legal and regulated are of course two socially backward countries (?) dominated by the Catholic and Orthodox Churches respectively and not to be compared to the liberal democracy known as “Cool Britannia” which takes a mature attitude to such things. N'est pas?

I recall the immortal words of the late, great Hoagy Carmichael, “Different strokes for different folks” and leave you with two recent soupçons from La Belle.

“lundi, novembre 16

Please note all media requests should be sent to either my publisher or agent. Anything received via my workplace or my personal and work emails, &c. will be ignored as I would only have to forward it to them anyway. Please do not come to my workplace as this compromises the security of patients and staff. Thank you for understanding.

Also, so much curiosity about my tax situation! Yes, I did pay taxes on sex work earnings.
Posted by belle at 9:57 AM”

“jeudi, novembre 5

But it is as much a cliché as it is the truth that appearances are deceiving. The person you think of as shy will actually talk your ear off, given half a chance. The most flowery, romantic love letters were written by absolute bastards. And under the shell of a coolly unemotional ex-prostitute beats the heart of someone who was only waiting for the right conditions in which love could blossom.”

http://belledejour-uk.blogspot.com/

Á Belle de Jour, bonne chance dans tes futurs projets.