Belle de Jour has come out of the anonymity closet and revealed herself as Dr Brooke Magnanti.
From her blog:
Now I’m not anonymous…
“I suppose I always thought that the part of my life I wrote about would fade away, that I could stick it in a box and move on. Totally separate it from the ‘real me’.
What it took me years to realise is that while I’ve changed a lot since writing these diaries – my life has moved on so much, in part thanks to the things that happened then – Belle will always be a part of me. She doesn’t belong in a little box, but as a fully acknowledged side of a real person. The non-Belle part of my life isn’t the only ‘real’ bit, it’s ALL real.
Belle and the person who wrote her had been apart too long. I had to bring them back together.”
From the Times Online:
I’m Belle de Jour
“She’s real, all right, and I’m sitting on the bed next to her. Her name is Dr Brooke Magnanti. Her specialist areas are developmental neurotoxicology and cancer epidemiology. She has a PhD in informatics, epidemiology and forensic science and is now working at the Bristol Initiative for Research of Child Health. She is part of a team researching the effects of exposure to the pesticide chlorpyrifos on foetuses and infants.
From 2003 to late 2004, Brooke worked as a prostitute via a London escort agency; she started blogging as Belle de Jour — after the Buñuel film starring Catherine Deneuve as a well-to-do housewife who has sex for money because she’s bored — shortly into her career as a call girl, after an incident she thought funny enough to write down.”
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Props to Belle for coming out of the sex worker closet! I support her courage and willingness to share so much of her life publicly. I love that she has such a prestigious career as well. As much as I love my hippie off-grid life if I came out I wouldn’t be breaking nearly so many sex worker stereotypes. Hell, even some of my friends are weirded out by my composting toilet. (For newbie readers-I blog anonymously because I’m still an active sex worker.)
But it’s a little hard for people to say prostitution ruins people forever when Belle is a specialist in developmental neurotoxicology and cancer epidemiology.
Of course, that won’t stop some. Not surprisingly her story has been getting some ignorant, judgmental comments. If you support her why not leave her a message on her blog?
Posted by Vixen as Sex Workers at 9:19 PM CST