The blogosphere got a case of the vapors yesterday when longtime blogger Belle de Jour voluntarily relinquished her anonymity and revealed herself to be both pretty and geeky,complete with a Ph.D. in informatics, epidemiology, and forensic science. Belle (a.k.a Brooke Magnanti) was one of the first bloggers to achieve celebrity status based purely on the content of her blog postings (in Belle’s case, she blogged about her experiences as a London escort). She parlayed her blog’s popularity into book and television deals, thus earning the envy and ire of all us amateurs pecking away at our keyboards as visions of literary contracts danced before our eyes.
Some might argue that Magnanti, with her middle-class background and advanced education, isn’t typical of the women who earn a living as sex workers. They may be right. It’s even possible that she’s perpetuating a long con on a public who subconsciously wants to accept commercial sex as long as it’s nonthreateningly packaged as an attractive and seemingly well-adjusted woman with an English accent and a completed dissertation. But she might just be someone who blogged about an interesting and unusual time in her life and now wants to reclaim her identity. I hope it works out for her.
