Brooke Magnanti

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Brooke Magnanti, speaking at Westminster Skeptics on June 7, 2010

Brooke Magnanti (born November 5, 1975 in Florida ) is an American - British blogger , writer and former medical researcher , who achieved worldwide fame as a sex blogger under the pseudonym Belle de Jour . Her true identity has been one of the best-kept secrets in the English literary scene for over six years and has led to much speculation regarding the author behind the pseudonym. The stories from her blog also appeared in book form from 2005 and were adapted for the television series Secret Diary of a Call Girl in 2007 .

Life

Brooke Magnanti was born in Florida in November 1975, the only child of plumber Paul Magnanti and nurse Susan Levy. Her grandparents were Jewish immigrants from Italy. She grew up in Florida and attended Clearwater Central Catholic High School. After graduation, she studied mathematics and anthropology at Florida State University. As a student, she began to publish on the Internet and had a website with cooking recipes.

During this time, her parents' 24-year marriage fell apart. After separating from his wife, her father began to see drug addicted prostitutes on a regular basis and at times lived with some of them. Brooke Magnanti met quite a few prostitutes through her father. She also had a relative who worked as a prostitute to pay for her drug addiction. According to her own statements, she didn't mind that her father went to prostitutes. However, she disapproved of their drug addiction, which led to a temporary falling out with her father. Brooke Magnanti wrote a 1996 letter to the editor of the St Petersburg Times advocating legalization of prostitution and saying that if it were legalized, it would not be a problem for her to have relatives working as prostitutes.

Brooke Magnanti later moved to Sheffield , England, and began a doctoral degree in forensic pathology at the university there . She began temporarily running a science blog called Cosmas and a link blog called Methyl Salicylate , and also published short stories and various articles on the Internet. In 2002 she met her friend ("The Boy"), who was later described in her blog Belle de Jour , who was an engineer and officer in the British Army . After her time in Sheffield, she also worked briefly in a hostel in Scotland and then moved to London . She was still working on her dissertation in both Scotland and London .

After her reserves in London were running low and she did not want to ask her family for money, she decided to work as a prostitute, as it enabled her to earn a living in a short time and spend the rest of her time on completing her dissertation. In early 2003 she started working for Barbarella escort agency at an hourly rate of £ 300, of which £ 200 went to her and £ 100 to the agency . She worked as a call girl for about 14 months until the end of 2004 , in the meantime she also worked as a daytime programmer for about three months. According to her own statement, she liked working as a call girl much better than working as a programmer, so she gave it up again. Also in 2003 she started blogging about her experiences as a call girl under the pseudonym Belle de Jour .

She submitted her dissertation in September and then received a PhD in Computer Science , Epidemiology and Forensics from the University of Sheffield in 2004 . Her boyfriend was both familiar with her work for the escort service and her blog, although he said he had deliberately not read the blog at the time and was unclear about the exact details of her work at the escort service.

In May 2006, Brooke Magnanti received a Fellowship in Childhood Cancer Research from the Bupa Foundation in Newcastle . She then bought a house in Newcastle and moved in with her boyfriend. However, their relationship broke up in the aftermath. After her fellowship in Newcastle expired, she later accepted a research position at Bristol University Hospital , where she studied the effects of pesticides on fetuses in 2009.

In November 2009, Belle de Jour revealed her true identity as Brooke Magnanti to the Sunday Times columnist India Knight, who had previously suggested that the pseudonym was a male author who wrote male fantasies for men. After India Knight had verified her identity, there was an interview and a photo shoot with the Sunday Times, in which India Knight then revealed her identity to the world public in a three-page article on November 15th. Brooke Magnanti justified her step to go public with the fact that she had been increasingly burdened by the double life recently; In addition, a lover in the meantime had indicated "with a big mouth" that he would announce her identity to the press. She had also been warned that the press was on her trail by a blogger named Darren, who had previously identified her without her knowledge.

During her time in Bristol, she met her future husband through a personal ad on the classifieds website Gumtree . The two married in 2010 and moved to near Fort William in Scotland that same year . Magnanti became a British citizen in March 2013. In 2014 she campaigned for the independence of Scotland as part of the independence referendum .

In the meantime (as of 2018) Magnanti has returned to the USA and works there as a freelance writer.

plant

Belle de Jour

Soon after Brooke Magnanti started working as a call girl, she started blogging about experiences under the pseudonym Belle de Jour (Eng. "Beauty of the day", after the character of the novel by Joseph Kessel). Your pseudonym alludes to the film of the same name by Luis Buñuel . In this, the blonde Catherine Deneuve plays a bored wife who, in addition to her bourgeois existence, begins to lead a double life as a prostitute on free afternoons. The blog quickly rose to prominence and attracted widespread attention from the UK public not only for its savory content, but also for its literary quality.

In December 2003 she won the Guardian's British Blog Award as an anonymous author in the category best written . Although some members of the award committee suspected that the blog entries could be fictitious and that the author behind the pseudonym might not be a real call girl, it was agreed that the blog entries were of great writing quality regardless of their authenticity. Judge Bruce Sterling said: "As a blogger, she is in her own league."

At the end of 2004, Brooke Magnanti and Orion Books agreed to convert the content of their blog into a book. In this context, she initially announced at the end of 2004 that she would end her blog. However, in January 2005 she decided to continue her blog, even if it could no longer contain any current experiences of her call girl life, which has now ended. The book was then published in 2005 under the title The Intimate Adventures of a London Call Girl and after it had become a bestseller, followed in the next few years with The Further Adventures of a London Call Girl (2007), Playing the Game (2008) and Belle de Jour's Guide to Men (2009) three other books. In addition, 2007-2011 was based on the book-based successful television series Secret Diary of a Call Girl with Billie Piper in the lead role.

From November 2005 to May 2006 Brooke Magnanti also wrote a column for the Sunday Telegraph as Belle de Jour .

criticism

Belle de Jour was repeatedly accused by critics of playing down prostitution in an irresponsible way or even promoting it. The Bishop of York John Sentamu criticized the fact that she drafted a myth of a self-determined bourgeois woman as a prostitute and thereby paints a glorifying picture of prostitution.

Speculation Regarding Identity

The true identity of the Belle de Jour has been one of the best kept secrets of the British literary scene for six years. Even after she signed a book deal, wrote columns and articles for newspapers, and shot the television series with Billie Piper, her identity was known only to her agent Patrick Walsh, her accountant and a few friends, but not to her publishers and editors. In addition, she was known to a blogger named Darren without her knowledge. He had identified Magnanti based on his intimate knowledge of the early blog scene in Great Britain, but kept its secret. Numerous attempts by the media to uncover their identity have failed; There were various speculations in which up to twelve well-known personalities were traded as candidates for authorship. India Knight, the Sunday Times columnist, initially suspected that the blog was a hoax and that a man was hiding behind it who was writing male fantasies for other men. In 2004 the Times commissioned the linguist Donald Wayne Foster , known as a "literary detective" , to use text analysis to determine the author behind Belle de Jour. According to the Times, the latter quickly identified the journalist Sarah Champion as the definitive author. Donald Wayne Foster himself contradicted this representation in a letter to the Observer, pointing out that he had never carried out a detailed analysis and that Sarah Champion had by no means clearly identified as Belle de Jour. Other personalities who were at times suspected as authors were the women's writer Isabel Wolff , the writers Toby Young and Michel Faber , the editor of the erotic review Rowan Pelling , the author of erotic-historical novels Lisa Hilton , the writer Christopher Hart and the columnist Andrew Orlowski .

Books

  • The Intimate Adventures of a London Call Girl . Orion Books, 2005
    Andrea Fischer (translator): The intimate notes of a London call girl . Goldmann 2005
  • The Further Adventures of a London Call Girl . Orion Books, 2007
  • Playing the game . Orion Books, 2008
  • Belle de Jour's Guide to Men . Orion Books, 2009
  • Belle's Best Bits: A London Call Girl Reveals Her Favorite Adventures . Phoenix 2010
  • The Sex Myth . Weidenfeld & Nicolson 2012
  • The Turning Tide . Orion Books, 2016, ISBN 9781409100850
  • You don't know me . Orion Books, 2017, ISBN 978-1409100898

literature

Web links

Commons : Brooke Magnanti  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Brooke Magnanti: Autumn Sweeties . The Gyst Of It (personal blog), November 8, 2011 ( archived version , accessed August 20, 2018)
  2. ↑ Belle de Jour: Belle's Best Bits: A London Call Girl Reveals Her Favorite Adventures . Phoenix 2010, p. 15, ISBN 978-0-7538-2794-9
  3. ↑ a b Sam Greenhill, Paul Thompson: I introduced Belle to vice girls: It showed her the 'human face' of sex trade, says father on Mail Online of November 16, 2009
  4. ↑ Tom Leonard: Belle de Jour's mother proud of 'brilliant' daughter Brooke Magnanti on the Daily Telegraph website of November 18, 2009
  5. ^ A b Gordon Rayner: Belle de Jour called for legalized prostitution as a student on the Daily Telegraph website of November 18, 2009
  6. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j India Knight: I'm Belle de Jour ( Memento of April 13, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) in The Sunday Times of November 15, 2009.
  7. ↑ a b c d e Laura Topham, Helen Weathers: Belle de Jour is a research student with a PhD. Shocked? Not as much as her deceived boyfriend on Mail Online from November 16, 2009.
  8. ↑ Eric Deggans: Subject of Showtime's 'Secret Diary of a Call Girl' grew up in Florida ( Memento of the original from August 11, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . Tampa Bay Times, April 1, 2011 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.tampabay.com
  9. ↑ a b Linkmachinego.com - Blog by Darren / LMG (accessed November 23, 2009)
  10. ↑ Tom Harper: Revealed: The scientist of 34 who says she is the real Belle de Jour on Mail Online November 15, 2009.
  11. ^ Zoë Corbyn: Prostitution did not finance Belle de Jour's PhD on the Times Higher Education website, November 19, 2009.
  12. ↑ Steven Adams: Belle de Jour author unmask herself amid 'perfect storm' of feelings on the Daily Telegraph website of November 15, 2009.
  13. ^ Jacqueline Vickery: Belle de Jour Blog (United Kingdom) . In: John Derek Hall Downing (Ed.): Encyclopedia of Social Movement Media . Sage, 2011, ISBN 9780761926887 , p. 72 ( excerpt (Google) )
  14. ↑ Arthur Martin: 'You get over it and move on': Ex-call girl Belle de Jour reveals she was raped as a teenager . Mail Online, April 16, 2012
  15. ↑ Brooke Magnanti: Why is Jacqui Smith welcoming me as a British citizen in 2013? . The Telegraph March 28, 2013
  16. ↑ See among others:
    Brooke Magnanti: Dr Brooke Magnanti: I Want To Live In A Country Based On Hope For The Future . National Collective, August 20, 2014
    Brooke Magnanti: The real reason older women are saying 'no' to an independent Scotland . The Telegraph, September 4, 2014
    Brooke Magnanti: In Scotland's romcom, who wants to wake up with David Cameron on Friday? . The Guardian, Sept. 17, 2014
  17. ↑ Brooke Magnanti at patreon.com (accessed June 20, 2019)
  18. ↑ a b c d Carsten Volkery: The legend of the happy whore on Spiegel Online from November 17, 2009
  19. ↑ Virginia Blackburn: The unmasking of Belle du Jour In Daily Express of 16 November 2009
  20. ↑ a b Rowan Pelling: Shocking - but only because Belle de Jour wrote so well on the website of the Daily Telegraph of November 17, 2009
  21. ↑ Richard Woods, Nicholas Hellen: Focus: Who is 'Belle de Jour', the high-class hooker whose web diary is set to be a literary sensation? in the Sunday Times on March 14, 2004
  22. ↑ Simon Waldman: British Blog Awards 2003 - The best of British blogging on guardian.co.uk on December 18, 2003
  23. ↑ London 'call girl' gives up blog on BBC News of September 17, 2004
  24. ↑ a b c Serge Debrebant: Life as a call girl on the Frankfurter Rundschau website from November 24, 2009
  25. ↑ Jonathan Wynne-Jones: Archbishop of York attacks Belle de Jour for glamourizing prostitution on the Daily Telegraph website of October 11, 2009.
  26. ↑ Ryan Hagen: A Few Questions for Belle de Jour, Call Girl and Scientist - Freakonomics blog (accessed November 21, 2009).
  27. ↑ a b c Arifa Akbar: Exposed: The most intimate secret of erotic blogger Belle de Jour on independent.ie of November 16, 2009.
  28. ↑ Sarah Champion: I was branded a call-girl blogger in the Observer on March 21, 2004.
  29. ↑ Donald Wayne Foster: Mourning glory - Letter to the Observer, March 28, 2004.
  30. ↑ Jemima Kiss: Mystery prostitute plagues UK press ( Memento of the original from October 9, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on Online Journalism News on March 24, 2004. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.journalism.co.uk
personal data
SURNAME Magnanti, Brooke
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Belle de Jour (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American medical doctor and blogger
DATE OF BIRTH 5th November 1975
PLACE OF BIRTH Florida