The World's Brainiest Call Girl

by Olivia Cole
The Daily Beast

This week a research scientist was unmasked as blogger Belle de Jour, inspiration for Showtime's Secret Diary of a Call Girl. Olivia Cole on a sex scandal's surprisingly happy ending.

After six years of anonymity, Belle de Jour, the ultimate 21st-century blogger, who documented the “Intimate Adventures of a London Call Girl,” has been unmasked and dragged into the light—or at least into the popping glare of flash bulbs. With her insatiable appetite for sex, her masochistic tastes, and her frequent and free-flowing discussion of “anal being the new black,” Belle’s blog caused a sensation when it first appeared in the summer of 2003. Belle de Jour made Sex and the City look like Little House on the Prairie.

She juggled “appointments” with men, and once she was finished raced home to tap away, reporting back to a readership that tipped into the millions. “Have you slept with anyone famous?” is the banal question she was most frequently asked during pillow talk. Since outing herself this week, Belle, or rather Dr. Brooke Magnanti, a 34-year-old born and raised in Florida, with a sparkling academic career in the U.K., is now very famous indeed. Now a Bristol-based research scientist into the effects of toxins on children, she says she turned to prostitution after moving to London from Yorkshire, where her family lived, and finding herself cash-strapped as she tried to finish her Ph.D. Moral relativism, especially for female columnists on Fleet Street, has faced a tough week, presented with a woman so keen on sex she was happy to “get paid for what I would have done for free.” The supposed ultimate male fantasy, of the prostitute who loves her job, according to Belle, really can exist.

(Original here.)