After years of mystery, the blogger behind the “Diary of a London Call Girl”, later adapted on TV as “The Secret Diary of a Call Girl” with Billie Piper in the title role, came out today as a young woman with a PhD in informatics, epidemiology and forensic science now working at the Bristol Initiative for Research of Child Health.

Brooke Magnanti, her book and Billie Pipper

Then a PhD student trying to write up her PhD Brooke Magnanti decided to become a sex worker when her saving ran out:

“I don’t know that prostitution would necessarily be one’s first choice, I say. Starbucks? Waitressing? Bar work? Bunking down on a friend’s floor? “Yeah, you could work behind a bar. But how many hours would you have to do just to pay your rent? I couldn’t even get an overdraft at that point, though of course once I started depositing so much cash they offered me a mortgage, about three months later! And I wasn’t prepared to borrow from friends or family. To be honest, the writing-up of a thesis takes up so much of your time and so much of your energy.”

Interestingly, Brooke decided to come out to Times Columnist India Knight who wrote an “uncharitable review [...] of her Intimate Adventures of a London Call Girl when it was published.” Likewise, reviewing the TV adaptation for the New York Times, Alessandra Stanley wrote that “Secret Diary of a Call Girl” is not an exposé, and it doesn’t look very deeply into either the prostitution industry or the psyche of one young call girl. It’s not Zola, it’s not even the movie “Klute”; it’s X-rated chick lit with lots of attitude but not much affect.”

Though Brookes was not in the situation of many of those who decide to enter the sex trade, she has a remarkable understanding of where the problem comes from saying that “Look, of course trafficking occurs. It’s awful. Awful. Desperate. But you don’t have a go at prostitutes — you have a go at border controls. You do something on the policing front.” Adding “The thing is that people are complex. 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.”

Sex work is certainly not always glamorous, flipping burger isn’t either, and the personal experience of Dr Brooke Magnanti shades some light on the variety of reasons and people who decide to enter the trade and clearly, it is not as simple as or reducible to trafficking and women’s exploitation as some like Harriett Harman, Jacqui Smith and a few others would like us to believe.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.