20 December 2009
belle de jour
I am impressed by her knee-high socks. All 30-something women, regardless of whether they are academics or sex workers, or both, should not shun the delights of the knee-high sock, however incongruous one might feel them to be on some primordial level. Knee-high socks are your friend, and they don't get torn up like tights. Although they do get holes in the heels and toes, but only if you buy the 3 for £5 ones from e.g. Greenwich market.
I realise this is no longer 'news-worthy', but it struck me that the really interesting thing about Belle de Jour's true identity wasn't the fact that she wasn't actually some balding middle-aged man, or the lovely Stewart Home, all of which speculation was basically just some sub-par misogynist idea that surely she couldn't be the kind of woman she said she was and yet write in a convincing way. Well, not that her writing is all that great, but the mentions of contemporary writers and actual novels seemed to send dumb journos into some sort of tailspin: 'she has sex for money and she reads?! Surely this exotic creature can't possibly really exist! Which old man came up with this?!' Anyway, no, the really interesting thing about Dr Magnanti is not that she's actually some sort of shy looking mousy academic woman, but that she's a scientist: everyone was scrabbling around looking for lit-chicks, but no one countenanced the idea that she was somehow not an English graduate at all. And that, not the sex for money nor the poor PhD student nor the blog-mystery thing, is why Belle de Jour should be remembered: When C. P. Snow talked in 1959 about overcoming the 'two cultures' divide, he was unwittingly preparing the world for Belle de Jour's simultaneous love of Martin Amis and pesticide research. Tee hee hee hee hee hee!
UPDATE: Lara - 'Another reason to like the belle scientist: Apparently she told her agent she wouldn't give any interviews, or she got to a point where she would give no more, apart from New Scientist. She said she really wanted to talk to New Scientist. And they interviewed her - a short piece - but the first two questions, hurrah, are about her work as a scientist. Not about shagging.'
