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Title details for Pretty Baby by Chris Belcher - Available

Pretty Baby

A Memoir

by Chris Belcher
Chris Belcher
Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
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1 of 1 copy available
"Absolutely not to be missed." —Vogue
"A muscular, canny memoir about labor and power and gender...I couldn't put it down. What a fucking gorgeous book." —Carmen Maria Machado, author of In the Dream House

A queer teen rebel escapes small-town Appalachia and becomes Los Angeles's Renowned Lesbian Dominatrix in this searing and darkly funny memoir that upends our ideas about desire, class, and power.
The dominatrix is the id of American femininity. She says the words that we all wish we could say when we find ourselves frozen in the presence of men. No is principal among them.

So writes Chris Belcher, who appeared destined for a life of conventional femininity after she took first place in an infant beauty contest—a minor glory that followed her around a working-class town of 1,600 people in rural West Virginia. But when she came out as queer, the conservative community that had once celebrated its prettiest baby turned on her.

A decade later, living in Los Angeles and trying to stay afloat in the early years of a PhD program, Belcher plunges into the work of a pro domme. Branding herself as Los Angeles's Renowned Lesbian Dominatrix, she specializes in male clients who want a domme to make them feel worthless, shameful, and weak—all the abuse regularly heaped upon women for free. A queer woman whom men can trust with the unorthodox sides of their sexualities, Belcher is paid to be the keeper of the fantasies that they can't enact in their everyday relationships. But moonlighting as a sex worker also carries risks, like the not-so-submissive who tries to turn the tables and the jealous client out for revenge.

As Belcher moves between the embodied world of the pro domme and the abstract realm of academia, she discovers how lessons from the classroom apply to the dungeon, and vice versa. Still, fear that her doctoral program won't approve burdens her with a double life. Pretty Baby is her second coming out.

In this sharp and discerning memoir, we see through Belcher's eyes how power and desire can be renegotiated—or reinforced.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    July 12, 2022

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781797144221
      • File size: 254876 KB
      • Duration: 08:50:59

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      April 11, 2022
      In this penetrating debut, professor and former dominatrix Belcher dissects the tensions between sexuality and shame. She traces her relationship with sex, beginning with her adolescence in 1990s Appalachia, where, she writes, “I was masturbating to the alcoholic coach” in A League of Their Own. To Belcher, losing one’s virginity (a mission she completed at age 16) was just another way to vie for power. While lies laid the foundation for her high school days, it wasn’t until she discovered she was hiding behind them—the cheerleading uniform, the sex with boys—that she encountered her true self: a queer young woman who yearned for closeness. As she took ownership of her identity, Belcher formed relationships that would prove pivotal, including a romance with Catherine, a professional dominatrix she met as a broke PhD student in L.A. As she recounts her own foray into pro domme work, she balances the raw and shocking—“I fed dog food... to a man who pouted and begged for more”—with incisive takes on the economics of sex work (“Everyone wants whores to stop whoring, but when they do, they can’t get hired at Starbucks”) and the freedom she found in it. The result is an illuminating personal look at the power and politics of sex.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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