Ways With Words 2012: Belle de Jour talks sex

Pink clothing for girls should alarm parents as much as the sexualised behaviour of pop stars like Rihanna, according to the author known as Belle de Jour.

Dr Brooke Magnanti, who became famous for writing an anonymous blog about her life as a prostitute, said parents should not be too worried about scantily-clad singers or salacious lyrics.

Rihanna’s provocative routines and stage costumes have been deemed unsuitable for children, with more than 2,000 viewers complaining about performances she and fellow singer Christina Aguilera gave on The X Factor.

Dr Magnanti, whose blog was dramatised by Billie Piper in ITV series Secret Diary of a Call Girl, ridiculed the idea that Rihanna was “out to corrupt everyone’s children and grandchildren”.

Speaking at the Telegraph Ways With Words literary festival, the 36-year-old said: “I’m not a parent but I don’t think I would feel uncomfortable seeing Rihanna on television if I had a daughter. Yet I cringe massively when I go into children’s clothing sections and everything for girls is pink.”

She added: “One of the things I find a little bit worrying is this assumption that children aren’t sexualised anyway, and shouldn’t be. It is part of growing up.

“Children do gradually transition out of being children. When you look at children between nine and 12 years old, that’s probably the region in which you start to have those questions anyway.”

Dr Magnanti suggested that every generation had a Rihanna figure: “It’s something I would like to hear more about from older generations – have things changed, or has this concern about particular individuals always existed and the only thing that’s changed is what they happen to be wearing?

“Among my contemporaries in the United States, it was Phoebe Cates’s breasts in [1982 film] Fast Times at Ridgemont High that was the sexualising image for a generation of 12-year-old boys.”

Dr Magnanti, who is promoting her latest book, The Sex Myth, said: “Another worry about this debate is that we seem exclusively focused on the idea that sexualised imagery is harming how people see girls and women, and making potential criminals out of boys.

“That really does young men down, actually – to assume this kind of imagery will turn them into potential rapists or sex addicts.”

One of the ‘myths’ Dr Magnanti explores in her book is the idea that the web is flooded with porn.

She told her audience that government plans to restrict access to pornography sites, with parents having to “opt in” to allow the viewing of pornographic content, were doomed to failure.

“There is this danger of assuming that because people are concerned about the amount of porn and the type of porn that’s available, that it should be up to the government or the internet providers to step in and do something about it,” she said.

“What’s problematic about that, of course, is that everybody has different definitions of what they would consider too much or what they would consider offensive, so this kind of top-down approach to controlling the internet is destined to fail.

“I was not raised with the internet, I was well into my teens. There’s a very different generation coming along with much more native understanding of the technology. There’s always going to be the concern that whatever the top-down solution you might try to apply to the internet, the kids have got the skills to get around it in about a nanosecond so you’re not preventing any potentially vulnerable children from seeing it.”

Dr Magnanti, a Florida-born research scientist specialising in child health, worked as a call girl while completing her doctoral studies. She revealed her identity to a newspaper in 2009.

Asked by an audience member if there was anything morally wrong in a woman sleeping with multiple partners, Dr Magnanti replied: “As long as they’re comfortable with it, I personally don’t see a problem.

“I tend to feel the same way about sex work. The people who should not be in sex work are the people whom this would bother morally.

“Whereas if you’re someone like me who was a bit of a slag anyway, you might as well get paid.”