Pretty Baby

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

<p><b>FINALIST FOR THE 2022 LAMBDA LITERARY AWARD FOR LESBIAN MEMOIR</b><br><br><b>'A muscular, canny memoir . . . I couldn't put it down. What a fucking gorgeous book' </b>CARMEN MARIA MACHADO<b><br>'Entertaining' </b><i>New York Times</i><br><b>'Absolutely not to be missed' </b><i>Vogue</i><br><b>'A gripping story' </b><i>Esquire</i><br><br>Chris Belcher 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 her small, working-class town in rural West Virginia. But when she came out as queer, the conservative community that had once celebrated its prettiest baby turned on her.<br><br>A decade later, living in Los Angeles and trying to stay afloat during a PhD program, Belcher plunges into a double life as both student and sex worker, branding herself as L.A.'s Renowned Lesbian Dominatrix. As she moves between the embodied world of the pro-domme and the abstract realm of academia, she discovers how lessons from the classroom can apply to the dungeon and vice versa.<br><b><br>In this searingly funny and perceptive memoir, we see through eyes of a dominatrix-turned-academic how power, shame and desire can be explored and subverted.</b></p>