Abstract

This chapter establishes the economics of access, where (the appearance of) access and exposure is traded as vital celebrity currency. It does so by examining the tensions that arise when life writing—an act of subjectification—is undertaken by an individual with a professional investment in their own objectification. This is true of much of celebrity culture, but especially when inflected through career origins in soft-core pornographic modelling or hardcore pornographic films. Despite the predominantly female target audience of celebrity autobiography, women made famous by male-targeted pornography have authored some of the most widely read texts in the genre. This chapter also reveals the ghosting relationship as charged with complex, gendered power dynamics. Existing as they do in a space of historical, representational lack (giving voice to women’s subjectivity, to women’s sexual autobiography, and to women in the sex industry specifically) it is significant that these texts, sold as ‘true’ female experiences, are often co-authored by men. Examining the power dynamics of ghosting is especially necessary when these texts narrate and make palatable stories of trauma, abuse and sexual violence. It reveals that a thematic and formal preoccupation with constructedness interacts with, and potentially undermines, testimonies of trauma survival.

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