BookBlog [dot net]: The Gender Genie Thinks Belle de Jour Is a Man, Baby

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January 14, 2005

The Gender Genie Thinks Belle de Jour Is a Man, Baby

Those wacky folks at The Guardian mentioned The Gender Genie again:

Graham Thomson: The Gender Genie thinks your blog was written by a male. Was it?

Belle: It was not. Incidentally, the Gender Genie also thinks Orbyn was written by a male - her photo gallery would indicate not - and Wherever You Are is female - I am reliably informed otherwise.

I might have to add a new category to go along with "fiction," "non-fiction," and "blog" submissions: "London call girl bloggers who write tell-all exposés yet still manage to keep their anonimity, which, let's face it, is probably much more interesting than the actual content of the book."

(Is it me or does Belle de Jour seem wrong? I'm thinking Belle du Jour sounds better. Or maybe I'm just in the mood for soup.)

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Trackback Excerpt: Meanwhile, over at bookblog The Gender Genie Thinks Belle de Jour Is a Man, Baby and wonders whether it should be Belle du Jour rather Belle de Jour....
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comments

hah!

It's funny about that Gender Genie. It's easy to trick.

I got that too, but if I made sure to use a passage longer than 500 words it was right, granted I was rambling which I think is a very girl thing to do but.... just what I found.

Hello Mary,

I think you're Book Blog is fantastic.

I notice that a discussion regarding this question has been taking place over at Mistress Matisse's Journal in the comments to this post:

http://mistressmatisse.blogspot.com/2005/01/what-am-i-up-to-well-im-busy-with.html

From which I quote the following:

"On Belle de Jour, my French isn't perfect, but I believe "de jour" is a gramatically correct way to say "during the day" or "daily." So the effect here is Belle de Jour = she's a "belle" during the day, while implying she is something else at night.

Belle du Jour, on the other hand, means that she is the "beauty of the day," like the catch of the day, which is actually a bit of an insult since it would mean she's a flash in the pan, soon to be replaced."

Do you think that Joseph Kessel and Luis Bu�uel had it wrong?

Anyway, if you have an interest in Belle de Jour, I have been monitoring developments for some time now on my Book Club Blog.
http://natural-creations.co.uk/bookclub.html

Happy reading...

hello
don't wanna start a fight over something insignificant,
but i asked my friend Isabelle, she's a legitimate french, that is from and living in france

she says "belle du jour" is correct, and not otherwise... "de le" becomes "du"

Nick, thanks for the heads up on Belle (and the compliment). I'm now sure I prefer Belle du Jour since she probably is a flash in the pan. I wonder if she'll even register on the American book scene when she gets published on this side of the ocean.

Mary, by the time BjD is finally published in the US in the autumn/fall the proposed Channel 4 UK TV dramatisation may well have been made, and be rightfully usurping Desperate Housewives as the rightful successor to Sex and the City - its early days but BdJ is up to number 15 in the bestseller rankings at Amazon UK and the newspapers appear split half and half as to whether she's genuinely a new literary voice or a fraud trading on cheap thrills. I suppose we'll have to wait and see - but whatever sounds right to you, her name remains Belle de Jour.

If memory serves, a belle-de-jour is a type of flower that opens during the day (hence the title of the film "Belle de Jour" about a bourgeois housewife who becomes a prostitute by day. And Nick, my French prof confirmed your grammatical explanation.

I kinda pinched the explanation form Mistress Matisse's informed readers - but I'm glad to hear it wasn't all wrong. You're right on the plant name: Belle-de-jour is also a common name for convolvulus -which sometimes called Morning Glory and is related to bindweed.

This from Wikipedia - Morning glory, also called asagao, was first known in China for its medicinal uses, due to the laxative properties of its seeds. So there you go.