Grisélidis Réal
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Grisélidis Réal (11 August 1929 - 31 May 2005) was a writer and prostitute from Geneva, Switzerland.
She was born in Lausanne, in a family of teachers and spent her childhood in Alexandria, and then in Athens, where her father was working. Back to Switzerland, she studied art in Zürich. She started to prostitute herself at the beginning of the sixties. She lived in Germany, with her children (she had four) and her lover. In her first book, Le noir est une couleur (Black is a color) - Balland, 1974, ISBN 2-7158-0005-3, she told her story in a blunt and honest way, with a dark lyrical tone she got from her own experience.
During the seventies, Réal became an activist, in particular with the occupation of the Chapelle Saint-Bernard, in Paris, in June 1975. She rejected the argument of the alienation by the pimps, and stated that prostitution could be a choice, a free-will decision. The revolutionary whore was born. She helped in the creation of a support association (Aspasie) for prostitutes. In her tiny home in Geneva, she created an international documentation center about prostitution.
In parallel to this political fight, Réal developed a positive vision of what she called in January 2005 (in the preface to Carnet de bal d'une courtisane, Verticales, March 2005, ISBN 2-84335-219-3), "an Art, a Humanism and a Science".
Réal stopped prostitution in 1995, at the age of 66. Three years earlier, in 1992, she had published La Passe imaginaire (L'Aire/Manya, ISBN 2-87896-037-8), a compilation of letters sent to her friend Jean-Luc Hennig.
