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Abstract
The author explores the celebrity of Bruna Surfistinha, a sex worker in São Paulo who turned a popular blog about her life as a garota de programa ("call girl") into a best-selling print memoir. Surfistinha has used her online writing to circumvent the controls of what Ángel Rama has called "la ciudad letrada" ("the lettered city") to gain access to the privileges of authorship—namely, financial remuneration in the form of book sales and the authority bestowed on experts by the reading public. By breaking down the "association factor" that attaches a stigma to prurient writing and by being available at no cost to any online reader at any time, she is able to appeal to a broader public than would be possible through traditional print. The commercial enterprise of O Doce Veneno do Escorpião demonstrates the ability for self-representation of previously marginalized people in new media.