Body Shell Girl

When Rose walked into a massage parlour in Toronto in 1997, she was looking for a temporary fix to pay rent and avoid having to go back to her home country of Australia.

Awkward, shy and looking for a place to belong, she found herself in a strange world she understood little about, other than here she could make more than rent. She planned to use her earnings to buy herself an education that would secure the career of her dreams.

Naively believing she could do only what was required of her, without trauma or side effects and leave the industry on her own terms, she was shattered by what unfolded.

Rose’s narration does not tell the reader what to think, but rather the reader is called on to consider the implications of what she shows in her poems. The result is a first-person testimony of the sex industry and the harms it produces.

Other prominent themes include alcoholism and addiction, eating disorders, asexuality, sexual assault, and the deep and lasting effects of trauma.

This is her story. It is also a searing portrayal of this dehumanising industry in all its destructive power.