Representations and identities prepared for professional sex workers in a novel

The present article intends to analyze the social representations of prostitution that were built in the feuilleton called Mariposa: uma puta historia, written by prostitutes of Porto Alegre, Brazil. The story is created with the help of a journalist and a psychologist and is publicized in a Rio Grande do Sul's culture magazine. Reading the chapters publicized until July 2008 and attending the meetings where the story is made, we intend to understand the process where a fictitious prostitute is built by real prostitutes. Considering that men and women are composed by multiple identities, we try to identify which are the identities that prostitutes attribute to their character. Using the feuilleton, the prostitutes try to deconstruct some prejudices attributed to them. They show a character who owns a house, have a family, establish relationships and feed dreams, like mostly people usually do. It can be concluded that the writers of Mariposa: uma puta historia represent their selves as women who have different social papers in the everyday life and who transits between their multiply identities. Telling in a fictional story how a person who works as a prostitute lives, they intend to decrease the stigma around this professional group.