Duncan Rhodes gets all the juicy details on an insider tour run by former sex workers. After years serving on the frontline, first at a nightclub, and then later in the red-lit windows, she still felt a great attachment to both the district and the profession, an attachment which drove her to set up the PIC. My goal is that if I can explain to people and give them a a better view of sex workers then they can feel less embarrassed about themselves and what they do for a living.
It makes it easier for them to stand up for their rights and feel secure about their profession. Women of all shapes, ages, colours and sizes can be found gyrating, beckoning or pouting in bikinis from the inside of their softly-lit love nests. Her slow walking pace she is using crutches, having hurt her leg is an added bonus, as it give us plenty of opportunity to apply our retinae to the red-lit windows that occupy the ground floor of the austerely-beautiful 17th century canal-side properties.
Women of all shapes, ages, colours and sizes can be found gyrating, beckoning or pouting in bikinis from the inside of their softly-lit love nests, but here on the main canal most confirm to typical male fantasies of being young, pale and pert. In the last remains of daylight, these pornographic creatures seem more than a little incongruous and most of the tourists passing by β families, couples and big groups of students β either ignore them, giggle, or try to take a surreptitious photograph a practice much frowned upon in this neck of the woods.
There are lots of people who like to come to work with a smile. After crossing over to the other side of the waterway, Verma draws us up close to a window where a busty brunette is busy pretending to field a phonecall β¦apparently this makes them seem more unattainable. Verma is careful to position us so that we are not obstructing the passage of any potential customers.
All the women working here are self employed which means they are completely their own boss, they are the ones who decide⦠who gets to come in and who does not. I always say this specifically because for some reason there are still a lot of people who believe that a prostitute is not allowed to say no. This of course is absolutely not true. Not only are the women self-employed but, as prostitution is legal in Holland, they also pay taxes. And whilst condoms are tax-deductable expenses their first concern is to get enough customers into their window to pay the exorbitant rents.
