Amsterdam Red Light Tour

Jacqueline is almost a parody of a Dutch beauty: tremendously tree tall legs, blond as the day is long, twinkling star eyes, and cream colored skin that looks poured out of a pitcher. With her smart leather jacket and stylish scarf she looks like she could be a successful lawyer or advertising executive on her day off. She is not, in fact, a successful lawyer or advertising executive. She is a sex worker. Mostly retires, studying sex work and workers but still with her finger (or some other appropriate body part) in the pie. She is giving me a guided tour of the Red Light District in historic Amsterdam. I ask her if she ever worked in the windows. She tells me that a friend of hers who studies sex work and workers insisted that four of her colleagues go and stand in a window to see what it was really like, rather than just studying the subject theoretically. So her friend rented four windows and invited Jacqueline to inhabit one for a few hours.

"I was just dressed in jeans and a top, not sexy at all, but as soon as I got in the window, all these men started looking in, smiling. Then this beautiful boy, I mean really he was a beautiful boy, well he was 22, but so beautiful, he nods at me like he wants to come in. So I open the door and this beautiful boy asks me 'How much?' And I was shocked - all these gorgeous women with practically no clothes on, in sexy lingerie and he wants me - I felt so powerful and pretty, you know, I couldn't believe it, but I felt absolutely great. I waited for Jacqueline to finish the story, but she was off on the next subject.

"Wait a minute," I said, "what happened? Did you have sex with the guy?"