RED LIGHT REVOLT
On a quiet road just off the high street, in a residential part of a British seaside town, there’s a small, unspectacular building sandwiched between houses and takeaways, its walls painted completely white. The owners refer to it as a massage parlour, but ask anyone in the neighbourhood and they’ll tell you: it’s a brothel.
Nobody who works there is allowed to talk about sex or exchange cash. That happens in the private rooms. The signs outside, meanwhile, remain coded. One simply reads, “A: £50.” But it’s not offering a massage treatment – it’s advertising anal sex.
“The [owners] told us when they put the sign up that if the police ask, it’s aromatherapy,” says Lydia Caradonna, a 21-year-old history student, sex worker and activist who operates out of the brothel. “They even got some oils to put in the rooms.”
Lydia has been involved in the industry for about three years now. She got her start just after leaving school, desperate to avoid the prospect of being homeless at the age of 18. “I have the sad story,” she says, with an awkward laugh. “Whereas most people have really average entries into the sex industry.”
Now based
