Anger inspired Annie Oakley to found The Sex Workers Art Show in Olympia, Wash., seven years ago. “I was working with a progressive activist organization, and I started doing sex work,” she says. “The people at the organization flipped out. They had this very sexist, classist response.” Oakley responded by gathering the artwork of local strippers, escorts, dominatrices and others in the adult business and setting the stage for performances ranging from bawdy to tragic. She struck a nerve, and the show sold out. Last year she took the cabaret-style revue and art exhibit on the road for a national tour, and the success inspired her to do it again. “It came out of wanting to confront the reality of who works in the sex industry, and why,” Oakley says.

The ten-or-so performers include Ducky Doolittle (right) a former 42nd Street peepshow girl turned writer, performance artist and sex educator, Scarlot Harlot (a.k.a Carol Leigh), a writer, filmmaker and prostitutes’ rights advocate, and David Henry Sterry, author of Chicken: Self-Portrait of a Young Man for Rent (ReganBooks, Harper Collins, 2002).

“A lot of people come because they want to see naked ladies,” Oakley says. “They get the naked ladies, but they also get political and emotional content.”
The Sex Workers Art Show will be at the University of Michigan Student Union at 8:00 on Wednesday, February 11. Donation.

-—Laura J. Williams