The short article Fooling and Tripping by Sterk was an intriguing article about prostitution. I discovered it interesting since she was actually integrating herself into prostitution without in fact prostituting and how a few of the prostitutes accepted and befriended her, and one pimp was actually good and had her back. When Sterk said, “I’m sorry for you,” to one of the woman of the streets, she got upset believing that Sterk suggested she sympathized with the woman of the street because she was a failure when Sterk truly meant she was genuinely concerned for the woman of the street.
I believe fieldwork would be an exceptionally hard task since you have to in fact go out and generally get your hands filthy and put your life in harmful situations. Sterk had to handle most of the important things that woman of the streets needed to like pimps, crack-heads, other prostitutes, rude customers, and weather along with hardly an access to a washroom.
I think that the fact that Sterk grew up in Amsterdam, where prostitution is legal, didn’t affect her research because even though she grew up where it was legal she was doing research where it wasn’t. On the other hand, I could see how it may have affected her research and maybe even started her interest in it because if prostitution was legal, then she would probably see more STD infected women therefore, making her more interested in why women are risking their lives for money.
I think all the themes that she listed were important but two that really stuck out to me were themes one and six. Theme one is basically what got the prostitute to decide to enter the business and theme six is how she escaped.
