No little girl dreams of this dressing room. Anna hunches on the concrete beam scratching around in her bag for her high heel boots.


The ground is a mat of shingle and damp dirt.

Even the weeds have given up trying to grow in this dank corner of Christchurch's red light district. A digger tyre serves as Anna's vanity table. On it rests a sparkly card holder full of condoms.

It is bitter July night in Christchurch - the kind of cold that eats through each layer of clothing. But instead of putting clothes on, Anna is taking them off.

She is a prostitute on Manchester St.

She shivers, but it is barely noticeable from her hands that are shaking, because Anna, 25, is dependent on alcohol.
"We all put on a show on how we can do this," she says. "But yeah, it's hard."
Anna is eloquent, something she attributes to her "posh" state school background.

At 16, she abandoned school, instead working on and off on the street. "When I last worked it would have been four or five years ago. The amount of girls is, like, triple now. It's because of housing," she says.

This time around she has been out here for three months.

It is 6.04pm. Time to walk to her spot outside Vision College.

Ever since the heels went on, she is harder, swaggering and defiant.

She "hates herself" for being back out here.

"I'm darker. A lot harder, like putting up a wall. I have more of a stone for a heart than a heart, I guess," she says flinching as she looks away, her fingers itching for a cigarette that isn't there. She stares down the street. Over the next year Anna will attempt to leave Manchester St twice.
Tess, 21, wishes her family and friends would come and take her off Manchester St.

Tess, 21, wishes her family and friends would come and take her off Manchester St.
Since the 2011 Christchurch earthquakes, working girls have had their patch reduced from about two kilometres, down to 360 metres between Bealey Ave and Salisbury St. Road works have forced "Peterborough" girls down with those who work the patch closer to Bealey Ave.
Elly, Mel and Leigh work down from Anna, sometimes at the bus stop and sometimes in front of a church.
Tonight they are lined up on a low concrete fence, like children waiting to get their photo taken, feet kicking the pavement.

Cars drive past slowly, some who will drive up and down all night without purchasing.

Others ask for prices because they don't "have the guts" or get enough of a thrill off just asking, says Leigh.

Girls disappear behind bushes. There are no toilet facilities for the girls. The nearest are Cathedral Square but are locked at night.
Leigh, Mel and Elly live in an abandoned house.

Anna lives about 40 minutes walking distance away from the street, on an empty section, in a tent. The sneakers in her bag are for the walk home.

Along with this group there are between three and eight more workers on the street most nights.

The girls are glum tonight. It's winter and very cold. Business is slow.

"God we are so lazy. Look at us we aren't even trying, c'mon," says Leigh, trying to buoy the girls.

Anna is further down the street, the clonk . . . clonk . . . clonk of her heels echoing on the deserted street.

A car pulls up slowly.

The driver becomes the subject of intense scrutiny by the three young women.

"Why isn't Anna going up to him?" asks Mel.

Anna, in two inch heels, technically has the "job". The car pulled up near her.

But she is smoking; gazing down Manchester St, walking the same tired patch.

The three women eye up the car.

Out here a man equals money.

"Well, someone has to do him," points out Leigh, lighting up a cigarette.

Mel stubbs out hers and strides down to the car, slinging her bag over a shoulder.

She is back in a couple of minutes, grinning.
Sex worker Tess talks about the life that led to her working on Christchurch's Manchester Street.
"He was on the phone talking to his wife," she says laughing.

"You probably gave that poor man a heart-attack," scolds Leigh.

The girls clutch at each others shoulders laughing helplessly.

The lack of jobs plus the lack of synthetic cannabis in their pockets soon subdues them.

"I am not leaving until I do crack it, even if it's just a $40 or $60. Just for sessions in the morning," says Elly.
She runs up to a pole and swings around it. She doesn't laugh.

Elly wanted to be a vet when she was a little girl.

Her hand gently strokes the soft golden hair of a puppy that lies licking her hand.

It is early September. She and Leigh have shifted out to the abandoned section with Anna. Elly was sick of her seeing her money "go up in smoke" - used to buy synthetic cannabis for everyone at the house.

Elly knew she wasn't equipped to be a vet.

"I didn't want to watch animals die or be in pain. Then I wanted to be a doctor but I couldn't handle someone dying on me." Elly knows what it is like to be a "pet".
She "was sold" at age eight to an older man at the end of the street.
Tess on Manchester Street.

"I used to come home in my school uniform, sometimes my aunty had already a dress picked "It was a really elderly man. He was really lovely to me. It wasn't the usual typical vigorous I want sex from you and that's it," she says.
"There was a part of me that was okay with it because I didn't have to be around my family," she says.
The puppy nuzzles her with his nose.
"He used to make cards with me too," she says, her voice trailing off. continue http://datingelationship..com.ng/2017/01/survey-of-fittest-life-of-sex-workers.html