‘Glamour Girls, Macho Men and Everything In Between’: Un/doing Gender and Dirty Work in Soho’s Sex Shops

Abstract

This chapter draws on ethnographic research carried out in sex shops¹ located in London’s Soho, an area that has been at the heart of the capital’s sex industry for over 200 years. As a place of ‘backstreet industry and below stairs debauchery’ (Richardson, 2000: 57), the sex industry dominates both the actual and perceived character of Soho. The area occupies only a square mile of London’s West End, yet its political, economic and cultural reach is considerable, and the area continues to have a global association with commercial sex.