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The Beauty School for Former Sex Slaves
Michael Angelo stands in the Wonderland Beauty Parlor, a swarm of mermaid Barbies hanging overhead. Angelo, who owns the quirky Manhattan salon catering to fashion-y clients such as Brooklyn Decker and Lydia Hearst, has just returned from another salon — a simpler place on a dusty city street in Cambodia. There, he helps teach former sex slaves the art of hairdressing.
The young women, escapees from brothels in a country rife with human trafficking, are learning to support themselves in life outside the sex trade. Kidnapped or tricked into slavery as children, they were rescued with the help of another survivor, Somaly Mam, who runs shelters and job-training programs around the country.
Angelo arrived at the salon, located on a busy intersection in Phnom Penh, in late April with a colleague, Annastasia Konidaris, and armfuls of hairdryers and curling irons. "Some of the girls had never held a pair of scissors," he says. "It was like I was Santa Claus." He had first heard about the young survivors in 2006 through a client at his own salon, Czech model Veronica Varekova, who had seen Mam speak at an event and couldn't wrap her head around the idea of children being sold for sex. Angelo "went home and Googled," he says, and saw a photo of a girl in a brothel that "haunted" him. Her eyes were hollow, her lips red. "I always thought women wore lipstick because they love it — that's the culture we grew up in."
Slavery is big business globally, not just in Cambodia. An estimated 27 million people are current victims worldwide, according to the U.S. State Department. In Cambodia, a desperately poor country still reeling from the genocide of the Khmer Rouge, toddlers can be sold into the sex trade. Virgins command a high price — as much as $4,000, according to the State Department's 2010 Trafficking in Persons Report. Local men as well as foreigners serve as clients, with the locals often driven by myths that sex with a virgin brings luck or health.
The young women, escapees from brothels in a country rife with human trafficking, are learning to support themselves in life outside the sex trade. Kidnapped or tricked into slavery as children, they were rescued with the help of another survivor, Somaly Mam, who runs shelters and job-training programs around the country.
Angelo arrived at the salon, located on a busy intersection in Phnom Penh, in late April with a colleague, Annastasia Konidaris, and armfuls of hairdryers and curling irons. "Some of the girls had never held a pair of scissors," he says. "It was like I was Santa Claus." He had first heard about the young survivors in 2006 through a client at his own salon, Czech model Veronica Varekova, who had seen Mam speak at an event and couldn't wrap her head around the idea of children being sold for sex. Angelo "went home and Googled," he says, and saw a photo of a girl in a brothel that "haunted" him. Her eyes were hollow, her lips red. "I always thought women wore lipstick because they love it — that's the culture we grew up in."
Slavery is big business globally, not just in Cambodia. An estimated 27 million people are current victims worldwide, according to the U.S. State Department. In Cambodia, a desperately poor country still reeling from the genocide of the Khmer Rouge, toddlers can be sold into the sex trade. Virgins command a high price — as much as $4,000, according to the State Department's 2010 Trafficking in Persons Report. Local men as well as foreigners serve as clients, with the locals often driven by myths that sex with a virgin brings luck or health.
http://nymag.com/thecut/2013/05/beauty-school-for-former-sex-slaves.html
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