Spread Magazine (United States)

Founders Rachel Aimee, Rebecca Lynn, and Raven Strega first had the idea for Spread Magazine in 2004. They were frustrated by negative misrepresentations of sex workers (including call girls, prostitutes, strippers, porn stars, and phone sex workers, among others) within mainstream media and decided to create a space for sex workers to represent themselves. The founders had no experience in publishing, but with the help of design software classes and benefit fund-raisers they published their first issue of Spread on March 15, 2005, and went on to win the Utne Independent Press Award for Best New Title. Their mission statement is as follows:

Their submission policy purports to be open minded: They will publish any perspective so long as it is the view of a current or former sex worker. The magazine accepts article submissions, editorials, photographs, and creative artistic expressions. Issues are published quarterly, are available via subscription, and are sold in many independently owned bookstores in the United States, the Netherlands, and shortly in Canada.

The magazine's cover is full color, and the inside is glossy black and white with an artistic and slightly edgy aesthetic. In addition to subscription fees, Spread generates revenue from advertising. Not surprisingly, much of the advertising is for sex products, escort services, and pornography, but also it includes advertisements from legal services, therapists, occupational health specialists, and other non-sex-related services. Each issue includes the following sections, many of which contain reader-submitted content: Indecent Proposals (readers send in the funniest or weirdest client request), Scene Report (readers send in stories about their working environments), Media Whore (looks at mainstream media attention towards the sex industry), Cunning Linguist (defines terms of the trade), Double Take (interviews with a sex workerboth his/her non-working and working persona), On the Street (asks random people on the street a question about sex work), Consumer Report (rates various sex products), Positions (asks a debatable question and offers two different perspectives), Hot Topic (reader responses to various “hot topic” questions), Intercourses (interviews with lawyers, advocates, etc.), and Classifieds. Additionally, each issue dedicates space to creative artistic submissions, feature articles, news articles, reviews (books, films, and CDs), and a resource section. Articles are often presented in a humorous, tongue-in-cheek manner, using double enten-dres to address serious legal and health concerns as well as the more mundane ins and outs of being a sex worker.

Although the magazine certainly provides sex workers with a space for self-representation in uncensored ways that challenge hegemonic notions of sex work, Spread also serves as a valuable resource for sex workers. Approximately 1/8 of each issue is dedicated to the Resource section at the back of the magazine. Resources include advice columns, health tips for hookers, legal advice, and online resources such as the International Committee on the Rights of Sex Workers in Europe, Escort Support Resource Portal, and U.S. Database of HIV Testing Sites. Physical resource centers such as Sex Worker Advocates of Tomorrow (Cleveland, Ohio), Working Men Project (United Kingdom), and The Coalition for the Rights of Sex Workers (Montreal, Canada), are listed for the United States, Latin America, Europe, Asia/Pacific Islands, and Africa.

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