Manicures and Spiritual Counselling for Sex WorkersA missionary group offers holiday cheer to transgendered people and women in the TenderloinBy Scott James on December 24, 2011 - 11:20 a.m. PST
http://www.baycitizen.org/religion/story/manicures-and-spiritual-counselling-sex/
Courtesy of Because Justice Matters
Missionaries and volunteers with the Christian missionary program Because Justice Matters attend to the nails of sex workers in San Francisco's Tenderloin district
One hand grasped another across a nail salon table and delicately applied strokes of purple polish. But this was more than an ordinary beauty treatment.
Each Monday afternoon at a spartan storefront in the downtrodden Tenderloin — just a few blocks away from the upscale salons on Maiden Lane — the Christian missionary group Because Justice Matters provides free manicures to women and transgendered people, many of them current and former sex workers.
"It's been said that the most counseling happens in a salon chair," said Ruthie Kim, the group's director. "As soon as you touch a person they want to talk to you."