Years ago, I worked as a fake madame in Skagway one summer doing brothel and red light street tours. I never could get into it. I kept thinking about the preteen Japanese girls they imported during the Klondike Gold Rush as prostitutes for Yokohama Row. And then there were the times men felt the need to tell me about the time their dad brought them to a prostitute for the first time. 
Then there's the thought that a person, usually a man, thinks they can "rent" the most private part of another human being to use. I wonder how many women go into a town on a business trip and ask themselves, "I wonder where I can go to get this done to me?" 
And yes, maybe  the "profession" has withstood the test of time, but it's a test of desperation to make money to live and a reflection of the shame and self-loathing women feel after they have been sexually molested. 
Then again, women get paid crap in most mainstream professions.