People find it distasteful for many reasons, but behind them is a long history of classism, sexism, and sexual control.  Institutions and certain classes learned long ago that sexual energy can be transformed into power.  Make a person feel guilty about sex, and you'll keep them in your power.  Manipulate their access and you will lord power over them.  Beer ads, churches, housewives, and the executives at Time Warner all use our sexual proclivities to channel our money into buying product, paying off sins, live in unfullfilling mariages, buy self-help books...

One of the by-products of this whole sex-guilt-desire cycle is to reinforce the myth that all street walkers were/are:

1. teens forced into it by bad men
2. addicts of some sort
3. diseased untouchables


4. a threat to the community
5. a magnet for crime
6. only a desperate, possibly disease ridden, or highly perverted man would ever indulge in a streetwalker
7. street walkers are uneducated
8. street walkers are uncultured
9. streetwalkers are forced into the activity by poverty or bad judgement

This helps the world think of outright sex for money as bad.  Which is good for a lot of wealthy people because it channels people's energy into buying other things instead or into working hard and sustaining unfullfilling sexless relationships. Interestingly enough you find a somewhat similiar vein of thought in the whole PSE vs. GFE debate.  GFE is thought among some to be a healthier route.  But I digress.

First, I know of a street walker who had a degree in english literature who did it yes to make money and partially as a pretty-woman style thrill.  it was a launch pad to learn more about the industry.  later she moved into more upperclass approaches to prostitution.

I knew an adult who was juvenile streetwalker. Yes, she felt unloved at home and her parents chipped away at her self-esteem, but she was never molested.  She wanted nice clothes.  Yes she was a victim of classism in the sense that she wanted to fit in in high school.  Yes a pimp did eventually try to snare her.  She put up with it for about 3 months because she thought he loved her and then she had him busted.  She's moved on and was pursuing 4 year degree in communications last time i talked to her.

I still maintain that in low tech environments and in areas of legalized or culturally accepted zona rojas, street walking is a viable opportunity for advancement for high-quality women.  But in the US, the face of street walkiing has changed dramatically because of hard drugs and the internet:

first take pre-internet days:
1. an opportunity for someone hard on cash to make a fast buck
2. an opportunity for drug head to score some cash for a buy
3. an opportunity for a provider to display his/her looks to a client who could make a decision
4. an alternative to parlors which took a cut.  Sometimes the parlors were friendly sometimes catty. sometimes the madam was mean and greedy, sometimes just an older girl trying to get by. for a new independent the street offered both a chance to bypass the parlor but a risk of being intercepted by predatory pimp. not all pimps consider themselves or were considered predatory. sometimes the relationship was symbiotic. the pimp might have been another low-skilled worker with a checkered past with dreams of his own.  he was there to provide understanding, physical security and friendship.  contrary to hollywood stereotypes not all pimps and madames were predatory.
5. small gangs of hoods who preyed on naive often young girls moving them from state to state to eliminate options for escape often getting them involved in a drug culture

Flash forward.... internet years:
1. Independents don't have to risk it on the streets
2. parlors have been phased out. they can advertise online and work virtually
3. clients don't have to cruise in their cars. they cruise on their laptops
4. urban gentrification has brought a whole new moral and aesthetic standard that won't tolerate cruising in most neighborhoods... not to mention money.  The lawyers wives in Selby Dale are listened whereas poor moms in the 70s were largely ignored...
5. pimps still exist and primarily target addicts and teens and have begun to use the internet too... but the internet has more checks and balances to enforce a code of fairness....
6. most current USA streetwalkers do want hard drugs

Like Ms. Catherine said, it is neither inherently good or bad, but can be either or aesthetically displeasing....

too much coffee....