I hate this question. I really, really hate this question. And as a massage therapy student, I get it fairly regularly, even among my “progressive”/”crunchy” friend set. I also hear from prospective massage students that this is a question they get bombarded with from skeptical people.
Here’s why I hate it:
It assumes there’s such a thing as a “gross” person, or a “gross” body.
I will admit that an unwashed body1 can be pretty… off-putting. But relatively clean bodies? There’s no such thing as an inherently gross body or gross person.
I mean this in all seriousness: every body I have ever seen on my table is beautiful. I am continually awed by the variety and beauty of the human form that I get to experience every time I give a massage. All the things that society says are gross or disgusting in the body are nothing more than disgusting prejudices — bodies that are “too fat” or “too thin” or “misshapen” or the “wrong color” or “too hairy” or whatever else kyriarchy has dictated is to be hated today — they are not what I see when I look at the bodies on my table. I see people — of all shapes, and sizes, and abilities, and colors, and hairiness — and they all floor me, always, with how similar they are, and simultaneously how different. How beautiful they all are, whether they’re in pain or fit or adequately functional or however else they may be.
I don’t know that all massage therapists feel this way2 but it’s the way I feel, and it is both cause and effect of my training and career path. I won’t say I haven’t encountered any prejudice in the classroom, but there have been abundant messages of body acceptance and positivity.
And that is how it should be: massage, at its best, is one place where we can relax completely — both our muscles and the walls we erect to protect ourselves. I hate this question because it violates that sanctity, and promotes the very prejudices I work so hard to keep my space free of.
- By which I do NOT mean a clean-but-sweaty or showered-last-night or smells-like-human body — though if you’re coming for massage, it’d be really nice to have bathed since your last workout — but rather mean built-up gunk. Which, actually, I have not yet encountered in a massage setting. ↩
- Though I will say I have never worked with a massage therapist from whom I felt any amount of body shame. ↩
I tweeted this but I’ll say it here as well. Concentrating on letting go of my notion that the therapist is thinking I”m “gross” is one of the benefits of massage in my opinion. The first few massages I got it took nearly the whole hour to relax and stop worrying about it. Now I only have occasional moments of self-doubt. I really think this moment of thoughtful, human touch has helped me love my body.
Honestly if the therapist IS thinking I’m gross it is more about them than it is about me. But, in my experience I think that a therapist without a reverence for the beauty of the human body wouldn’t be a very good therapist. I almost think you’d know. It is such a – I want to say – worshipful experience to me. I’ve told my therapist before that what she offers is so much more than “relaxation” or “a spa experience.” It really forces me to LOVE my body which has not always been easy for me.
It is wonderful to hear it from a therapists point of view.
You know, I had a bit of a lightbulb moment reading this. I have felt ‘gross’, or worried about being ‘gross’, on a massage table before. But that has only happened to me on the times that I’d had a massage in a beauty parlour (not something I tend to pay for myself, but I’ve been given a few gift certificates over the years.) It makes perfect sense when I think about it now: in those instances, I was in a place where the walls were covered with advertising for cosmetics, and the beautician was heavily made-up, and the overall aesthetic was about women aiming for a certain standard of ‘beauty’. So without consciously thinking about it, I’d obviously been affected by those messages and started to feel worried about my fatness and my stretchmarks and patches of dry skin on my elbows et cetera ad nauseum. But the times when I’ve seen a dedicated massage therapist in a therapeutic setting? I’ve always felt comfortable and at ease, because the focus of the decor and the therapist’s demeanour was on wellness, not on appearance.
As a follow-up to your thoughts:
Every time I bring up the issue of sexist public nudity laws (where women are required to wear shirts in places men do not have to) in mixed company, someone always brings up the “problem of gross bodies”. They completely derail the conversation away from sexism to sexuality. The basic premise seems to be that only sexy bodies (read: forms pleasing to the heterosexual white male) should be allowed to be bared in public, but since the government can’t enforce that, nobody should be allowed to be bared in public. … And yet when the weather gets hot, guess which of these same people take their shirts off?
I hope we can one day come to realize that the human body has beauty beyond that which is purely sexually pleasing.
People don’t seem to think of their bodies as vehicles for living, which is very sad. We don’t define ourselves in terms of how we feel, but rather by how others see us. I’m sure it would be much easier for people to accept and even love their own bodies if we weren’t bombarded with the idea that certain people should cover up because they are an assault on our eyes. I feel so sad for people who won’t get massages or wear shorts or go swimming or make love or whatever else they won’t do because of what other people might think or say.
Thank you for this. Like the other commenters, the first time I had a massage I was TERRIFIED of the therapist thinking I was “gross” (and I was about 7 months pregnant). I was so nervous I kept on my bra and underwear. I recently began eating better and exercising and even though I’ve only lost about 20 pounds and still have a way to go, I feel so much better about myself! I don’t know, something just clicked the other day and I decided I am no longer going to sit on the sidelines of life worrying about whether or not some stranger thinks I am too fat, too short, too ugly, too “whatever.” It’s nice to hear that you love the bodies you work on. I’ll remember this during my next massage.
This? Makes me feel good. Really good. I’m glad to know that there is such body positivity in the massage community. I suppose it shouldn’t surprise me, but it’s great to hear it all the same.
I’ve heard so many messages through the years that I need to cover up. The other day someone told me the photo they’d seen on the Web was a really good one of me: I looked it up and part of me cringed–I am so very fat. Another part of me notices that I have a nice smile that involves my whole face and it really is a pretty good likeness.
When I’ve had massage, and not only from you, I have always gotten that feeling of acceptance. When I was in back spasm and could hardly get on and off the table, the therapist was all about “how can we make this work for you?” I think it must have something to do with the people who go into massage therapy and the training y’all get. I am grateful for the way you counteract the messages from society.
This concept of ‘gross’ bodies is similar to what I hear commonly from people when they find out I go to nude beaches all the time(I live in a big city where nude beaches are uncommon, but come from a small town where they are the norm). People frequently ask ‘but aren’t there old/fat/ugly/wrinkled people there?’ and ‘do naked people try to talk to you?’. I usually just respond with ‘everybody has a right to be naked’ and that yes, we talk to each other and even horse around with each other in the water.
Mostly I attribute this attitude from others as a North American issue with not being able to separate nudity from sexuality; if I thought of every person I saw nude in a sexual way then I might be bothered by it as well, but instead I just think of them as people with bodies and their beauty is not based on my personal level of attraction to them.
@Vittra – This is why I would love for the asexual community to gain a stronger voice in the matter. I can’t speak for them myself, but I imagine that it is very marginalizing to them for everyone to equate nudity with sexuality. Clearly, if an asexual person wanted to walk around nude, it would not be for the arousal of others!
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