For what it’s worth, both times I got a full body massage I went home and took a shower afterwards.
I agree with the physician analogy - somewhere around teenage years, don’t most people want someone other than their mom or dad to be their doctor?
Actually, it’s never a good idea for a doctor to treat a close family member and that has nothing to do with being a teenager. You’re too emotionally close to be professionally objective with them.
X 2
Is it possible the daughter takes part in some tough sport?
I think there’s a bit of a false dichotomy here. The boyfriend could be ignorant and insecure, instead of controlling and possessive. I can have some sympathy for ignorance and insecurity, especially in teenagers. I don’t think his way of handling the situation was a good one, and it would be a red flag for me if I were the girl. Instead of rationally talking through the situation and widening the circle to include a discussion with her parents about his concerns, he’s moved on to ultimatums. If he’s not willing to be reasonable and learn about what happens during a session with a RMT and adjust his views based on information, instead of ignorance, then I’d consider the daughter lucky to have dodged a bullet. This perspective may not occur to her for a few years though.
Enjoy,
Steven
That’s an excellent point. Considering how many people in this very thread thought a massage must always have sexual undertones, it’s not surprising that people outside of the board might think the same thing. And most teenage boys are pretty insecure.
I’d pretty much give everyone in this scenario a break.
Boyfriend is going about it all wrong. He should be having her teach HIM how to give the massages.
Im a psychologist myself, another profession at higher risk for inappropriate interactions with clients. I wasnt singling RMT’s as ‘the only profession’, more that I consider massage therapists to belong to a cluster of professions where boundary issues are more common.
Basically professions that involve some level of emotional or physical intimacy and one on one interactions seem to be a higher risk. How much thats because some people are more attracted to particular professions, and how much its the inherent nature of the profession is somewhat open to question. With dentists an obvious extra complicating factor is the client can be drugged.
Its also the case in Australia at least that having your rooms attached to your house as a psychologist is heavily disapproved of, Im not sure if its actually prohibited though.
Call me over cautious, but where theres one boundary issue, theres a higher chance of others in my experience.
Otara
My older sister is my RMT. I have a lot of lower back/hip issues that require a lot of deep tissue massage extending into my butt. I have no problem with my sister doing that or even my male pilates instructor who is often trying to loosen things up in my glutes. But my dad? There’s absolutely nothing skeevy about my dad and logically, if he were an RMT, it shouldn’t be an issue but I can’t see myself being comfortable with that.
Is this a specific case or hypothetical?
It would somewhat surprise me, but the question seems to be, should two consenting near-adults, family members, be able to be intimate, for good reason, in a non-sexual way if they both want to? I think the answer is surely “yes”. Why not? Anecdotal evidence says that family members trading massages is unusual but perfectly normal.
The potential problems are that because a dad is in authority, a dad may be abusing a child, possibly without them knowing. In which case, is the risk sufficiently high that we want to ban (socially or legally) any such contact? Would doing so help? My reaction is that it wouldn’t help, although I’m not a parent, so I’m not sure.
Of course, you can also look for hints whether there could possibly be a problem. Does the dad massage lots of friends and relatives? Then it’s almost certainly benign. Is the daughter defensive about it? Or enthusiastic? If there’s a risk of actual abuse, then that’s awful and doing something about it is tremendously difficult. If not, then I don’t think they should be vilified!
However, the responses in this thread have shown that the, right or wrong, the boyfriend’s reaction is entirely understandable. So maybe, for instance, the mother and the boyfriend should have a chat and see if he gets used to the idea?
People are making some assumptions about what is going on here. We don’t know if the daughter feels sexually stimulated by the massage. We do know that massaging body parts can be sexually stimulating even when it’s not genital.
We don’t know what the father’s motivations are or what his thoughts are while he is massaging her. Maybe he’s thinking about a football game. Maybe not.
It could be innocent or it could have an unspoken, even subconscious, element of incest. Not enough information for me to say that it’s harmful.
I agree that it’s unprofessional for people to practice on family members for a number of reasons and I know that some families don’t see a problem with it.
I worked with a chiroprator for a while and she encouraged all her co-workers to enroll their family members in an ongoing program with her. That was opportunistic and intrusive to me and I terminated my position with her.
It’s important for a father to practice good boundaries with his female childen. This could easily cross the line.
I’m gonna take a WAG here and assume that there’s a big difference between being clothed and covered with a sheet, while getting a professional massage. I’ve never had one, but from what I’ve heard, your private parts are covered by the sheet, not your whole body from neck to toe.
And since it’s a massage with oil, dad has to be applying the oil, and again, I’m gonna assume he’s applying it directly to his daughter’s body, rather than through a sheet.
So put me in that “not indicative of abuse, but still skeeves me out” category. If I were a doctor, I wouldn’t give my daughter (if I had one) physical exams after a certain age, and if I were an OB-GYN, I damned sure wouldn’t be her OB-GYN. Sure, it’s not sexual, but it would just be an icky degree of intimacy between father and daughter.
Same thing here, only more so, IMHO. A gynecological exam isn’t going to give a woman physically pleasurable feelings, but a massage sure is, or it’s not being done very well! And that’s just a lot of his daughter’s skin that daddy’s touching. I’d have a problem if daddy wasn’t a massage therapist, and I don’t see how a professional license somehow makes everything fine.
Call me a prude, but this sort of father-daughter intimacy does feel skeevy to me.
God, as an athlete in high school I would have died and gone to heaven if my father offered me more than the upper back/shoulder rubbing I cajoled out of him from time to time. My mom’s idea of a massage is how I briskly rub lotion into my legs.
No, this isn’t weird.
I also think it’s nothing like lip kissing. That to me is nasty, but I’m sure there are those who would say full-on massages are 10x weirder than a lip peck. I’m fully aware YMMV.
When those opinions are based on zero experience and “facts” that are just plain wrong, yes, they should be called out on it. Or do you just smile and pat someone on the head when they tell you “niggers are like children”?
The point is not that it’s the same as being fully clothed, but that the phrasing is intended to give an unfair impression of how exposed she is. Massages just don’t work very well at all through clothes–it would be like trying to have your eyes examined through sunglasses.
Just like he should never kiss her on the cheek. Because he could easily move two inches to the side and suddenly be jamming his tongue down her throat.
Your post should have stopped at “I’ve never had one.”
You’re not lying naked on a table with a washcloth over your genitals. You’re completely covered (potentially more covered from view than you would be in street clothes, in fact) on any area that the therapist isn’t currently working on.
<hijack> Interestingly, this week’s Savage Love podcast included a call from a young woman who has a masseur who has her lay there only in her underwear bottoms, and his massages have grown to not only include but feature stroking of the inner thigh, hands under the undies to massage her buttocks, and lots and lots of breast massaging! But she doesn’t really know if she feels like it’s sexual or if she wants to screw him or vice versa, but she does love it! Oh my… (Dan finally advised her to just tell him that the massage was at just the right intensity level and she didn’t want it to increase any. And then he said her future follow-up call would include the news that they’d screwed.)
Someone should go slap this guy for giving the profession a bad image, but I think you’d have to fight off that caller first.</hijack>
And a question for those in the profession: are there people who just don’t have massages “work” for them? Everyone who’s tried to massage my shoulders say something about my muscles being “tight,” and I typically find anything barring the most gentle efforts to be anywhere from unpleasant to immediately painful. (Note that I haven’t seen a professional massage therapist.)
Seconding what Shot From Guns said, anyone who hasn’t had a professional massage is pretty much completely unqualified to comment.
At every single massage I’ve had (and I’ve had close to 3 dozen in the past 8ish years) I was totally covered except for the area the therapist was working on.
My son is like that. He had a severe scoliosis which was “corrected” by surgery when he was 11. As a result first of the scoliosis and then the pain from surgery, his back is a brick wall of overcompensating muscles trying to keep his spine stable. Massage just doesn’t feel good to him, no matter how gentle I or others try to be. (And, to keep my messages in the thread consistent, let me add that I haven’t performed a full body massage on him and, especially now that he’s 17 and definitely sexual, I wouldn’t be comfortable doing so; I’m talking simple shoulder/back rubs.)
He’s the only one I’ve come across personally, though, and it’s for very specific physiological reasons. I have had some other people say they’ve never liked massage but give me a try, and they’ve all become converts. 
There really is something to all those hundreds of hours we spend learning and practicing anatomy and techniques; a professional massage just doesn’t feel the same as an untrained one, IMHO.
The covering of body parts you’re not working on is called “draping”, by the way, and we also spend a good dozen hours practicing it on each other in massage school. You want to get a nice snug but not too tight wrap on the body parts you’re not working on so that the patient feels secure and protected, not exposed and vulnerable. There are very specific techniques to doing this; we’re taught a few options for each body part and then choose our own preferred method as we learn the work. Of course, there are some clients who couldn’t care less, or actually prefer not to be draped. If I’m *certain they’re not a cop, I’ll comply with their request, but again, draping is mandatory for following the licensure act in my state. If I expose, much less touch, the gluteal cleft (“butt crack”), the area from the anterior illiac crest down to the pubic bone (the pubic triangle and a little above) in either gender or the breasts of a female client, I’m breaking the law, whether the client asked me to or not.
*Which, in reality, means they’re a friend of mine before our massage relationship is initiated. I won’t ever trust a client, ever. There are just too many stings in this town.
Oh yeah?
There’s this porn site with a section on massage, and in every single movie, the massager and massagee end up naked and having sex. Every. Single. Time. What do you say to that?
If you can’t believe porn, who can you believe?
I marked the skeeve option, but I have to say, that’s MHO. My family are not touchy-feely, and I’ve never had a dad around, so all my hackles would go up at the thought. Too much history, probably, for me to make an unbiased choice. I’ve rubbed my teenage son’s leg when he had a cramp, but I don’t think either of us would be comfortable with me massaging all of him.