Male Massage Therapists: The Right Touch, But . . .

CHICAGO - Like many massage therapists, Chuck Dean has tried all kinds of marketing strategies from direct mail to print advertising in an effort to expand his practice.

But nothing worked as well as the classified ad he placed recently:

"Deep tissue massage by visually impaired man with fully utilized sense of touch. Reduce stress and muscle pain. . . . " He included his location and a phone number.

Dean, who has Stargardt's disease, a hereditary form of macular degeneration, mentioned his handicap in the ad, a bit reluctantly, at the suggestion of one of his regular clients, Colleen Currigan, a Chicago veterinarian.

"I told him: `I think that you do such a good job of massage because you have such a good sense of feel, and maybe it's because you're visually impaired and maybe not,"' Currigan recounts. She says that since "a lot of women are maybe intimidated by having a male massage therapist, they might feel less uncomfortable if he has a visual impairment. If visual impairment can be a factor to your benefit, I thought, `Then let people know it.' "

The ad drew in many clients for Dean, but none of them was a woman.

"I've never had any woman client come in here (because of) a newspaper advertisement," notes Dean, who is in business with three others.

"The majority of my clientele is male," echoes massage therapist Tom Lembo, who works out of his home. "I have women clients, but they're women that have gotten to me through boyfriends, husbands and friends."

Women now make up 46 percent of the nation's work force, but 77 percent of the members of the American Massage Therapy Association are female.

Male massage therapists seem to have a more difficult time than their female counterparts in starting massage practices, which tend to grow slowly.

"There's probably a fear of inappropriate touching, especially in a Swedish massage, when you're nude under a sheet alone in a room with someone you've never met before. People can be hesitant about that," acknowledges massage therapist Sara Corkery, an instructor at the Chicago School of Massage Therapy.

"People also may have a perception that a man might be too rough, that a woman might have a gentler touch, which is not necessarily the case. Men sometimes just feel foolish having another man touch them. Our society is so touch phobic that it's hard for people to change their patterns of thinking."

Walter Miller, a Chicago massage therapist, says "The male massage therapist gets the double whammy. In my lingo, you're dealing with the heterophobes and the homophobes: the men who don't want to be touched by a man and the women, who, for whatever reason, don't want to be touched by a man.

"Most people would probably say they're more comfortable going to a female massage therapist. Our society equates the nurturing touch with the feminine side of our population."

Still, Miller says male massage therapists also benefit from personal prejudices. He says he knows "a number of male massage therapists who do very well (with) the gay population. A lot of gay men are more comfortable being touched by a man rather than a woman. Massage is about relaxation, and some gay men don't find a female presence relaxing."

Partly because of the gender issue, Miller says that early on he began almost exclusively doing chair massages - stress-relieving treatments of neck, shoulders and upper back - in business settings.

"It was the easiest way to introduce my hands to people, and I didn't have to deal with the issue of disrobing," he says.

What both male and female massage therapists do have to deal with is screening potential clients to weed out those looking for services other than therapeutic massage.

"Screening can be challenging sometimes," says Pamela Lightcap-Jones, who, with her massage-therapist husband Adam, owns Zenergy, a massage therapy center in Chicago. "They talk to us about it in school, but it really takes experience and intuition. There are certain questions that a legitimate client is not going to ask you. He's not going to ask a therapist what she's going to wear. And although a lot of people may prefer male or female therapists, a legitimate client is not going to be as uptight about it."

One of the most ancient healing arts, massage therapy requires technical knowledge, clinical skills, manual dexterity and sensitivity. Professional standards for both individuals and training programs have been beefed up in the last five years, but massage therapists still must contend with the lingering, shady image fostered by massage parlors.

"Male massage therapists are more likely to work in chiropractors' offices or some setting outside their own business," says Ben Manalo of Chicago, who works with several chiropractors and in a health club in addition to his private practice providing massages in clients' homes. "My house-call clients are (exclusively) men. I don't think women feel comfortable inviting a male stranger into their homes."

Marilyn Kier, whose massage therapy business Wellness At Work provides chair massages for workers, says that reservations about male therapists fade once the ice is broken.

"When I was injured, I had to send some of my employees to replace me, including some men," Kier notes. "Once people realized that the (men) could be trusted in terms of pressure and confidentiality, (those prejudices) went away.

On the other hand, some women prefer male massage therapists, because they believe that men, being physically stronger, can do deeper massage work.

"This goes back to the doctor-nurse scenario," says Bob Yoder, immediate past president of the New York State chapter of the American Association of Massage Therapists.

"A lot of people believe that a male therapist is more educated, more dedicated, more professional, more knowledgeable, and that a male therapist can work deeper, which might be true in the big picture, but I know female therapists that can make people sit up and say `Stop!"'

Chuck Dean contends that "it's more technique than it is a male-female (issue). Most of the work comes from body weight. The table is low and you lunge . . . and when anybody puts 100 pounds or more into their thumb, people are going to notice that really deep massage."

Even as evidence accumulates of the benefits of massage therapy for relaxation, back strain and repetitive stress injuries, massage therapists say another challenge they face is gaining acceptance by the mainstream medical community.

"A lot of people get massage therapy and don't even tell their doctors about it," Yoder notes. "They're paying for it out of pocket because insurance doesn't cover it, and it's cutting down on hospital time and recovery time."

"The relationship between doctors and massage therapists and bodyworkers is changing, but it still needs work," Hoeffel says. "We need to learn to talk to each other and value the work that each other does."