There’s been so much said about The View in the past week or two, I almost hate to add my two cents worth, but I’m going to, anyway. I’m almost glad this happened, because it woke a lot of massage therapists up from the state of complacency they were in and spurred thousands to take action.
For those who have been oblivious to all the hooplah, this all started when a massage therapist from Portland OR made an accusation of sexual assault against former Vice President Al Gore, which she claims happened during an outcall in 2006. I’m not excusing Gore’s behavior in any way, but frankly if this alleged incident happened the way she says it did, she ought to have “STUPID” tattooed on her forehead for ignoring every red flag in the book. She claims he was drunk when he opened the door and it all went downhill from there. I’m not massaging the Pope if he’s drunk, and she should have known better. That’s a whole other blog.
At any rate, following this sensational announcement, the women on The View, and Elizabeth Hasselbeck in particular, proceeded to insult the entire massage profession with a lot of ignorant comments about massage.
This has resulted in The View receiving a response from both AMTA and ABMP–and more importantly, from thousands of therapists.
I’ve been preaching this sermon for years now, that we have to get up and get involved. It’s been very disheartening for me many times when I’ve reported on some piece of legislation that’s detrimental to us, and it either gets no attention at all or attracts those few die-hards like myself who will jump up and holler. So for this reason alone, I have been glad to see so many massage therapists getting up in arms about it. There have been hundreds of postings on Facebook, and thousands signing petitions demanding an apology from The View. I don’t watch that show and if there’s been an apology forthcoming, I haven’t personally seen it, but what I have seen is therapists coming together to raise a little hell, and that’s a good thing.
Peace & Prosperity,
Laura Allen
July 11th, 2010 at 6:02 am
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July 11th, 2010 at 6:08 am
Well said. I’ve tended to not get involved in legislative stuff, the MTBOK, and the like. You’ve rallied me, Laura. I’m seeing the importance of my own participation now. It was impressive to hear from so many of my clients who emailed the producers after I spread the word.
I can’t imagine what it was like for that massage therapist in Oregon. I don’t know that I would have handled the situation well, either. It’s tough to refuse to massage someone. Compounded with celebrity status of the client, it must have been, well, befuddling. But you’re right, she should have walked away. I’ll take that lesson and file it for future use. Oh, and bless her heart.
July 12th, 2010 at 4:51 pm
HI Laura,
I totally agree with you, no matter what the truth…any client that I perceive to be under the influence of alcohol or other, the massage session ends there even if it has not begun. Also, the massage session ends with groping, requests of a sexual nature, etc.
Having said that, I did send a post to ABC’s website for the View and here is what I said:
Are we as Licensed Massage Therapists whom have worked to overcome the ignorant comments, sexual innuendos and outdated stereotypes of our profession supposed to assume that Elizabeth H. (one of the hosts of the “View”) slept her way through producer after producer to get her job? Just wondering.
July 13th, 2010 at 7:29 am
Professionals in all walks of life do a disservice to their industry when they expose inadequacies for profit. In this case it sounds as if client and LMT should have ended the session before it started, or, written it off as stupid behavior from both parties. Lesson learned – alcohol and massage do not mix.
August 5th, 2010 at 8:55 am
I am delighted to see our profession immediately jumping on anyone who has anything “ignorant” and “degrading” to say about our profession. Unfortunately, there are many who still believe in the old stereotype of the “old” profession. I cringe when I watch a TV show or movie that pokes fun at massage therapists. I wish that the “powers that be” (our professonal organizations) would take an even stronger position against negative comments about the massage profession. Frankly, I believe not enough has been done proactiviely, nationally by our “powers that be” to promote our profession at the highest level possible. It’s been my contention that we are our own worst enemy because we have not done enough to bring up the public’s knowledge level of massage therapy. We have all been asked at some point in our training, to educate our clients, which I fully participate in and enjoy doing, but that is not enough. It only touches the people we see. What about the population in general? Even physicians don’t really know what we do or that we have helped so many people improve. I know it costs a lot of money to widely promote anything these days – millions of dollars in TV ads, but I believe we really need to find a way to do this. Our organizations need to get together on finding the funding to put major national ad campaigns together – beyond radio — what about the “Fitness” channel? Why doesn’t our profession put together an Informercial or even a 30-minute program dedicated to massage therapy – there would be so much material to include – certainly enough to go on for months. I would like to see more done by our professional organizations in the proper care and feeding of our profession through heavy Public Relations campaigns and TV programming. Maybe even our top teachers within the profession, the ones that produce such excellent training videos for us, would be the practical group to start with. I believe there’s never been a better time than now to start promoting massage therapy in a really public way – I would love to see my profession represented positively. Let’s not wait for an incident to “react” to — why not make some proactive strides to tell the public the real story of what we do today!
October 16th, 2010 at 9:57 pm
All massage parlors are not houses of prostitution. If the place looks shady, more often than not it is. Best places to get a legit massage is at a spa with other spa-like services.