There seems to be an insatiable appetite among the public for competitions. This results in some enterprising people turning even the most unlikely practices into contests with prizes and the works. The annual hot dog eating contest is one such thing. But at least that contest has a quantifiable measure with which to judge the outcome.
Harder to understand is a massage competition. But it appears that there is a world championship for this.
[O]ne Saturday morning in June, in Copenhagen, I found myself in a classroom filled with twelve massage tables, around which massage therapists from across the world prepared to ply their trade on their receivers, or “body models,” in front of an audience.
…The eighth annual World Championship in Massage was under way in a modernist, glass-and-concrete building owned by University College Copenhagen. For a weekend, more than two hundred and sixty competitors from fifty-eight countries would face off in nine categories, including Swedish, Thai, chair, and Eastern- and Western-freestyle massage.
…The competition awards no prize money; the main reward is glory. Therapists pay for their own travel and lodging, plus an entrance fee, and judges volunteer—sometimes after earning a certificate from a massage-judge training course that Tengbjerg leads.
…A secondary reward is gaining perspective.
…The championship has two stages. In the preliminary rounds, competitors massage fellow massage therapists—“It basically functions as a giant massage trade,” one told me—in classrooms full of numbered stations, under the watchful eye of judges holding clipboards. Judges grade on an eighty-five-point scale, assessing technique, innovation, client communication, ergonomics, and flow. Winners then proceed to the championship round, in which they massage the judges. As at an élite dog show, starkly different categories have competitions within themselves, then against one another; at the end, a chair massage might beat a facial or a Thai massage, like a Yorkie besting a Weimaraner.
…In the United States, massage wasn’t regulated for a long time, and has been used as a cover for sex work; even today, jokes about happy endings persist, something that rankles therapists. So do the terms “massage parlor,” “masseuse,” and “masseur,” which are longtime euphemisms, though laypeople can use them unwittingly. “Phoebe, on ‘Friends,’ kind of destroyed it for us in a way, too, because she called herself a masseuse,” Hoyme told me. “In America, we don’t use that term, because it’s considered a female prostitute.”
But massage has become more mainstream in North America—the realm of the strip mall, where affordable massage franchises have proliferated (Massage Envy, the biggest, has nearly a thousand locations and offers a subscription option), and a pillar of the fitness and wellness industries. (Many insurers cover massage for rehabilitation purposes.) Though new massage therapists can struggle to make ends meet—franchises generally don’t pay well—they are in high demand.
…To outsiders, including noncompetitive massage practitioners, the whole thing can seem nuts. In Manhattan, at a low-frills spa I’ve been going to for years—everybody they hire has a good touch—one of the owners was incredulous. “I mean, imagine being a cardiothoracic surgeon and having a cardiothoracic-surgery competition,” he said.
It may be that the only thing that prevents cardiothoracic-surgery from being turned into a competition is that its practitioners earn so much money that it would not be worth their while to take part in competitions. But although massage therapists may struggle to make a living, on the plus side they are among the least likely to be replaced by AI.
Who knows, some day this may become an Olympics event.
Incidentally, I was not aware of the negative connotations of the word ‘masseuse’ and that the preferred label is ‘massage therapist’.
… they are among the least likely to be replaced by AI.
Please do not place a large bet on that: I got a robot massage and lived to tell the tale
My search for the above (based on a headline seen for several days, but not today, in The Guardian) also found “Low prices massage robot” at amazon.com.
Robot massages are “old”, I wouldn’t even call it AI… Back when I was a kid in the 90s, my parents had bought a device that would give a back/shoulder massage, it basically was just some rotating balls behind a piece of sturdy but smooth cloth which you would squeeze between your chair and your back. Worked great!
A couple of decades ago, I got one of those back/neck massage thingies as a gift. It’s…okay…but not as good as a real massage therapist, who can ask questions and vary the massage based on customer feedback.
Also; a shoulder injury a decade ago sent me to a physical therapy shop that was absolutely useless. The orthopedist wanted to do surgery that my insurance refused to cover because of how often it fails to fix the issue. I asked around and ended up at a massage therapist (also not covered by insurance but infinitely cheaper and less invasive than surgery) who actually understood the mechanics of what was going on and sped up the healing process. I returned to her when I had a case of plantar fasciitis and not only was she able to relieve the pain, but she also pointed me toward some online articles detailing stretches and shoe choices that meant I haven’t struggled with plantar fasciitis since.
Massage is like a lot of other careers; there are a lot of good schools and a lot of not-so-good schools that teach it. There are students who go through for good reasons, and those who go through for not-so-good reasons. The massage chains and the spas that employ massage therapists can be good or they can exploit (financially) their massage therapists and their clients.
I sent an email asking her what her opinion was and she replied that it’s not clear in the story what exactly the judges were judging on, and also that just like with any other therapist, there can be a client-provider mismatch.
That therapist started out at Massage Envy because it hires students right out of massage school and it’s a place for the new therapist to get a lot of experience in a short time, on a variety of bodies with a variety of needs. It doesn’t pay well, however, and it’s far more profitable for her to have a room in her home where she sees her clients. She reminded me that I had to sign a form on my first visit affirming that I was not there seeking sexual attention and that she would dismiss me from her practice if I harassed her.
Two observations on the concept of cardio-thoracic surgery competitions:
1. there’s an objective way to judge success -- is the patient dead?
2. I know a couple of surgeons (although neither specialises in cardio-thoracic), and if their anecdotes are anything to go by if you started a competition it wouldn’t be the paucity of prize money that would stop them. Rather it would be the prospect of being beaten. They can, I’m very reliably informed, be quite egotistical. If you’re already the top dog, why compete? (Because you might lose….)
Wrong. If the word is used to mean ‘professional massage person’, then that is the meaning of that word. The only people keeping those connotations alive are those people insisting masseuse still means prostitute. And for what its worth, I also had never heard that, and always understood it to mean professional massage person.
As for cardiothoracic surgery competitions, the reason you won’t see that happen is actually that cardiothoracic surgery is a life or death procedure. Competition is for things that do not risk the life of someone that did not consent to that risk.
Such as bed-making.
“Massage parlour” was indeed a long time euphemism for brothel in Australia.
And I mean used by the establishments themselves. They would advertise in the classifieds (this is back in the day) as massage parlours and everyone including the cops and us schoolkids knew what that meant.
No prize money, entry fees, volunteer judges… That competition sounds like a grift
The only thing stopping me from turning this sentence into my next novel is that I’d have to actually watch some of those competition shows to properly mock them, but I can already see scenes. Poor people signing up to be patients because it’s the only way that they can afford life-saving surgeries. Doctors entering the room with sponsors advertised all over their surgical gear. Bonus rounds where the producers deliberately induce some horrible trauma to the patients.
If Trump or Putin has a robot massage machine, it is time to hack the processor to do a “Homer throttles Bart” thing.
While I’m certain some participants for the event are doing it for the fame, I suspect most of them are in it for the advertising. After all, wouldn’t it be helpful for their business to be able to honestly say, “Finalist at Eighth Annual World Championship in Massage” to their website or advertising flyers. Just as just being present at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show will boost a kennel’s reputation and profits. However I feel that watching happy, or just very focused, dogs run through an obstacle course is much more entertaining than watching slabs of meat being pulled and stretched. So if the massage championship gets televised, I’ll give it a pass. But that may be just me.
I do find the U.S. television producers feeling that every competition must be cut-throat quite off-putting. I am much more a fan of the British format, like bake-off, where the participants are willing to help each other. There was a pottery throw-down on British television which Netflix purchased a couple of seasons of, and my wife and I loved it. It was still a competition, and there were definitely a range of skills for the potters. Yet, while I’m certain there were some hard feelings in the competition, the editing showed more cooperation and appreciation of each others works. The show, like bake-off, tried to accentuate that community was more important than skill. The couple of times I’ve seen one contestant help another on US television, the judges seemed to think that contestant was hurting their own chances of winning. It doesn’t have to be that way.
The person sitting next to me on my June MSP -- Paris flight was a massage therapist, going to Copenhagen for this competition. She gave me and the person sitting on her other side each a nice hand massage, and said we could watch the competition streaming online (I did not). So, not quite televised, but close enough.