Meet the Other Phone. A phone that grows with your child.

Meet the Other Phone.
A phone that grows with your child.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Creepy or perfectly innocent?

76 replies

PerfectPlum9 · 20/09/2019 21:43

I had a bad experience a few months back & it still haunts me today, so I thought I'd put it to the MN jury & see what you think.

I wanted to have a full body massage at my local health club, something I've done several times before. On this occasion, none of the female masseurs were free, one was off sick & there was a male replacement brought in from another branch for the day. He was available. So in the spirit of being mature about this I agreed to have the man. I went into the treatment room as usual & he was piffling around with various bottles on a side unit. He asked me to undress & lay on the bed & put the towel over me - towel covers just boobs to fanny. So far so normal. Full body massage is normally done naked in this place with just the towel, I don't know how it is elsewhere. Anyway, he clearly kept his back to me studiously arranging his bottles whilst I undressed & I assumed he'd stay that way until I was under the towel, to protect my modesty. He would easily have been able to hear when I'd got onto the bed & laid down. And it would've been professional to not turn around but ask 'Are you ready?' before doing so. But just as I moved to approach the bed he whipped around to face me & caught a full eye-full of me butt naked. I felt horrible. I was absolutely sure he did this 'accidently on purpose'. He then said a kind of 'oops sorry' & turned away again whilst I got on the bed. It wasn't convincing at all & I was really left with the feeling he'd had a deliberate sneaky gawp under the guise of an innocent mistake. I will never ever have another male masseur again after this. I have to say, he did do the massage appropriately & absolutely nothing funny happened, though god knows what was going through his head. When the end came, he left the room for me to get dressed again on my own.

Aibu to be upset/disturbed at what happened?

OP posts:
Patnotpending · 21/09/2019 14:32

I trained in therapeutic massage in the 1990s. There were three men on the course and at least three times as many women. We had to take turns massaging each other and over the weeks of training all three men received warnings for inappropriate touching, language and behaviour and two of them were asked to leave. The third one got to the end but didn't receive his qualification and certificate after he admitted he had no intention of massaging older, fatter, imperfect bodies – he'd come on the course to learn how to get his hands on fit young women. The course tutor, an older woman, took the safety and dignity of the client very seriously and I feel really lucky to have trained with her and to have had her instill the importance of clear boundaries.

I know NAMALT but after my experience on that course I would never book a massage with a male massage therapist.

New posts on this thread. Refresh page