A Rose by Any Other Name?: Massage and the Word Masseuse

About six weeks ago, the American Massage Therapy Association sent out an email with an attached press release about a recent Craigslist.com decision. The decision involved the Craigslist.com “Erotic Services” section and the use of the word masseuse in that section as a “cover” word for prostitutes. Although the document’s wording was a bit difficult for me to unravel, what I took away from it was that the AMTA does not support the use of the word masseuse not only because prostitutes often use the word as an attempted legitimate cover for illicit activities, but also because some licensed massage practitioners still use the word as a legitimate title. Clear as mud? Okay, let’s try this instead: “Hookers cannot call themselves masseuses because everyone knows they are not really giving massage, and even though we don’t generally use the word anymore because it makes us sound like hookers, a few of us either still use it or might want to use it in the future, so it should be off-limits to… hookers.” Hmmm… well, I tried.

In any case, I have to wonder if the massage community as whole can ever really use the word masseuse again in any lasting legitimate fashion. Shakespeare said, “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet,” but that’s not quite true when you’re dealing with language and connotation. Anyone who got uncomfortable at my use of the word “hooker” knows on a gut-level what connotation is. It’s a word plus any associated ideas and baggage that word has picked up through cultural use. Which is why, no doubt, the author(s) of the AMTA press release used the word prostitute, not hooker or whore. The first is cleaner and more objective; the others are… not. The word masseuse has fewer negative connotations for me personally, probably because I grew up in the rural Bible Belt where there were almost no massage practitioners, legitimate or otherwise, and masseuse (and masseur for that matter) was a word I encountered only in fantasy romance novels where rich people go to fancy hotels and spas and get pampered. However, it no doubt has extremely negative connotations for some people.

Language is a funny thing. And I don’t mean funny/humorous, although it can be. Such as the time my grandmother was gossiping in shock about a distant cousin of mine who had “gotten mixed up” with someone paralyzed from the neck down—in her words, “a quadra-pubic.” I confess, I still can’t drink carbonated beverages and recount that conversation at the same time. But when it comes to the word masseuse, language can be a bit more funny/strange and far more politically and socially complex.

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