My first massage was a gift from a friend for my birthday. It was an expensive, fancy one and I was worried about going for weeks. Not because of a dislike of being touched or a fear of small spaces, but the dark stories that have circled around fat online spaces for years. Masseurs who seem scared to touch a bigger body, even ones who act disgusted by our flesh in front of them. Those who refused to even touch a fat person at all.
It gets worse: Stories of beds breaking, towels not fitting, chairs not being wide enough. Even if the massage therapist is body positive, the world may not always be accommodating to our plus size frames. Whenever accessing beauty treatments that involve our bodies, like massage, there are many negative narratives like these that run through the mind of the average plus sized person.
That said, my first massage lit an addiction to professional touch. The movement of my body under the hands of a professional – releasing not just the stresses from everyday life like sitting badly in my desk chair, but the stresses of existing as a fat person in the day to day that we do not even realise resides in our muscles – was a catharsis like no other. Moved by this sense of relaxation I never knew I needed, the times I can treat myself to a massage become a highlight of my months in the lead up and the time following.
I guess the best analogy for the recountations of fatphobia in beauty treatments is like speaking to your friends about your boyfriend: You never gush about the good times for fear of showing off. You don’t tell your mates all about every lush meal he makes you or every time he’s picked up your favourite choccie bar from the shop on his way home from work.
What is much more natural is complaining about the times he’s messed something up. It’s easy to vent, knowing others will support you, than gloat and feel like a smug git. When it comes to beauty treatments, we may share to a pal about a particularly good nail tech or hairdresser, but more often than not it’s a quiet joy we keep to ourselves. Yet if something horrible has happened, it feels almost necessary to share the word wide and far, so nobody else has to feel belittled in the same way. Especially when said nastiness is related to an experience of discrimination.
So when staring at your beauty booking app, wondering if the person on the other end is going to be a nightmare, remember to take the stories you read with a grain of salt. They are not the only experiences being had in spas and beauty salons across the country, even if they are the only ones you read about.
If you are especially worried, there are reviews you can take into consideration before booking to get a better picture of what to expect. On top of this, you can also even mention to your beauty technician that you are plus size – even mentioning you have an anxiety of accessing treatment because you are plus size – and gauge their reaction. More often than not, the person answering these questions has gone into the beauty profession in order to make others feel good, and that includes accommodating different peoples’ different needs.
That said, it can also be hard to remember to look after yourself when feelings of poor body image are emboldened by fatphobic messages in the media, in the government and in our deep subconscious. If you feel you cannot look good, it can seem pointless to even try to feel good through a beauty treatment or pamper session.
This mental anguish when trying to access beauty is a tough one to advise upon; even reading solid advice can feel pointless and difficult to apply to yourself when you are in a deep enough hole. Still, I feel the biggest lesson I ever learned about feeling positive about my body is this: Doing so is an active choice. Feeling good about myself is a decision I have to make for myself every day. In a world telling you no, you aren’t going to get a yes unless you provide one for yourself.
This includes feeling beautiful. It’s about making the choice to dress however you like because you like it, being adventurous with hair and makeup you never felt “able” to try out, and putting yourself in positions that scare you. That can be as simple as buying an eyeshadow you might never have used before, making an online dating profile, posting a bikini pic to the grid or in my case, going to the massage appointment a friend gifted me.
Written by Gina Tonic