Emily Hoeven | If we're talking body

Growing Pains | Ruminations inspired by a massage

By Emily Hoeven 09/05/16 11:30pm

Before coming back to Penn, I got my first professional massage. I had been saying “I need a massage” for years before actually getting one. This was partially because, despite my desperation to loosen the tension in my neck and shoulders, the concept of a massage — a complete stranger intimately rubbing your body — made me somewhat nervous. Yet the second the massage started I no longer felt awkward, instead beginning to think about the instinctive habits of the body, how they are intertwined with our minds and actions and what they might reveal about how we conduct our lives.

The first thing the masseuse said to me was, “Today is your day. You call the shots.” She then said that if I didn’t like a particular massage technique she used, I could tell her to stop or change what she was doing. Obviously, this made sense — the whole point of a massage is to make the person who is getting massaged feel better in the affected areas. This can only be done if the person who is getting massaged articulates what he or she wants, what feels good and what feels bad to him or her.

Yet I often feel that this sort of bodily agency, this listening to what the body says and then articulating and respecting it, is rarely present in everyday life. As college students, we’re used to blinking away our exhaustion. We say, half-jokingly, “I’ll sleep when I’m dead,” and tote around to-go cups of coffee. We observe the hookup culture around us and critique the fact that it is the norm, yet feel like we might be missing something if we don’t partake. How else do we prove that our bodies are attractive and desired and thus valuable?

More generally, humans constantly feel the need to apologize for their bodies: “Sorry, I haven’t shaved my legs in two weeks.” “Sorry, I’m super sweaty.” In a world so heavily saturated with commercials and photos and Instagram accounts telling us what our bodies should look like, how they should be clothed — in a society that simultaneously promotes everything “sexy” yet views sex as taboo and accessible, but not discussable — we find it difficult to say “I am proud of my body. I’m going to stick up for my body, regardless of what others may think.”

After all, consider how much peer pressure relates to the body: drinking, drug use, partying and sex are all, at the basic level, physical activities. And it can be hard for us to exercise our bodily agency — to stand behind our choices of what we do or don’t do with our bodies — if we feel that they go against popular choices.

Similarly, our bodies can reflexively acquiesce to the physical circumstances around us. For example, several times the masseuse lifted my arm and moved it to a different position. The first time she did that, she said, “Stop helping me.” I was confused: “What?” Then I realized. As she lifted my arm, I hadn’t let it dangle limply; the second I sensed she was trying to move it, I automatically moved it in the desired direction as well.

The masseuse told me that everyone has that reaction. As the massage continued, I consciously worked to keep my arm limp as she moved it. It led me to wonder how many actions we do without even thinking. How much autonomy do we exercise over the habits that have been ingrained in us? What do our most minute actions reveal about our relationship to our bodies and to the world around us?

I don’t necessarily have answers to these questions, but I think they are worth asking. Because perhaps the most important thing one can do regarding one’s body is to think about it. We all take for granted that we have a body, that we live in a body. But how often do we acknowledge all that that means?

My feet were massaged last. I kept laughing and fidgeting because they were so ticklish. “Most feet are rarely touched,” the masseuse said. And I thought about how ironic it is that we don’t really give our feet a moment’s thought. I hadn’t even expected them to be massaged, despite the fact that they carry me around all day. I resolved to give my feet a good rub now and again. After all that my body does for me, the least that I can do is stand up for it — celebrate it — be unafraid to be myself, in my own skin.

Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.