QotD: Why men don't like spas

Then there's the overwhelming feeling of disappointment and pointlessness that comes when you get a masseur who doesn't work your soft bits hard enough. You know this from the very first touch when his/her pressure is akin to a tentative stroke of a friend's new puppy. Great, you think. Now I am going to have to lie here for the next hour, with no trousers on, basted like a Christmas turkey, bloody Enya simpering away in my ear, while some failed hairdresser rhythmically tickles away at my flabby parts as if petting a consumptive hamster.

[. . .]

Why don't men know how to spa? Well, we feel awkward, adiposal and clumsy. We feel vaguely absurd, incongruous and, frankly, rather appalled that we have surrendered to that chink in our masculinity that is required to get us through the door of one of these establishments.

If we sign up for treatment at a mixed facility, the experience is never anything less than sweat-inducingly humiliating. The girls on the reception desk appear to be making fun of us as we fill in the health questionnaire, the throwaway sandals are at least four sizes too small, and the gown is comically short in the leg and arm. We don't have the nous to say exactly what we want because we don't want to appear overly expert in such arrant girliness.

It is almost impossible to make things pleasurable for any man who isn't a spoilt, self-serving, over-indulgent Premier League footballer. The environment is skewed towards the type of narcissism that makes most men squirm. We simply do not know the form, and to cover our arses (quite literally, in those shorty gowns), we start to act like nervy, cowed saps, doing as we are told and never asking any questions.

We certainly can't relax. If it's a massage that we are in for, we are concentrating so intently on not farting or entering a state of visible arousal that our bodies tense up like England footballers during a semi-final penalty shootout. That is bad enough if the person doing the massage is a woman. If it's a man's fingers on us, the tension is trebled.

Simon Mills, "Why real men don't like spas: Ill-fitting gowns, whale songs and lavender candles... no wonder many men struggle with the spa experience", TimesOnline, 2009-01-24