Calgon, Take Me Away

As a cuspy second/third wave feminist, I tend to pick and choose amongst the dictates of contemporary femininity. Mini-skirts : yes. Make-up on the weekend: no. High heels: yes. Wonderbras: no. Waxing my legs in the summer: yes. Shaving my underarms in the winter: no.

I lose all my autonomy and objectivity, however, when it comes to spa treatments. I know that hot baths and pampering will not cure what ails me (I once read a great article about the absurdity of "take a hot bath" as the omnibus advice for women, but I have no idea where I read it--Bitch, maybe?--so, alas, no link). I know that seaweed wraps and hot stone massages have no real physical or emotional benefits, and their purveyors are just looking for innovative ways to take my money. I know that every women is beautiful, just as she is, in her own way. I know all that.

But they just feel so good.

Yes, I'm a total sucker for soaks, steams, wraps, rubs, really just about anything some woman in a white jacket or tight t-shirt wants to do to my body.

When we lived in Berkeley, K's and my favorite treat was a daytrip to Indian Springs, one of the oldest spas in Calistoga, home of the famed mineral springs and mud baths. It's an old-fashioned kind of place, almost Victorian, where you have your mudbath in a rectangular cement tub like a horse trough, then soak in a clawfoot tub filled with hot mineral water, sipping cold mineral water with cucumber and orange slices. Then they wrap you in a big flannel bathsheet and take you to a white panelled room, like a cabana in an old beach resort, where you lie down with more flannel sheets on top of you and more cucumber slices on your eyes (that's M and E's favorite part of the story). If you want, you can have a massage after that, and sometimes we did, but just lying under those flannel sheets was perhaps the most relaxed state I have ever experienced in my life.

If K called me right now and said she had plane tickets and spa reservations, I'd be out of here in a split second.

Anyway, I thought about spa treatments this morning, as I scraped dead skin off my shoulders with my fingernails. Not even a loofah or pumice, for god's sake. It's the end of winter and I am a flaky, dry, tired, stiff mess. I know I could just go buy a loofah and a pumice, pour some olive oil in my bath, slather myself with Lubriderm, and make S give me a backrub. But though that might take care of the problems, it just wouldn't be the same.

There are fancy spas in Red State Capital City, but they're not Indian Springs. And I'm not enough of a spa dupe to pay their ridiculous prices. So I won't be getting a day package any time soon. Maybe this weekend, though, I'll spring for a pedicure. Because after all, I'm a hardworking woman, and I deserve it!