everybody wants to be hot (literally)
please put baby (me) in a sauna
Welcome to house six, a project to demystify and decolonize wellness. In the age of anti-intellectualism and censorship colliding with the wellness industrial complex’s turn towards MAHA, house six is a project that combines aesthetics and education.
This is The Digest — the newsletter where I talk too much about something that the wellness world is obsessed with.
Daily Dose:
Summer is coming and it better feel like this besties
The Digest
Do not talk to me about Bathhouse. The New York hot spot recently went viral for being … gross. And one thing about me? I haven’t set foot in Bathhouse since my first and last time there in 2021.
But even before the gross expose earlier this year, Bathhouse was losing its luster. Every block in downtown Manhattan offers a sauna and cold plunge experience these days. And instead of the vaguely clubby but standoffish atmosphere of Bathhouse (the blaring house music at 7am was so 2010s Williamsburg coded), many of the new spots are curating intentional, highly specific vibes.
This is happening on every trendy block of New York City — plus the not-so-trendy blocks where biohacking finance bros flock to similar services. It’s happening everywhere else, too.
Othership — which has been accused of being ‘cultish’ by everyone I have taken there/spoken to about it — intentionally creates community through guided sessions between the sauna and cold plunge rooms. It’s also a beautiful facility. The biggest challenge: keeping a straight face during the aromatherapy bomb and towel waving on your first time.
It was featured in a Toronto Life article on “The Cult of Wellness” and recently threw a divisive “rave” event. Some found it an exhilarating alternative to the going out scene. Others found it obnoxious. I am in the latter camp — especially because some people really thought it was a regular sauna session.
But I fear the trend of alternative, sober nightlife is only going to get more annoying. Book club nights and non-alcoholic bars (some of which serve non-alcoholic cocktails for upwards of $20 … girl, that’s lemonade) are already propagating. But gimmicky events like this one are definitely on the horizon.
But it’s not all trance-rave gimmicks. According to Vogue, Americans are craving community more than ever and communal baths are appearing as an answer. “There’s a sweat bath practice in almost every culture worldwide — from the Turkish hammam to the Japanese onsen and Russian banyan. In these spaces, socializing is a key element of the bathing experience.”
Socializing in a sauna isn’t unique, but for a long time it’s been confined to exclusive members clubs or crowded gyms. This move to communal saunas creates intentional community.
Founder Kelly Crimmins of Big Towel Spa in Hudson, NY says, “It’s not just: come, and sauna, and leave. Many people have met here, and projects have started because of it.”
And I believe that. I’ve made friends in new cities by going to trendy communal saunas. Is it the vulnerability? Is it the select group of people annoying enough to waste their time and money on an overpriced sweat?
Meanwhile, other trendy spots like Sky Ting or Higher Dose let you have 30 to 60 minutes of solo sauna time, then emerge into the city.
It’s not just saunas. Every workout is “hot” now. I am loyal to my heated pilates classes, and my Los Angeles studio just opened the first infrared reformer classes in the city.
Every class, I watch overconfident first timers (usually somebody’s boyfriend) brave the heat just to collapse in their own sweat in the middle. We’ve all been there. We all come back for more. One of the aforementioned friends who accused Othership of being a cult (again, I don’t disagree but I’ve dabbled in worse cults) texted me the day after about how good it made their skin.
Infrared heat is especially popular. In a studio or a sauna, it heats the body instead of the surrounding air for a more comfortable experience. Plus, it packs all the benefits of infrared light. I am never not tempted to buy one of those infrared blankets. A nap in one of those sleeping bag-like contraptions must go crazy.
In my dream home, I have one. But in my dream life, I also have a sauna. To all my friends: if that ever manifests, good luck ever seeing me again. I imagine something just a little less elaborate than GP’s in-home spa — but that level of dedication to wellness will always inspire me.
bikini body rhetoric is back, I fear
But it would be naive to pretend people are just seeking community and the catharsis of sweating. Gen Z is documented to have more interest in detox-related content and products. Sure, because they feel good. But mostly because they’re marketed to help you look good.
Like most other wellness practices, traditional or not, saunas or heated workout classes have become shortcuts to appearing slimmer. Imagine a wrestler, wrapped in plastic, jogging before a meet to drop water weight. Think of the water-shedding body sculpting massages blasting their before and afters on your feeds. Sweating is about what most wellness content is about these days: aspiring to be smaller.
The millennial body positivity movement was already hanging on by a thread thanks to the proliferation of Ozempic. But TikTok’s #skinnytok is shamelessly promoting eating disorders like it’s 2013 Tumblr. But this time, it’s not the knowing (and darkly aestheticized with Skins UK gifs) shame surrounding Tumblr’s harmful content. Worse: it’s couched in wellness language.
In the years since Jia Tolentino’s landmark critique on the then-embryonic wellness industry Always Be Optimizing, wellness has turned into an even stranger beast. A new version of that essay would be titled Always Be Shrinking. Not just through the usual means, but by perverting age-old wellness practices like a good shvitz into tools to look even a little bit slimmer.
Is there no safe space left? Can we sweat in peace, without being surrounded by toxic rhetoric about detoxes?
are we overthinking sweating?
For a recent article in the Camille Styles Summer Edit, I spoke to Shannon Davenport, founder of bath care brand Esker beauty, about the ritual of bathing.
She talked about the origins of bathing across cultures. She talked about their hero product, the body plane, which I swear by for exfoliation. And she talked about how uncomplicated all this should be.
The benefits associated with taking a bath all stem from the benefit of temperature therapy. Just stepping into a warm bath is enough to give you health benefits like stress relief, improved circulation, and more. Just like a cold shower gives you all the benefits of a cold plunge without stepping into an ice bath.
“It's like the most extreme version of it has been more normalized than like the most normal version of it,” says Shannon about the explosion of saunas and cold plunges. “I’d take the relaxing, nice, cozy bath over suffering in ice cold water.”
I love the glamour of a gorgeous sauna. I love the power trip of getting good at hot pilates. But all these memberships and exclusive new pop ups are marketing a very simple concept. The extremes are what makes cold plunge culture so attractive to tech bros. And in the same way, sauna culture is getting there too.
It’s another example of how a practice that was one a form of recovery for athletes or a special treat at a spa has been commodified into a daily practice that isn’t about feeling better, it’s about feeling better than other people.
Don’t get me wrong, you’ll see me at the sauna. I’m making my way through LA’s sauna scene and will even have a list of favorites soon. But if you’re craving the benefits of a sweat, a long hot shower or, even better, an indulgent bath can be good enough.
Song of the Issue:
Going to see Beyonce is the best wellness decision you can make btw.