Experiences Are Out, Wellness Is In
Is your discretionary spending in line with this new trend?
So I spent last Saturday at the spa.
It’s the kind of thing I feel a little embarrassed explaining, but I had been carrying around a lot of tension in my neck and shoulders, and my hip (from where I got hit by the car in 2014) had started aching right before I went to bed and right after I woke up, so I booked a spa day and got a deep tissue massage.
The Cost of Getting Hit By a Car
It’s kind of like the massage therapist rebooted my body. When I do my morning yoga practice, the full width of my shoulders touches the ground in corpse pose. When I do wall sits, my entire back touches the wall. I swear I am standing taller.
All of this cost me $180 (technically $140 plus tip), and I also got to enjoy a rainforest shower and a sauna and an afternoon without the internet, in a room full of comfortable chairs and people who kept bringing me enormous glasses of cucumber-lemon water.
It also means I am falling right in line with The Cut’s newest piece on wellness as today’s discretionary spending must-have:
Why Wellness Is the New Way to Look, Feel, and Act Rich
One way that idea has trickled down to the 99 percent is what she is describes, in brand-speak, as “luxury for one’s selfie.” “The methods by which we formerly whitened teeth, smoothed cellulite, or battled ageing were generally kept secret,” she says. “Now, we tweet about them. Having a #spaday, and tweeting photographs of faces obscured by mud masks, has become just as much a status symbol as posting a photograph of a new purse.”
When I booked my massage, I didn’t think of it as a status symbol; it was more like “I have a specific problem and I can pay money to temporarily fix it.” But I avoided telling anyone else what I was doing—no #spaday selfies for me—because I did feel like it would be flaunting both my financial stability and my privilege.
The Cut doesn’t specifically say that people are booking spas instead of safaris, but it’s interesting to think about luxury wellness treatments, which we can do at home or at the spa near our home, taking the place of travel (which requires more money plus time off work), which took the place of things (which we can’t fit into our tiny apartments, plus we have an entire Internet of Things in our hand). You can do a face mask and stay in and watch Netflix at the same time—or, like our most recent Doing Money interviewee attested, you can cleanse your pores while you do your laundry.
Have you been spending more money on wellness lately? Did you even realize you were doing it? Am I guessing correctly that the wellness trend is associated both with our increased workloads and stress and our desire to experience something that will make us feel better without taking up a lot of time, space, or extra cash?
Support The Billfold
The Billfold continues to exist thanks to support from our readers. Help us continue to do our work by making a monthly pledge on Patreon or a one-time-only contribution through PayPal.
Comments