For Colleen:
No, I caught that half the clients were old Asian women (as I noted above), and that they scrubbed one another. But they weren’t exchanging money to be scrubbed, it was friends doing it – would have been like you taking a scrubber to me, or vice versa. I did see a few of the older Asian women being scrubbed professionally, but not many. Overwhelmingly, the paid services were taken by the white women there. And yes, expense-wise, it certainly was quite a bit cheaper than the traditional spa, but that doesn’t change the fact that there are a lot of people who could never afford such a thing. I understand that it seems seriously negligible to you, but for all my talk of it being a new addiction, I’ll never be able to afford going there on my own. It’s simply out of the range of what I can justify and afford. And if it’s out of my range, then there are a lot of other people for whom it’s not affordable, as well.

I will also note that I, personally, didn’t feel like a piece of meat; while the scrub is certainly…efficient, I guess is how I’d say it, the woman who provided mine was very friendly and made me feel welcome, and to some extent I found that part of the experience more…I don’t know what the word is, authentic, less tied up in trappings of privilege and expectation, something like that, than the massage was.