Pampered Guilt: With Spa Treatments, Is There More Than What Meets the Eye?

i can understand what you mean, though i feel odd about receiving pedicures from anyone–no matters his/her race…and i LOVE pedicures. the manicures don’t bother me, but there is something about the social implications of washing feet/shining shoes/doing some type of service that low to the ground in basically a kneeling position. i think that is what bothers me…the physical side of it…what message that normally sends to us. feet are considered dirty and cleaning them or the shoes people wear is considered to be reserved (esp. in the past) for a certain sector of society….the poor people, the immigrants, the uneducated, etc. so it’s hard to break that association b/c it’s been ingrained in us over time.

I went on to include personal experiences that further complicated my view on receiving service in spas:

manicures, on the other hand, don’t make me feel weird. but the pedicure…so hard sometimes. i like my beautician. she’s a year younger than me, has similar interests, and was born and raised in nepal. she always puts an interesting spin on topics as a result of her cultural upbringing and her experiences as an immigrant, so we talk about race and social status a lot. nevertheless, it’s odd for me to have an intelligent, confident, interesting woman i would completely consider my friend if it were outside of a business relationship to scrub my feet.

Back in November of 2007, writer Emily Nussbaum of New York Magazine decided to tackle this issue as well. In the opening of her article “A Strangers Touch,” she endeavored to pinpoint the psychological games at play when one goes to a spa, especially one in which the person in charge of your service may be perceived as being on a different social level from yourself, at least bearing in mind the complex racial and class stratification in the United States, and to be more specific, New York City:

The first time I got a pedicure, I felt something similar: physical vulnerability, mingled with a lurid awareness of power—an Asian woman who didn’t speak English was kneeling in front of me, washing my feet. It felt distinctly slave and master. But that’s only true the first time you have a treatment like this. Pay once, twice, three times, and the aura of exploitation dissolves, and with it, the contradictions implicit in getting a massage, or a waxing, or a mud wrap: You’re naked, but nothing explicitly sexual is going on; the touch is intimate, but the toucher is a stranger. The name she tells you may not be her real name. What’s happening is not medical, though the props that surround you—the glass jar of blue fluid, the hygienic oven—encourage that illusion. And yet you are in charge: You’re the customer.

Nussbaum spends most of the article explaining how many New York spas, at least those that are more affordable to the average consumer (read: middle class) are little more than sweatshops with pretty, earth-toned façades, and presented instances of women who had challenged the system, like Susan Kim, who led a lawsuit against two Upper East Side spas in October of 2007. It’s undeniable that the spa industry has its flaws, just as any other, and it’s important that we not gloss over them. Though as I read the comments in preparation for this piece, I noticed that many readers accused Nussbaum of projecting her experience too heavily, applying it to her analysis. In other words, they thought Nussbaum had already come to a conclusion on the spa industry and was now looking for a way to support her conclusion by providing biased information. I wondered whether or not the audience had become so incensed because the subjects of her article were women of color and/or women within the immigrant community. Could it be that those commenting shared Nussbaum’s discomfort, but cloaked their own denial of privilege in vitriol?

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