Unreadable

There is a particular exhaustion that comes from being legible all day. From having a face that answers questions before they're asked, a voice calibrated to the room, a posture that signals competence even when she's half-present. The spa is not about the body. It's about the hours when no one is reading her.

She doesn't go to be pampered. Pampered is the industry's word, and it misunderstands the transaction entirely. She is not there to be indulged. She is there to be illegible for a while, uninterpretable, free from the particular labor of being a woman who is always, always being assessed.

You already know which women actually go.

They are not the ones who speak the language of self-care. They are the ones who have stopped explaining it at all. The appointment is in the calendar the way the accountant is in the calendar, the way the physical is in the calendar. It is not a reward. It is infrastructure.

These women have solved a problem that others are still romanticizing. They have stopped believing that rest is earned and started treating it as a condition for functioning. The difference sounds small. It changes everything.