Man Spa Adventure

Call it self-indulgent, call it narcissistic, or blame it on Beckham, the man spa is here and growing. A healthy smattering of mini clinics offering men’s facials, pedicures or warm herbal body wraps are dipping their well-trimmed toes into the London market, before likely launch nationwide. Older spas, traditionally covens of women who lunch, are seeing more masculine clientele, as the British male grooming industry grows from £685 million in 2004 to £821 million in 2009 (according to Mintel). USA spa-industry receipts already rival box-office takings, with the biggest growth in the male sector. Last year 31% of US spa-goers were men.

Each spa offers a range of ‘treatments’, all intended to make you look and feel younger. Some are couched in meaningless PR twaddle: by selecting a ‘Real Time Out’ massage at Wholeman, for example, you “choose to invest in restoring a deeper sense of now.” Others make medical claims. Spa NK offers “Ayurvedic lymphatic drainage and thermotherapy techniques” to help “fluid retention, poor digestion and cellulite.”

Discounting the pseudo new-age blather (unless your sense of now has been shallow recently?), the medical claims have some weight. Hippocrates was a fan of medicinal massage back in 400 BC. Dr Louis Teichholz, Chief of Complementary Medicine at Hackensack University Medical Centre, New Jersey, claims: “Massage can drain lymph channels, primarily in women who get blockages after mastectomies. Most people have no need for that. However, massage reduces adrenaline and cortisol production, thereby lowering stress, so there is proven physiological benefit for all.”

According to spa expert Linda Arroz: “Regular spa treatments lower blood pressure, increase ability to focus, and help us to sleep better. People are staying in the work force longer and need to look less tired, more refreshed, and less stressed. Getting a massage, facial or a detox treatment can do just that. The human touch itself is very healing, especially for singletons who may not be close to family.”

As a stressed singleton, relatively close to family but not in a touchy way, I was a good test candidate. So, to investigate the world of Man Spas I underwent three different treatments, in three days, in three spas:

Wholeman Warrior Facial, 90 minutes, £115

The Warrior Facial, of course, is the same facial that Alexander the Great had after his magnificent but pore-clogging victory at dusty Gaugamela in 331BC. Not really. It’s just a facial, like girls have.

With its neat rows of male grooming liquids and trendy décor, the newly-opened Wholeman shop looks like a cross between a chemist and a nightclub. The astonishingly clear-skinned Treatments Manager Jo Vernon swiftly whisked me upstairs into a green and brown waiting room. A plasma TV silently beamed a sports channel at empty, manly-coloured seats.

The aura of clean virility drifted urbanely into the treatment room, where, naturally for a facial, Jo asked me to strip down to my pants. She handed me a black Ipod, and asked me to select some music. I pretended that I knew how briefly, then suggested that she chose.

The facial began with a foot massage. “We like to really pamper the guest”, explained Jo, kneading away at my soles, “So we start on feet and work up to the scalp. It’s not reflexology, it’s purely for relaxation.”

And very relaxing it was too, apart from the ticklish bits. Soon we were onto a “dry massage of facial pressure points to clear any negative energy.”

For the facial proper, salve after lotion after unguent was expertly smoothed, stroked and rubbed into my face. Some were removed, some absorbed, and some left for a while. The whole thing was coupled with a variety of massages to face, head and arms. My memory of the end is hazy, but I do remember thinking that it seemed never-ending, and hoping that it would be.

Gentleman’s Tonic Pedicure, manicure, Swedish Massage, 90 minutes, £103

Gentlemen’s Tonic is tucked away on reassuringly posh Bruton Place. Over two years old now, used to celebrities and captains of industry, they were utterly unimpressed by a journalist. I was unceremoniously marshalled into a small waiting room, to be collected minutes later by therapist Geraldine Brodie.

After a dunking in a lava-hot foot bathing mini Jacuzzi straight out of an Argos Catalogue, and a massage of course, my feet were expertly trimmed, buffed and rasped by Geraldine. She chatted away to me as unaffectedly as a farrier might chat to the horse he was shoeing. It takes two years of college to reach her level, although you learn the most on the job. Gentleman’s Tonic’s customers are all male, mostly between 30-40, and about 20% gay. There are plenty of celebrity clients, whose names she tells me after only one: “Oh go on, I won’t mention them in the article.”

With all unattractive corns and pads removed from my feet, my hands were fashioned from bitten-to-the-quick zombie claws into presentable paws. It was almost a miracle metamorphosis.

Five minutes later I was face down, naked, and finding out what a massage is like from someone who’s trained for two years. It was a performance, often employing whole body weight, set to alternatively rousing and relaxing classical music. It was warmly intimate and sometimes breathtakingly physical, without being sexual (well, almost - I did have to count backwards in German during the inner thigh section). I guess it was similar to the pleasure of a stroked cat. It was blissful, and, like 99% of Geraldine’s clients, I fell asleep.

Roused, showered and re-dressed, I moseyed away through Mayfair, smiling and zonked.

Spa NK Ultimate Detox, 90 minutes, £125

Stepping out of the wealthy / down-and-out streets of Notting Hill, I was ushered though futuristically efficient, clinical corridors to a changing room, which was better than clumping clothes on the treatment room’s work-surface as before. Undressed, showered and robed in a colossal brown dressing grown, I teetering like a foot-bound Chinese girl on far-too-small-for-me slippers to the waiting room. It was a smart, Asian-influenced affair, with jugs of lemon and lime water.

After collection by 32 year-old Spaniard Lola Bähr, who originally came to London to study Flamenco, I lay face down on the heated massage bed, naked, hoping that ‘Spa NK’ was not an amateurishly enciphered message for what actually went on here.

Luckily it was a massage - again, deeply relaxing and asexually sensuous. A full body exfoliation followed: I was scoured all over with salt, “collected in the Celtic way by women from Brittany”. Next Lola coated me in warm, curry-smelling ‘Ayurvedic’ mud, wrapped me in the plastic sheet I’d been lying on, then about ten big towels. Heated from below, I cooked happily, like a sausage roll in a garage’s bakery display, as Lola massaged my head, all the while chatting away about dating, and the commune she hoped to found one day.

Time up too soon, Lola unwrapped me and vigorously flannelled me clean, then massaged me all over with essentials oils to “stimulate digestion, circulation and immunity”. Brilliant.

I finished with a herbal tea in the waiting room, now full of a dressing-gowned woman making a Very Important Business Call (Spa NK is not strictly a man spa, but merits inclusion due to its masculine atmosphere, and 30-40% male clients). Showered and dressed, I left in a daze to sit happily on the bus home, smelling mildly of curry.

Debriefing

Each treatment was deeply relaxing to the degree of stupefaction. However, can such self-indulgence be justified? A massage is healthier relaxation than a bottle of wine and a pack of Marlborough Lights, but it’s a lot more expensive.

There are, of course, the physical effects. The evening after my facial, a stranger said I was gorgeous. She was the pub nutcase, but I was definitely looking healthier. The manicure has stopped me hiding my bitten mitts under tables when someone mentions the importance of attractive hands. My feet were fine before, but the pedicure has made them look like a schoolgirl’s.

I won’t be going back though, because my annual vanity budget is about £20 on haircuts. However, I’d happily buy one (or chip in) as a present for someone else, and I’d happily go if bought one. Something utterly luxurious that no way benefits the giver is a great gift.

The burgeoning man spa industry’s battle is to change its image from luxury to part of urban man’s health regime, as gyms have over the last decade. They will probably succeed. The fashion pages may be saying that the macho-man is back, but that shows why you shouldn’t read the fashion pages. Men are inexorably feminised and becoming more so. Take the shamelessly high-maintenance hairstyles of twenty-something lads, for whom hair gel companies and saloons have rendered their services indispensable. As these vain young men gain more disposable income, I suspect that the man spa will become just as essential to them.

DETAILS

There are a plethora of man spas in London. For regular treatments the key is to find a therapist that you like, then stick to him or her. I was a guest of the following: Wholeman, 67 New Bond Street, London. www.wholeman.co.uk, 0207 629 6659

Gentleman’s Tonic, 31a Bruton Place, London. www.gentlemenstonic.com 0207 297 4343

Spa NK, 127-131 Westbourne Grove, London. www.spacenk.co.uk, 0207 727 8002

Article printed December 2006 in the Financial Times