The New Hotness

In this piece, Pat Cassels sits in a sauna watching a dancing duo clad in dazzling, crystal-studded spandex unitards—an awesome spectacle, by all accounts. Cassels finds himself here to cover the inaugural Aufguss World Masters, which is, as he writes, “a blend of dance, sport, theater, therapy, and aerodynamic manipulation so odd it could only come from Germany. I was witnessing, for lack of a more succinct description, competitive sauna–ing.” It’s fascinating, it’s fun, it’s hot. Enter the sauna.

Despite the competition’s judges and rules, to the uninitiated aufguss might seem strange—even silly. “The first time I saw it, I thought I was watching a Will Ferrell movie,” Talmadge told me. Yet it arrives at a uniquely opportune time to tap into American culture. Attendance, revenue, and employment at spas in the States are all up. The International Spa Association calculates that nearly 200 million people visited one last year, spending a record $22 billion. In such a market, could aufguss, already a hit in Sweden, Norway, and the Netherlands, catch on in the States like so many Scandinavian phenomena before it? Could it be the next ABBA? The next democratic socialism? The next pornographic cinema? The World Masters, in fact, strikes me as an oddly perfect fit for the United States. There’s something distinctly American about turning relaxing into a sport—as if wellness were subject to capitalist rules of competition. Or have we become so accustomed to anxiety and dread that simply calming down feels as challenging as completing an Iron Man?