The fitness chain Equinox recently announced a new peak of pampering, a higher altitude of indulgence. It’s a deluxe membership called Optimize by Equinox, it costs about $40,000 a year and it comes with a sleep coach.
I know what tennis coaches do. They bark corrections at players whose serves stink. I know what football coaches do. They scream at referees about pass-interference calls.
But a sleep coach? I picture a bedside bully with a stopwatch and Sominex, demanding a sprint into R.E.M.: “You can do it! Breathe! Dream!”
According to a recent article about Optimize on CNBC.com, the sleep coach is actually more of a sleep consultant, conducting two private, half-hour sessions a month on snoozing like a pro, and belongs to a crew of coddlers including a twice-monthly nutrition coach and a thrice-weekly personal trainer. Their goal isn’t simply fitness or even wellness. It’s longevity. And that, apparently, takes a village. As well as a fortune.
More than a decade ago, I wrote about how “the places and ways in which Americans are economically segregated and stratified have multiplied, with microclimates of exclusivity popping up everywhere.” I mentioned special passes that sped big spenders to the front of amusement-park lines. About Uber echelons. And about Equinox, where, at that point, there were tiers of trainers with escalating hourly rates, and where eye-scanning technology determined who had paid for admission to special sanctums.
Could we possibly give people even more extravagant and obvious ways to advertise and, well, optimize their affluence? Equinox has answered that with a resounding yes and in a manner that reflects an intensifying obsession among the economic elite: eternal, or at least extended, youth.
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