Russian bath

About halfway through “Flash Count Diary: Menopause and the Vindication of Natural Life,” the American novelist Darcey Steinke describes lying down for a massage at a Russian bath house in Paris and coming to an exceedingly belated realization: “I was in a place where women took money for sex.”

“The best traditional banya, or Russian bath, is arguably Sanduny,” Mr. Kryuchkov told me.

The diversity of shapes, like that in a Russian bath, is eloquent about the stresses of life and gravity on the female body in a way that contemporary images of desirable women rarely dare to be.

The diversity of shapes, like that in a Russian bath, is eloquent about the stresses of life and gravity on the female body in a way that contemporary images of desirable women rarely dare to be.

Hence, there is an element of danger in the Russian bath—a danger to sudden death similar to sunstroke.