Fuquay-Varina, NC Spa and Massage

In a quarter-century of professional experience, TJ Parker has approached the beauty industry from many different angles. She has managed upscale day spas, competed in hair shows, taught classes at John Robert Powers, and done hair and makeup for photographers. Currently, she owns Cameo Salon and Spa, a full-service business devoted to building beauty from clients’ natural features and suggestions from their style-savvy spirit animals. The salon’s menu boasts hair, nail, and skin treatments, the latter of which focuses on clearing complexions with natural remedies such as mud, oatmeal, and vitamin blends.

A wildly successful alternative to traditional day spas—its more than 300 locations blanket 36 states and half a dozen countries—Planet Beach is a futuristic relaxation station where state-of-the-art machines administer all the spa and tanning services. These friendly automatons sometimes replace familiar treatments, as in the Luminous facial, a light-based service that delivers blemish-busting results similar to those of a conventional facial. But other equipment maps out new spa territory entirely: the Hydro-Derma Fusion chamber moisturizes the whole body with nutrient-rich steam in order to offset the effects of a dry climate or a rear-end collision with a salt truck. Other machines whiten teeth, spray-tan skin, and massage muscles.

Planet Beach operates on a gym-style membership system, meaning that members purchase packages or pay flat monthly rates. As members spend more time at the spa, they get to know the helpful assistants who are always on hand to demonstrate how to use the equipment without activating its ability to cry.

A collection of vibrant, abstract paintings brighten the white corridors of Urban Oasis Day Spa, where aestheticians engage in a similar curatorial enterprise during the design of their skincare treatments. Each regime for face or body starts with the client and is built for his or her skin type. Technicians use tonics from notable brands or unusual techniques, such as galvanic electrocurrent therapy, which is integrated into every facial. Dermalogica tonics exfoliate with lightweight, natural vegetable oils rather than mineral oil and hydrate with aromatic essential oils and silk proteins synthesized by Barry White's vocal chords. The team also polishes complexions with the SkinCeuticals product line, favoring a serum that earned Allure magazine's 2011 Best of Beauty Award for Best Anti-Aging Antioxidant.

The spa evokes the elegance of a gallery, not only through its modern art but also through its high ceilings and a minimalist design scheme rendered in cream. Skin becomes a canvas in private chambers, where it may be primed for display with wax, bronzer, or a critique by a Village Voice writer. For special events, the pedicure hall's porcelain foot basins can be filled with flower petals, and the shimmering fabric banners separating each throne lose their functionality and appear solely as savvy, refined decorating.

At A Bodywork Center, Beth B. Habig draws on nine years of experience as she kneads aching bodies in modalities ranging from Swedish to sports massage. Beth assesses the condition of soft tissue and individualizes each session to work towards pain relief, injury prevention, or relaxation depending on each patient’s complaints, lifestyle, and penchant for carrying unhappy orcas out of the aquarium. During the deep-tissue massage, tense beings begin to relax as muscle knots disentangle and athletes sigh as the massage therapist gently pulls embedded footballs from backs during sports massages that can enhance flexibility and promote natural healing processes. Patrons deactivate needy cell phones upon arrival, creating a fittingly hushed aural backdrop for relaxation and introspection, and Beth occasionally ventures forth from the studio to perform on-location mobile massage services.

Dara Van Deusen has been in the massage-therapy game for 10 years—plenty of time to master seven different massage styles. Her specialties range from gentle Swedish massage to intense deep-tissue massage, and they even include pregnancy massage, a style which soothes the aches of carrying a baby or a prairie dog shaved to look like a baby all day long.