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144 AH&L | 7.07 pat of Crest and your brother’s old retainer—yours, unfortunately, having been mangled by house pets. The times … they are a-changin’! These days, no self-respecting house, either a new model in Duluth or a reno- vated Ansley townhouse, is complete without the Diva Bath. Drumroll, please! What ever did we do without deluge showerheads—and two per bath at that! If our mothers thought a “whirlpool” was 14 tiny legs churning with Mr. Bubble, then today’s streaming, pulsing, massaging water must seem like a visit to Old Faithful. No woman worth her Tory Burch’s is content with anything less than a Diva Bath. The DB is a sanctuary, a lair, a place of atonement for all the sins visited against us by an unforgiving world, a world where we must work. So, at a minimum, we need subway tile—all the better if we can add marble, onyx, mosaic and iridescent flourishes. As for faucets, they must be matte sil- ver or rhodium if we are feeling oh- so-modern and groovy or agate or onyx or lapis lazuli with basins to match if we are feeling downright glamorous. From slender onyx columns straight out of the Delano hotel or yards of marble with five-figure, gold-plated basins that gleam like soft gems, no expense is spared in creating our bathroom. We are determined to get that shiatsu massage that a 60-hour workweek and demanding offspring continually deny us. We want to be pelted from every angle (that water destroys cellulite and, hey, it’s a workout that can rival Pilates) and all this while we sit on the deftly placed marble ledge. Yes, our showers last that long: Bless that steady 747-velocity of water that turns our entire bodies into one giant pucker. Just try and wrest us out of here— fat chance, what with the $400 gold- plated deadbolts. No, in Diva Baths there are settees for lounging, fur throws for our pedicured feet, and terry poufs to assist us in the art of make-up application. Stacks of drawers await our precious cosmetics. Deco mir- rored trays hold our perfumes. Lucite containers hold perfect Q-tips, cotton balls and sable brushes. Mercury glass vases hold fresh calla lilies. Towels so thick that just a glancing blow dries head to foot. But these aren’t towels—they are acreage of velvety cotton. Candles and sea salts, books and magazines abound now that we have the Diva Bath with its 900 square feet of Nirvana. We ain’t leavin’! ‘Cause we have a plasma TV in here and we can darn well watch George Clooney and dream. one are the days when our mothers made do with one bath per five children and our dad- dies showered outdoors with a garden hose and some old dog shampoo after a day of fishing. Bathrooms were some- thing to be cleaned by misbehaving teens with a can of Comet in one hand and a poor report card in the other. The bath of yesteryear was strictly utilitarian. Masses of kids huddled beneath a trickling stream of alternately scalding and glacial water. The amenities were nanny’s cast-off beach towels with some aunt’s monogram (all the better if she shared the same last name) and acces- sories culled from the children’s craft class. Toothbrushes were seldom replaced, and dental hygiene involved a Marcia Sherrill Bath Rx Marcia’s prescription for bath bliss Photographed by Steve Pomberg G marcia_july.qxp 5/29/07 4:51 PM Page 144
