Gym designers have rid locker rooms of the gnarly shower curtains, trading them in for sexy glass escape pods. They have made bathroom stalls ever more private. Comfy couch corners, Wi-Fi and lockers with built-in locks have gone from swank options to standard issue.

健身房设计师已经摒弃用粗糙浴帘隔开的更衣室，代之以性感的玻璃隔间。他们把浴室隔间也做得更私密。以前，舒适的沙发、WiFi和带有内置锁的储物柜是奢侈的可选项，现在这些都是标配。

“Everyone wants to get upgraded now,” said Rudy Fabiano, an architect who estimates he has designed about 500 gyms in the last 25 years.

建筑师鲁迪·法比亚诺(Rudy Fabiano)称自己在过去25年里大约设计了500家健身房。他说：“现在所有人都想升级。”

But gyms are still unable to provide the one thing younger men in particular seem to really want: a way for them to shower and change without actually being nude.

但是，健身房依然不能提供年轻人真正想要的一样东西：不必裸体示人就能沐浴更衣。

Each day, thousands upon thousands of men in locker rooms nationwide struggle to put on their underwear while still covered chastely in shower towels, like horrible breathless arthropods molting into something tender-skinned. They writhe, still moist, into fresh clothes.

每天，美国各地成千上万的男人在更衣室里难为情地裹着浴巾，费力穿上内裤，就像可怕的气喘吁吁的节肢动物在蜕变成软体动物。身上还没干透就得扭动着穿上干净衣服。

“In the last 20 years, maybe 25 years, there’s a huge cultural shift in people that ultimately affects gyms,” said Bryan Dunkelberger, a founding principal of S3 Design, which has worked for clients like Equinox and the Sports Club/ LA.

S3设计公司(S3 Design)曾服务过Equinox和Sports Club/ LA等客户。该公司的主要创始人布赖恩·邓克尔伯格(Bryan Dunkelberger)说：“在过去20年或25年里，文化的重大变迁最终影响了健身房。”

“Old-timers, guys that are 60-plus, have no problem with a gang shower and whatever,” Mr. Dunkelberger said. “The Gen X-ers are a little bit more sensitive to what they’re spending and what they’re expecting. And the millennials, these are the special children. They expect all the amenities. They grew up in families that had Y.M.C.A. or country club memberships. They expect certain things. Privacy, they expect.”

邓克尔伯格说：“60多岁的老年人对大家一起淋浴什么的没有意见。X世代对自己的花费和期待更敏感一些。而千禧一代是一群特殊的孩子。他们期望拥有各种设施。他们的父母是基督教青年会或乡村俱乐部会员。他们期待某些东西，比如私密。”

Your gym wants you to have gym buds, with whom you buy expensive carb-infested juices on site and with whom you swap tips about trainers and teachers (but with whom you definitely don’t swap spit). And now your gym wants you to feel a little more at ease in that most sensitive space: the men’s locker room.

健身房希望你拥有健身伙伴，你们可以一起在健身房购买昂贵的高碳水化合物的果汁，交换关于教练和老师的看法（但是你肯定不会和他交换唾液）。现在，健身房想让你在最敏感的空间感觉更自在：男更衣室。

Showering after gym class in high school became virtually extinct in the ’90s. And if Manhattan’s high-end gyms weren’t riddled with ab-laden models or Europeans (or both), there would be few heterosexuals under 40 who have spent any naked time with other men.

高中上完体育课后沐浴的做法在20世纪90年代已经基本消失。若不是曼哈顿的高级健身房里挤满腹肌明显的模特或欧洲人（或欧洲模特），又有几个40岁以下的异性恋男士和其他男人有过裸体相见。

“It’s funny, they’re more socially open with everything — Facebook, social media — yet more private in their personal space,” said Kevin Kavanaugh, the president of David Barton Gym.

戴维·巴顿健身房(David Barton Gym)总裁凯文·卡瓦诺(Kevin Kavanaugh)说：“很有意思，他们在所有事情上都更开放，比如在Facebook等社交媒体上，但是却要求更私密的个人空间。”

Not long after the invention of the idea of personal space in 1959 came a classic ’70s study gamely titled “Personal Space Invasions in the Lavatory.” In it, researchers spied upon urinals to see how long it took for men to begin emptying their bladders.

1959年，个人空间这个概念出现。在那不久之后的70年代，出现了一个经典研究，名字很有趣：《厕所里的个人空间侵犯》(Personal Space Invasions in the Lavatory)。研究者们在男用小便器上安装了一个探测器，追踪男人们在多长时间之后开始清空膀胱。

It takes, we learned, almost twice as long when there is a man at a urinal next to you, and about half as long as when someone is one urinal away, compared to going it alone.

研究结果是，与独自撒尿相比，旁边小便器有人的话，开始撒尿的时间要延后一倍，隔一个小便器有人的话，时间会缩短一半。

Closeness breeds anxiety; penis-related closeness can be overwhelming.

社交距离的缩小让人紧张；与生殖器有关的社交距离缩小可能让人难以承受。

“Someone standing next to you at the subway station fully clothed is less close than someone standing next to you naked at a gym,” Mr. Dunkelberger said.

邓克尔伯格说：“健身房里裸体站在你旁边的人比地铁站里穿着衣服站在你旁边的人更让你觉得挨得近。”

“Privacy and space is kind of where it’s at,” Mr. Fabiano said.

法比亚诺说：“私密和空间取决于地点。”

Gyms, like black holes, resonate at a frequency. There is the chartreuse and violet and space-black thrum of David Barton Gym, and the clean white with candy red accents of New York Sports Club — a red wholly different from the sensual deep red ping of Barry’s Bootcamp. The blistering white and yellow of a SoulCycle burns the hottest.

健身房和黑洞一样，是在某个频率上震动。戴维·巴顿健身房是橄榄绿、紫罗兰色和太空黑的合奏；纽约运动俱乐部(New York Sports Club)是干净的白色搭配糖果红色，那种红色与巴里训练营(Barry’s Bootcamp)魅惑的深红色全然不同。SoulCycle健身房醒目的白色和黄色最为性感。

Our budget-conscious friend Blink Fitness has a funny soft blue that I can’t even hear. Crunch has the palette of those awesome Indian comic books. The wheat and marble of Equinox is like “Mussolini does the Hamptons.”

注重成本的Blink Fitness健身房用的是一种我从没听说过的有趣的淡蓝色。Crunch健身房的色调像是印第安漫画书的精彩搭配。Equinox健身房的小麦色和大理石色就像“墨索里尼来到了纽约汉普顿海滨”。

Mr. Dunkelberger believes that women pick a gym based on whether it is clean and safe. Only then do they imagine themselves in the environment. Men choose a gym more abstractly, less sensibly, more ineptly.

邓克尔伯格认为，女人挑选健身房的标准是干净安全。只有满足这两个条件，女人们才能想象自己在其中的情景。男人挑选健身房的标准则更抽象，不明智，更糊涂。

Now, more than ever before, they choose tastefulness. In almost every high-end locker room there is a wet door, leading to a dank troll cave. This is the steam room. But at the Equinox abutting the High Line, the men’s steam room instead intrudes: It is a glass box that presents itself as a wall dividing the sink area and shower area.

现在，他们比以往任何时候都更注重品味。几乎所有的高档更衣室都设有一块湿地板，通向潮湿的洞穴——蒸汽室。但是在高线(High Line)附近的Equinox健身房，男用蒸汽室是突出来的：它是一个玻璃房，把盥洗区和淋浴区分隔开。

From three sides, fleshy moving colors are visible inside. It is reminiscent of the absurd smoking chamber of Rome’s Fiumicino airport. It is a thirst trap as drawn by Michel Foucault and executed by Olafur Eliasson. It’s great.

你能从三面看到移动的人影。它让人想起了罗马菲乌米奇诺机场(Fiumicino)荒唐的吸烟室。它就像米歇尔·福柯(Michel Foucault)设想、奥拉维尔·埃利亚松(Olafur Eliasson)制作的饥渴陷阱。棒极了。

The Equinox on East 61st Street, two David Barton locations and the Setai Club on Wall Street have lately partnered with Glam & Go, a blowout bar that starts at $25 for 15-minute dry-hair blowouts.

东61街上的Equinox健身房、戴维·巴顿的两家分店以及华尔街的Setai Club健身房最近和Glam & Go吹发店合作——花费25美元可以获得15分钟吹干头发的服务（这是起步价）。

At the David Barton Gym on Astor Place, Glam & Go was installed inside the women’s locker room. “Our men are saying: ‘Hey, what about me? I can’t go in the ladies room to get it,’” Mr. Kavanaugh said. “So we’re talking about how to put it in gender-neutral areas.”

在阿斯特广场(Astor Place)的戴维·巴顿健身房，Glam & Go是设在女士更衣室里的。卡瓦诺说：“男顾客们在问：‘嘿，我怎么办？我又不能去女更衣室吹头发’。所以我们在考虑把它搬到公用区域。”

For the conceivable future, the all-gender blowout bar looks to be the only moderately intimate gym location where men and women are likely to mix. For a city now seemingly mostly composed of subsidized young people from posh liberal arts schools who all dormed and often showered together, it’s queer, and a little sad, to see that desires for privacy and gender segregation are still entrenched in design.

在可以想见的未来，全性别吹发室可能是健身房里唯一一个男女共处的中度亲密的地方。纽约市现在似乎主要由上流文科院校里受资助的年轻人组成，他们都住宿舍，经常一起沐浴，所以，看到对私密和性别隔离的渴望仍深深存在于设计之中，让人觉得奇怪而悲哀。

“We had an attempt at a coed sauna, thinking it would work well,” Mr. Kavanaugh said. “But it didn’t. I was surprised at the amount of puritanical behavior around mixing the sexes. I guess it goes to wanting more privacy.”

卡瓦诺说：“我们曾设立过一个男女共用的桑拿房，以为它会很受欢迎，但其实不然。我很奇怪，男女共处时，很多人会感到拘谨。我猜是因为人们希望拥有更多私密空间。”

“If there was a man in there, women wouldn’t go in,” he said. “If there was a woman in there, men wouldn’t go in. It became very strange. I’m surprised at how less enlightened we are about crossing and mixing genders.”

他说：“如果里面有个男人，女人们不会进去。如果里面有个女人，男人们不会进去。这很奇怪。我不明白为什么我们在男女共用方面这么不开化。”

Gym designers have waged a long battle to make the locker room not sad, not alienating and not a place that smells like butts. They treat urban loneliness and personal shame as a product problem — with a product solution. And their success means that the gym is now both everyone’s extra bathroom and extra living room.

长期以来，健身房设计师们在努力让更衣室不再悲哀，不再疏远，不再是一个闻起来臭烘烘的地方。他们认为城市的孤独感和个人羞耻感是产品问题，能够通过改进产品得到解决。他们的成功意味着，如今健身房是大家的另一个卫生间和另一个起居室。

The other day I visited the new Equinox Brookfield Place, where the men’s executive locker room is reached by iris scan. The perfection of all possible lighting has been achieved at the very manly locker sinks, and I spent quite some time staring lovingly at myself there. I’ve never looked better.

有一天，我去参观布鲁克菲尔德广场(Brookfield Place)新开的Equinox健身房，那里的高级男更衣室要通过虹膜扫描才能进入。盥洗区很有男人味，灯光效果极佳，我长时间含情脉脉地注视着镜子中的自己，觉得自己从没这么美过。

Gym capitalism works. I don’t think I’m lonely anymore.

健身房资本主义起作用了。我不再觉得自己是孤独的。