When Oprah made her friends do SoulCycle for her 60th birthday we marveled at the bald display of power. The sheer difference between a typical birthday party (free sugar and alcohol) and a SoulCycle birthday (physical and emotional suffering) seemed to reflect how deeply her friends owed her for fruits of Oprah friendship we outsiders could only imagine. But it turns out you don’t even need to be the world’s leading authority in compassionate self-improvement and cashmere Christmas presents to make your friends work out in your honor. According to the New York Post, SoulCycle hosts the birthday parties, popularized by Oprah and Lena Dunham two or three times a week, to those who can shell out about $5,000. It is quasi-feminist, according to SoulCycle birthday-girl Tara Lipton.“It was such an empowering feeling — you feel healthy, you feel good!” she told the Post.
