What does one do after selling a $45 million tech consulting firm? For Kristina Roth, the answer was to buy her own island—but not to house a mansion for herself. What was once known as Fjardskar has been renamed SuperShe Island, the ultimate extension of what began as a blog intended to "help women discover the best version of themselves—or become, as [Roth] brands it, SuperShes," writes Merin Curotto for the Observer. Curotto was invited to spend a week on the island, which opened in July, costs $4,675 for a week-long stay, and is open to those who "meet a strict set of membership criteria." The 8.4-acre "carefully programmed oasis of female empowerment" is free of men, sugar, and booze, but not devoid of luxury.
It boasts Michelin-starred chefs, "$2,000 toilets that incinerate poop," and something called "shinrin-yoku forest bathing." Curotto spends time talking to Roth, who "doesn't so much arrive as float in on a cloud." What does SuperShe represent for her? It "offers the safety of an all-female herd without peer pressure to conform." Roth explains: "The end goal when you're living in New York, if you come in your twenties, is somehow to exit with a rich husband and have a house in Connecticut, and maybe a loft downtown. You think, 'Oh wow, everyone is doing it!' So, of course, you're trying to fit in. The mammal brain is in a constant 'Do I wanna just go with the herd?' mode. And that means, in the animal kingdom, that I'm safe, because if a lion comes the chance of you being eaten are lower when you are in a herd." Read the full story here. (More island stories.)