masochism Tag

I recently went through a major heartbreak, and found myself experiencing a sudden storm of wellness-adjacent impulses, ones that arrived in lockstep with each painful emotion. Should I go on a keto diet? Get Botox? An eyebrow lift? Or an acid peel? True, all of these exercises feel consistent with “glowing-up”, a breakup rite of passage. Except they came with distinct feelings of anger, shame, and even violence. Why was it that these beauty treatments, which are sold to us as self-care, could feel more akin to an urge to self-harm? By now we’re all too familiar with the old adage ‘beauty is pain’. Traced back to at least 1800s France (‘il faut souffrir pour être belle’, or ‘one must suffer...