Dark Wellness Novels Turn Beauty Obsession Into A Cult

You’ve probably heard art critic John Berger’s now-famous quote: “Women constantly meet glances, which act like mirrors, reminding them of how they look, or how they should look… Sometimes the glance they meet is their own, reflected back from a mirror.” By now, what’s expressed in Berger’s 1972 Ways of Seeing is so accepted as a truth, its message almost feels trite. But has it been fully realized in the zeitgeist?