Can a Facial Fix a Broken Heart?

The beauty world is turning shrink with treatments that heal and transform. Cassie Powney lies back and waits for a miracle.

- Cassie Powney

I think we should just be friends. As those seven simple words jumped out at me from my phone, each one a tiny dagger to the heart, I thought I might be sick. It was May 2003. I was 19 and the charismatic blue-eyed boy I’d been dating had sent me the text no one wants. And just like that, we weren’t dating any more. My surprisingly civil reply swam in front of me as I typed through tears, then shot out of my vision as I pressed send and flung my phone across the room, watching it bounce satisfyingly off the wall.

And then… I called my local beauty salon (yes, the phone still worked) and booked the most expensive facial on the menu. Well, I could hardly have gone to my doctor and asked for an official diagnosis, could I? Or waltzed into a pharmacy and requested some ‘men-are-mean’ pills.

“A face massage is the obvious antidote to all that time spent with our faces knotted or sagging with sadness,” says behaviour expert Judi James. “We are essentially pampering a damaged ego and the more money we throw at it, the more validating it feels.”