Looking good, feeling better…
Many years ago, I had a rash across my face and felt miserable. I didn’t want to go out the door. Of course the rash got better and I was fine, but at the time it occurred to me how difficult it must be for women’s self esteem to be facially challenged and so I rang the local public hospital social workers to offer my services with any cosmetic care for any patients.
Serendipity arrived in bucketloads. The hospital was just debating whether to start the internationally famous Look Good Feel Better programme for cancer patients They asked if I was willing to be the volunteer State Coordinator for Tasmania. I said yes in my ignorance.
But my naivety mattered little because LGFB was such a well established programme that I had a set form to follow, cosmetics companies to rely on for supplies and retail stores providing volunteer beauticians for my teams. I did this for ten years, meeting with more courage than you can possibly imagine.
In the depths of despair, cancer treatment ravaging their skin, hair and self-esteem, the women (our clients, never patients) would come for a great day of spoiling. We would teach them skin care, work with them as they applied their makeup, teaching them all the different ways to tie scarves and bandanas round their heads and have enormous fun as they tried on wigs in a million different styles and colours. They were given a huge bag to take home, with all the products we had used for each them. Our instruction to them was that it was not to be shoved in a corner but that they were to paint a bit of a masterpiece every day in the journey to wellness. Look how well you feel today, we would say!
Those women left feeling a million bucks – for one day they could look in the mirror and feel better because what they saw looked fabulous. Skin tone evened out, colour on their cheeks, lips lusciously outlined, eyes delicately shaded and lined, eyebrows sketched where there may have been none. Utterly transforming and vital in raising the hope and confidence that they could beat the disease. They would arrange to meet family members for lunch, dinner, coffee – eager to show how wonderfully ‘normal’ they looked. They would often tell us how intimidated they or their friends and family were by the effects of the cancer and this was one way to thumb their nose at the disease.
More recently my eighty eight year old mother has been in hospital (not with cancer, I might add). She’s always been fastidious with her appearance and hated not having her hair done or her makeup on and so I began to go in every morning and comb her hair up for her and apply just a little makeup – enough to take away her frailty and let her see herself in the mirror so that she could say ‘Gee, I’m not looking so bad after all.’
As I walked down the corridors of the wards, seeing elderly women looking worn and tired, I so desperately wanted to go and do their hair, put on a bit of lippy, maybe powder or blusher. It is of course not possible, for health reasons if nothing else. Everyone must have their own personal kits and besides, some of them may not have welcomed the intrusion.
But I have to say, when I get up in the morning I most often look absolutely awful. By the time I emerge from the house, it matters to me to paint the kind of face that gives me that ‘good’ feeling, So that I can face the world on my terms. It’s not facile or shallow. It’s exactly the same as that cancer patient who gets to look in the mirror and say ‘Gee, today I do really feel better!’
If you or a loved one has cancer, please contact your local hospital anywhere in the world and enrol in an LGFB day. You’ll absolutely love it! Trust me, this is from my mouth to your ear!
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What a wonderful post. I have contemplated explaining my own relationship with makeup and why I am only very rarely seen without it but I always worried about coming across as shallow. I’ve always been told by my mum that it was something I didn’t need and that other people don’t see what I see when I look in the mirror and maybe that was true when I was younger, maybe it’s still true, but now I wear it to hide the broken capillaries and red blotches on my face and scars on my chin caused by quite severe rosacea and “adult acne”. Without makeup I feel conspicuous and ugly. Wearing it makes me feel normal, gives me confidence and alleviates the paranoia I have that everyone is staring at me. My reasons for having my extremely grey hair coloured regularly are very similar.
Kathryn, never ever think that painting a picture daily is shallow. It’s not. End of argument! To me it’s all to do with being strong enough to face whatever life throws at you each day and if makeup helps, so be it.
The ‘rash’ I had was in fact a severe outbreak of rosacea and left me with the standard red blush across the cheeks and nose. Even if I wore nothing on my face but a skintone leveller I would feel better. I use Maybelline BB during the day and if going out at night and having a wine, I will wear a green base, as the capillary stain fires up. I am also a true blonde and have the pale eyebrow that go with that and eyebrows are true frames for the eyes, which everyone knows are ‘the windows of the soul’. Which is why it is one of the skills taught at the Look Good Feel Better workshops for patients who have lost their own. Thanks so much for replying the way you have, i hope it gives others confidence to be bold and brave with ‘Looking Good’.
You’re welcome. Thank you for posting. I don’t often use a green base, it never seems to make a lot of difference to my redness which is a constant presence. But I did recently start using Clinique Redness Solutions moisturiser and cleanser which has reduced the pimples I kept getting and got rid of the soreness they created. It’s very expensive but has been worth it.
Kathryn, my skin specialist prescribed a really old medication and it works well. It’s 1% sulphur in a sorbolene base. When I feel an attack of rosacea coming on, I use that at night on top of a plain nightcream and during the day under a sunblock day-moisturiser. It seems to get rid of the pimples without drying out the skin. But I swoop right in the minute there is a sign. Foods are lethal – spices and acid-containing foods. Also believe it or not, sunshine, which is a pain for me being outdoorsy and a lover of the Australian beach. Hence the use of UV moisturisers and big shielding sunvisors.