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The American Cancer Society offers a complimentary program called Look Good, Feel Better to teach those going through cancer treatments beauty techniques to increase their confidence.
A friend who is also going through breast cancer treatment suggested I look into the program. My make-up skills have been more trial and error over the years, so I figured I’d take my friend’s advice.
In my area, the program was offered at various hospitals, the American Cancer Society, and Gilda’s Club. Gilda’s Club offered evening times but they sustained flooding and postponed their community offerings as they got back on their feet. The Gilda’s Club person shared that they schedule fewer workshops late in the year due to the holidays and that the program would be changing in 2019. After a bit more research, I found a class that worked with my schedule and called the national number for the American Cancer Society. After being on hold for twenty minutes, I was able to register for the class.
The hands-on workshop is run by professionals in the beauty industry who donate their time and talents. The make-up industry donates products for the program. The make-up bags were sorted by light, medium, and dark skin tones.
We started with awkward small talk as we waited for the five students to arrive. In the beginning, it was like being at a party that no one wanted to be at, but we all knew it would be good for us. It was a given that we all had cancer, so the questions of kind of cancer, type of treatment, and place of treatment came up. Breast 3, Lung 1, and Ovarian 1.
We were asked to remove all of the packaging from the make-up items, so we spent the first few minutes breaking seals and removing plastic wrapping from the various items in the cosmetic bags. It turns out that people would receive these complimentary items, then try to return them to the store. We were all a little bewildered by that people would do that, but we did as we were asked.
Our bags included a variety of items, including lotions, potions, brushes, foundation, eye shadow, and blush. The items were things that could be found through department stores, beauty stores, drug stores, and direct sales consultants.
We learned about different make-up application techniques for foundation, eyes, cheeks, and lips.
The topic of interest to us all was eyebrows. Four of us had already started treatment, and one had yet to begin. While microblading might be a way to address sparse chemo brows, it’s not an option once chemotherapy has begun due to the risk of infection. (I can barely put eyedrops in my eye and I don’t wear contacts, so the thought of microblading kinda scares me.)
Our instructor shared that every kit included the IT Cosmetics Brow Power Universal Eyebrow Pencil. The skin tones in the room ranged from fairest of fair to me, so we were all bit skeptical about the Universal-ness of the Universal Eyebrow Pencil. One of the ladies uses the product regularly and assured us that if she can draw in an eyebrow, then we could all do it.
As we oohed and aahed over the product, we were sold on the Universal-ness of the product. Upon further research, I learned that for every Brow Power pencil and Love Fully brush, IT Cosmetics makes a contribution to the Look Good, Feel Better program.
Before cancer, my minimum leave the house unless I’m going to exercise make-up routine included moisturizer and eyeliner. So I was happy to find the Rimmel Exaggerate Waterproof Eye Definer in my bag goodness. It’s a thin, soft eyeliner with a built-in sharpener and smudger. I’ll definitely be purchasing it in other colors.
We all left with amazing looking brows, because our instructor was sure we left that hands-on knowledge. I definitely left with a new perspective of how make-up can impact how we present ourselves to the world. Even though we can’t necessarily control how our bodies respond to the cancer treatment, we can control the make-up techniques we use, which does help us feel better.
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