When you look good, you feel good.
For many women going through cancer, it’s difficult to feel beautiful when dealing with the side effects of illness and treatment. Look Good Feel Better is an organization that teaches women beauty techniques to help them look and feel their best while they are undergoing treatment. Many of the volunteers are experienced beauty professionals who are trained hairstylists, aestheticians, makeup artists and nail technicians.
As Look Good Feel Better (LGFB) celebrates its 25th anniversary, we caught up with Linda Whitehurst, volunteer and beauty expert, and Geralyn Lucas, a women’s health advocate and author of “Why I Wore Lipstick to My Mastectomy,” a memoir about her battle with breast cancer, which was later turned into a TV movie.
Make It Better: Geralyn, you’re a breast cancer survivor yourself and you wrote a book titled “Why I Wore Lipstick to My Mastectomy.” Tell us about your personal experience with cancer treatment and why lipstick was such an important part of it?
Geralyn Lucas: I was diagnosed 19 years ago with breast cancer. I remember the morning of my mastectomy, as it was the day after my 28th birthday. I looked down and I saw this hospital gown and it said “Property of Mount Sinai Hospital.” I realized I strangely felt like I was property of the hospital too. I wanted to do something glamorous that was really far away from the scalpel and something hopeful, so I put on bright red lipstick. It lasted through my seven-hour surgery. I’m wearing lipstick today, 19 years later, to remind me every day that I have to live up to my lipstick and remind me that every day is a gift. It really is when you’ve gone through cancer.
I’m so proud to be celebrating Look Good Feel Better’s 25th anniversary. They help women who are going through treatment have that experience that I did with my lipstick—to kind of reinvent themselves during a time when so much is being taken away.
For many women, losing their hair and other appearance-related side effects of cancer treatment can be devastating. How critical is appearance, confidence and attitude when undergoing cancer treatment?
I think when anyone is going through cancer and treatment, it’s such a lack of control. It just feels like things are being done to you and it’s such a scary time. To be able to have a program that’s so helpful, that builds community, that shows you that you’re not alone, that shows you some tips and tricks and just sort of lets you be yourself again and be comfortable is wonderful.
Going to work every day was really challenging for me because I knew that people were looking at me to see if I looked sick. To be able to look well and especially to be able to look well to my family, to have them not worry as much, was a feeling of taking control back. It’s special to look back and say, “Twenty-five years ago what was going on?” People didn’t talk about cancer as much. This program has been there to help over 900,000 women through their treatment. Wherever you are in the world, you can find a free program.
Linda, you’ve been involved with Look Good Feel Better for almost 25 years. Can you tell us about what you do with the program and how it makes a difference for women living with cancer?
Linda Whitehurst: I think it makes an amazing difference because the women come into the programs and they’re not really sure that they want to be there or they’re shy. Then they open up this fabulous makeup kit and they start pulling things out and they say, “Wow!” As we start going through it, we’re not just doing their makeup, but showing these women how to deal with the dry patches, how to deal with the dark spots, how to deal with no eyelashes and using liner to make them look like they have eyelashes, how to deal with eyebrows and showing them how to gently pencil their brows on so that they look natural.
Then we go into the wigs, turbans, scarves and hats. We show them how to wear a scarf so that it looks like a fashion statement and not just a handkerchief tied on their head. We teach them how to put a wig on. Some of the women don’t even realize (even if they’ve already purchased a wig) how to put it on, how to take care of it, and how to make it look natural. We give them tips on how to shop for a wig if they haven’t already bought a wig. We teach them how to just shine every day and move forward so they leave feeling confident and hopeful.
Look Good Feel Better has 15,400 group workshops nationwide in more than 2,500 locations. To find a workshop in your neighborhood, log onto lookgoodfeelbetter.org and type in your zip code. If you would like to volunteer, please visit the website for more information.
