Illness can rob you of more than your health. It can take away your dignity and sense of self-worth. It can make people not want to touch you, whether its because they fear that your illness is catching or are afraid that in such a fragile state, a hug could somehow break something. And, if youre spending a lot of time in a hospital bed, it can steal beauty from your immediate world.
The Lipstick Project puts beauty and touch back into the lives of people who are in the hospital or hospice.
Volunteer hairstylists, estheticians, makeup artists and registered massage therapists bring spa services to the bedside.
There comes a time when a fire-engine red manicure is exactly what the doctor ordered, founder and executive director Leigh Boyle told the sold-out crowd at a recent Public Salon at Vancouver Playhouse.
The projects name was inspired by a story from the end of the Second World War, told in the diary of a British army lieutenant whose task was to liberate the Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp.
It took a little time to get used to seeing men women and children collapse as you walked by them and to restrain oneself from going to their assistance. One had to get used early to the idea that the individual just did not count. One knew that five hundred a day were dying and that five hundred a day were going on dying for weeks before anything we could do would have the slightest effect, wrote Lieutenant Colonel Mervin Willett Gonin DSO in his diary.
In the midst of such constant horror, a box of lipstick was delivered to the camp, whether intentionally or by mistake. This was not at all what we men wanted, we were screaming for hundreds and thousands of other things and I dont know who asked for lipstick, wrote Gonin, who soon discovered that the lipsticks arrival was the action of genius, sheer unadulterated brilliance.
I believe nothing did more for those internees than the lipstick, he wrote. Women lay in bed with no sheets and no nightie but with scarlet red lips; you saw them wandering about with nothing but a blanket over their shoulders, but with scarlet red lips. I saw a woman dead on the post mortem table and clutched in her hand was a piece of lipstick. At last someone had done something to make them individuals again; they were someone, no longer merely the number tattooed on the arm. At last they could take an interest in their appearance. That lipstick started to give them back their humanity.
As Boyle says, its a story of humanity restored, a reminder that beauty exists.
Men and women who are in the final stages of their lives, in hospitals or hospices, need these reminders. Many of them are well aware of how many days or weeks they have before they shed their mortal coil. They are all navigating the tricky experience of closing out their lives.
Someone who is dying is accustomed to being poked and prodded by others. But this is not the kind of touch that promotes human connection and lets them know theyre not alone. We touch our clients with care and confidence and strength. We work with people in their last days and invest in the experience of being alive. We help our clients feel themselves again because it might be the last time they feel this way.
Boyle unofficially started the project in 2010 when she was working with an education-based Ethiopian NGO. One day she visited a hospital for women who suffered from obstetric fistula after childbirth. Chronically incontinent, they suffer physically and psychologically, often ostracized by society. When she said she wanted to volunteer, the hospital said that if she could think of anything to make the women feel better, her efforts would be welcome. She started to give them manicures and hand massages. And the women loved it.
Back in Vancouver as a development officer at Union Gospel Mission, Boyles volunteer-based project is now an official non-profit society that welcomes volunteers for a variety of roles as well as donations.
You can also support The Lipstick Project by purchasing holiday postcards by Hong Kong based artist, Beverly Chan. You can purchase a pack of six postcards for $5..
