Its the last Beauty Night before Christmas at the Downtown Eastside Womens Centre and the busiest night of the year.
Women from the neighbourhood crowd inside the violet-walled rectangular room for a foot massage, an acupuncture treatment or a picture with Santa and a stocking stuffed with luxuries such as brand-name cosmetics. The mood is chatty and vibrant until the cops show up. Then you could cut the tension with a knife.
The officers are plain-clothed and have no business here; they just need assistance getting into the building next door but the women are on edge. One glares with palpable hatred as she changes the diaper of her infant daughter.
Theres a lot of mistrust in this room. And for many of these women Christmas is a far cry from the most wonderful time of the year.
It can be pretty challenging. Theres always these expectations from when youre a kid where Christmas is supposed to be happy-joy-joy, says Beauty Night founder Caroline Macgillivray. Its not for everybody.
Macgillivrays no stranger to the dark side of the holidays. Her mother passed away when she was just 20 years old and for years the pain was particularly acute at Christmas. For a long time I actually made sure I was always working on Christmas so I didnt have to go through it. When I started Beauty Night and was able to do something really fun at Christmas, it actually healed me in a lot of ways.
What started 11 years ago when Macgillivary, then a volunteer in the DTES, butchered some poor womans hair is now a crucial resource in the DTES, providing personal care options such as massages, manicures and haircuts to women in the neighbourhood four nights a week twice at the Womens Centre and twice doing outreach at shelters and social services agencies.
Down here, where stories of lost childhoods, family tragedy and unfathomable trauma seem to be a dime a dozen, Beauty Night becomes even more important during the holidays when, more than manicures, women need community and support.
Volunteers DJ Joe and Beatrice Starr know the feeling well. Both are bracing for the next week, one that marks the anniversary of the deaths of several loved ones in their lives. For Starr, the season also conjures memories of having her children apprehended, her struggle to win them back and a 20-year fight with crack-cocaine addiction. For Joe, it brings back recollections of sexual and physical abuse, a bout with serious illness as well as feelings of isolation and depression. Around here, thats the norm, and the two are out tonight to try and provide some respite from the ghosts that surface for many women this time of year.
I went through depression. I see it in a lot of the girls down here, says Starr, picking at her iridescent nail polish. When youre feeling depressed the caring stops and you just dont look after yourself anymore. Its times like that when a stocking stuffed with tokens of affection, some perfume and shampoo, can make all the difference, she says.
For Joe, who sports a heart on her cheek the only makeup shell deign to wear the makeover portion of Beauty Night barely registers on her radar. All this stuff is too girlie for me. Its the prospect of providing support to other women that helps her deal with her own demons.
And by time the event starts to wind down, around 8pm, many of the women about 100 or so who have cycled through are looking a bit more refreshed but also resolved as they trickle out into the street. Beauty Night takes a hiatus for the next week and many will be on their own, on the streets or in the SRO rooms that seem even smaller this time of year. But theres another Beauty Night waiting for them on the other end where they can count on finding some creature comforts, community and a sympathetic ear all year long.
