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Why women with cancer are traveling to Baton Rouge for this beauty program


In a shopping center off Florida Boulevard sits a boutique that has been helping women feel beautiful for more than 30 years.

Ruth Addison started The Total Woman Boutique in 1982, but she has been fitting women in bras and wigs for more than 50 years. Her daughter, Sherri Spillman, and her granddaughter, Amy Pinell, help run the mastectomy shop that specializes in custom-fitted items.

It’s also the site of the Look Good Feel Better workshop, a free monthly program from the American Cancer Society that teaches beauty techniques to women undergoing cancer treatment.

Addison started the program at her boutique in 1991 while she was serving on the ACS board of directors. Her store is the only other local place the workshop is offered besides the ACS branch.

“Women aren’t handicapped just because they’ve had breast cancer,” Addison says. “We really want to be here for the community and provide a bright and supportive atmosphere for women going through [cancer].”

Women come from as far as 150 miles away for the boutique’s workshop, Addison says.

As a certified cosmetologist, Pinell has been running the workshop for about seven years. But she knows the store far beyond the confines of a regular workplace. She grew up in her grandmother’s shop, coming here with her mother and spending countless summers and days after school there.

“Being able to come behind my grandmother, following in her footsteps for her vision she always had, is really rewarding,” Pinell says.

Workshop participants are given full makeup kits worth about $300 from the ACS. Pinell shows the women how their daily beauty routines may change with the effects of cancer treatment. For instance, moisturizing before applying makeup is important, because the skin will be especially sensitive.

Many patients may lose their hair during treatment, including their eyebrows. Teaching women how to fill in or draw their eyebrows is Pinell’s favorite part of the class.

Today, as they practice using an eyebrow-drawing tool, Pinell demonstrates the technique on 82-year-old Concepcion DeVia.
DeVia looks in a mirror at her finished eyebrows and says, “Now I get [a] boyfriend,” drawing laughter from the entire table.

DeVia’s daughter, Mariam Rifai, joins her at the workshop and can’t help tearing up. “It made her feel good just to see her face all made up, and it made me feel great to see her that way,” Rifai says.

The class is intimate, and women who began the two-hour program as strangers laugh and exclaim to one another, “You look beautiful!” by the workshop’s end. lookgoodfeelbetter.org


This article was originally published in the September 2017 issue of 225 Magazine.