Burned Beauty
Skin care heroine camouflages scars
By Rebecca Jones
Originally published in Skin Deep, July/August 2009. Copyright 2009. Associated Skin Care Professionals. All right reserved.
The occupational therapist at Memorial Hermann Burn Center in Houston initially dismissed Susanna Schulz Reed's offer to help burn patients learn to camouflage their scars with special makeup. Hiding the scars sends the wrong message, the therapist insisted. Better that the patients should learn to love themselves as they are, scars and all.
Reed, an esthetician who'd spent much of her career helping people cover up scars from acne and from surgery, just looked at the woman. "You're wearing makeup to cover your flaws," she slyly observed. "Can you imagine how you'd feel if your skin were as flawed as your patients'?"
A few days later, the chastened therapist called Reed back with a question: How soon could she start working with their burn patients?
Makeup Makes Changes
Today, Reed, who owns Houston Skin Clinic, has built her practice around corrective skin care, including acne treatments, photofacials, and ultrasonic facials. About 10 percent of her clients are burn victims recovering from serious injuries.
"It's very rewarding to see how much of a change the proper makeup can actually make," Reed says. "It sounds like a little thing, but to someone who has never known how to cover up their scarring, it's a big deal. It means a lot more than you or I could imagine."
Some of Reed's favorite clients are teenage girls. Every year, she donates her time and expertise at Camp Janus, a weeklong camp in Texas for recovering burn victims ages five to 15. She donates the makeup too. "A lot of these girls don't have any makeup because they can't afford it," Reed says. "The camouflage is more expensive than regular makeup, and you can't find it easily."
Reed says the girls she's met at Camp Janus, where she's been a volunteer for five years, have scars that go deeper than skin deep.
"A lot of these teenagers come from homes that are underprivileged, or they've been subject to abuse or neglect," she says. "A lot have very low self-esteem. Sometimes, it's hard to get them to hold their heads up long enough to put makeup on them. Their heads hang down. But just to see their faces when they finally look in the mirror is amazing. It's extremely rewarding."
Traumatic Event
Reed, who grew up in Texas, knows a thing or two about the suffering of burn victims. As a child, she, too, was severely burned, though she didn't suffer permanent scarring on her face.
"We were at our beach house, and it didn't have central heat," Reed recalls of that winter day in Port O'Connor, Texas, when she was seven. "We had floor heaters. My sister was reading me a story, and I was standing too close to the heater. This was in the days before flame-retardant children's clothing, and my pants caught on fire. My legs were burned. I'm not scarred, but it was a very traumatic event for a child."
During her teen years, Reed struggled with severe acne. "I think that's also what got me interested in camouflage makeup," she says. "I think I perfected my technique on myself back then."
As a young woman, Reed enrolled in Texas Christian University, but she acknowledges that college just wasn't her thing. She stumbled onto esthetics through a fluke.
"I would come home on the weekends and hang out with my mom," she recalls. "She would go to Neiman Marcus to get her hair done, and while I was waiting for her to finish one day, I saw these girls in white coats walking around. I asked what they did, and they told me about skin care."
In the late 1980s, full-time estheticians were quite rare. Reed was intrigued. "I told my mom that's what I wanted to do--I wanted to quit college and do what they were doing."
Her parents weren't pleased, but she eventually won them over. "I knew it was right," she says. "And ultimately, that's what really counts. 'To thine own self be true.' And I have never regretted my decision."
Sensitive but Tough
Reed transferred to San Jacinto College in Houston to study esthetics, then went on to specialize in her area of interest. She got married and moved to a small town in Louisiana, which wasn't large enough to support an esthetician. But while there, she befriended an eye doctor who did eyelid surgery. "He would send his patients to me, before and after," she recalls. "So right in the beginning of my career I got into helping people with scarring."
When she and her husband moved back to Texas, Reed went to work for a plastic surgeon, then worked for a spa. A dozen years ago, she opened her own business, Houston Skin Clinic. Then, about six years ago, she paid a call on Houston's Memorial Hermann Hospital, the home of one of the nation's leading burn centers.
"I think people who work with patients who have been burned have to be sensitive but tough," says Kim Walker, OTR, the occupational therapist whose encounter with Reed led to a partnership between the hospital and the esthetician. "They know what it's going to take for this person to get through a significant injury. It's hard work for the patients, it really is. It's a long process, and you have to be able to help them see that there's going to be light at the end of the tunnel."
"Susanna is that light," Walker says. "Some of the programs you see on TV about plastic surgeons are misleading. They make it sound like you will have normal tissue again. You won't. It will get better, but it will never be the skin you had before. But offering makeup tips and things you can apply to your skin to improve it certainly helps the patient."
Emerging Confidence
One of the first patients Walker referred to Reed was Angelica Suarez, a 14-year-old girl starting her freshman year of high school when the family's propane grill exploded while her father was barbecuing. The girl was left badly scarred on her arms, face, hands, and neck.
"She never wanted to make eye contact with people," Walker says. "Teenagers can be so fragile. A normal teenager is struggling with issues of body image, or self-esteem. If you have trauma on top of that, it can be a real challenge to get through that phase of development. Once Susanna taught Angelica how to put the makeup on, you could just see her confidence emerge. Her self-image changed. I think it really helped her through her burn recovery process."
For Reed, one of the highlights of her career was helping the girl prepare for her quinceaera, a Hispanic tradition to celebrate a girl's 15th birthday. "She had me do her makeup that night," Reed says. "Her story was just amazing to me."
Today, 20-year-old Suarez is attending college, studying to become a dental hygienist. She's become a confident young woman.
"It really was helpful," she says of the camouflage makeup techniques she learned from Reed. "Some people might say 'Oh, I don't want to go out because of my face.' But I knew I could go out, I knew I could cover up my scars. I knew people wouldn't be staring at my face or any part of my body. It just helped me be more myself."
Suarez doesn't always use the camouflage makeup now. She's finally gained enough confidence in herself that she doesn't rely on it the way she once did. "I feel a lot better about myself," she says. "I'm better every day."
A Driving Passion
When she's not at work, Reed devotes herself to her family. She and her husband, Bill, a deputy sheriff, have two daughters, Anna, 15, and Shannon, 9. She also has two stepsons who often stay with the family.
"I run," she says. "I play tennis. I'm very active. My kids run in triathlons. We kayak. We do just about anything outdoors." But work, she says, is her driving passion. Working with burn victims is a challenging specialty, not for the faint of heart. But for estheticians who might like to try working with this special-needs population, Reed has some tips.
"Get your technique down and know what you're doing," she says. "Practice using the makeup, even if just on your friends or people who aren't scarred. Become comfortable putting that makeup on, because it's a different consistency from most makeup. You have to warm it up, and it's definitely harder to work with."
Go to workshops, she advises. Watch videos. Find an experienced esthetician who can mentor you in proper technique. And don't forget to call on doctors and others who work with burn survivors. "Often, they don't even know there's help out there," Reed says. For information on Reed and the Houston Skin Clinic, visit the clinic's website, http://hsc.datastack.com/.
Rebecca Jones is a longtime newspaper reporter and freelance writer based in Denver, Colorado. Contact her at killarneyrose@comcast.net.
The occupational therapist at Memorial Hermann Burn Center in Houston initially dismissed Susanna Schulz Reed's offer to help burn patients learn to camouflage their scars with special makeup. Hiding the scars sends the wrong message, the therapist insisted. Better that the patients should learn to love themselves as they are, scars and all.
Reed, an esthetician who'd spent much of her career helping people cover up scars from acne and from surgery, just looked at the woman. "You're wearing makeup to cover your flaws," she slyly observed. "Can you imagine how you'd feel if your skin were as flawed as your patients'?"
A few days later, the chastened therapist called Reed back with a question: How soon could she start working with their burn patients?
Makeup Makes Changes
Today, Reed, who owns Houston Skin Clinic, has built her practice around corrective skin care, including acne treatments, photofacials, and ultrasonic facials. About 10 percent of her clients are burn victims recovering from serious injuries.
"It's very rewarding to see how much of a change the proper makeup can actually make," Reed says. "It sounds like a little thing, but to someone who has never known how to cover up their scarring, it's a big deal. It means a lot more than you or I could imagine."
Some of Reed's favorite clients are teenage girls. Every year, she donates her time and expertise at Camp Janus, a weeklong camp in Texas for recovering burn victims ages five to 15. She donates the makeup too. "A lot of these girls don't have any makeup because they can't afford it," Reed says. "The camouflage is more expensive than regular makeup, and you can't find it easily."
Reed says the girls she's met at Camp Janus, where she's been a volunteer for five years, have scars that go deeper than skin deep.
"A lot of these teenagers come from homes that are underprivileged, or they've been subject to abuse or neglect," she says. "A lot have very low self-esteem. Sometimes, it's hard to get them to hold their heads up long enough to put makeup on them. Their heads hang down. But just to see their faces when they finally look in the mirror is amazing. It's extremely rewarding."
Traumatic Event
Reed, who grew up in Texas, knows a thing or two about the suffering of burn victims. As a child, she, too, was severely burned, though she didn't suffer permanent scarring on her face.
"We were at our beach house, and it didn't have central heat," Reed recalls of that winter day in Port O'Connor, Texas, when she was seven. "We had floor heaters. My sister was reading me a story, and I was standing too close to the heater. This was in the days before flame-retardant children's clothing, and my pants caught on fire. My legs were burned. I'm not scarred, but it was a very traumatic event for a child."
During her teen years, Reed struggled with severe acne. "I think that's also what got me interested in camouflage makeup," she says. "I think I perfected my technique on myself back then."
As a young woman, Reed enrolled in Texas Christian University, but she acknowledges that college just wasn't her thing. She stumbled onto esthetics through a fluke.
"I would come home on the weekends and hang out with my mom," she recalls. "She would go to Neiman Marcus to get her hair done, and while I was waiting for her to finish one day, I saw these girls in white coats walking around. I asked what they did, and they told me about skin care."
In the late 1980s, full-time estheticians were quite rare. Reed was intrigued. "I told my mom that's what I wanted to do--I wanted to quit college and do what they were doing."
Her parents weren't pleased, but she eventually won them over. "I knew it was right," she says. "And ultimately, that's what really counts. 'To thine own self be true.' And I have never regretted my decision."
Sensitive but Tough
Reed transferred to San Jacinto College in Houston to study esthetics, then went on to specialize in her area of interest. She got married and moved to a small town in Louisiana, which wasn't large enough to support an esthetician. But while there, she befriended an eye doctor who did eyelid surgery. "He would send his patients to me, before and after," she recalls. "So right in the beginning of my career I got into helping people with scarring."
When she and her husband moved back to Texas, Reed went to work for a plastic surgeon, then worked for a spa. A dozen years ago, she opened her own business, Houston Skin Clinic. Then, about six years ago, she paid a call on Houston's Memorial Hermann Hospital, the home of one of the nation's leading burn centers.
"I think people who work with patients who have been burned have to be sensitive but tough," says Kim Walker, OTR, the occupational therapist whose encounter with Reed led to a partnership between the hospital and the esthetician. "They know what it's going to take for this person to get through a significant injury. It's hard work for the patients, it really is. It's a long process, and you have to be able to help them see that there's going to be light at the end of the tunnel."
"Susanna is that light," Walker says. "Some of the programs you see on TV about plastic surgeons are misleading. They make it sound like you will have normal tissue again. You won't. It will get better, but it will never be the skin you had before. But offering makeup tips and things you can apply to your skin to improve it certainly helps the patient."
Emerging Confidence
One of the first patients Walker referred to Reed was Angelica Suarez, a 14-year-old girl starting her freshman year of high school when the family's propane grill exploded while her father was barbecuing. The girl was left badly scarred on her arms, face, hands, and neck.
"She never wanted to make eye contact with people," Walker says. "Teenagers can be so fragile. A normal teenager is struggling with issues of body image, or self-esteem. If you have trauma on top of that, it can be a real challenge to get through that phase of development. Once Susanna taught Angelica how to put the makeup on, you could just see her confidence emerge. Her self-image changed. I think it really helped her through her burn recovery process."
For Reed, one of the highlights of her career was helping the girl prepare for her quinceaera, a Hispanic tradition to celebrate a girl's 15th birthday. "She had me do her makeup that night," Reed says. "Her story was just amazing to me."
Today, 20-year-old Suarez is attending college, studying to become a dental hygienist. She's become a confident young woman.
"It really was helpful," she says of the camouflage makeup techniques she learned from Reed. "Some people might say 'Oh, I don't want to go out because of my face.' But I knew I could go out, I knew I could cover up my scars. I knew people wouldn't be staring at my face or any part of my body. It just helped me be more myself."
Suarez doesn't always use the camouflage makeup now. She's finally gained enough confidence in herself that she doesn't rely on it the way she once did. "I feel a lot better about myself," she says. "I'm better every day."
A Driving Passion
When she's not at work, Reed devotes herself to her family. She and her husband, Bill, a deputy sheriff, have two daughters, Anna, 15, and Shannon, 9. She also has two stepsons who often stay with the family.
"I run," she says. "I play tennis. I'm very active. My kids run in triathlons. We kayak. We do just about anything outdoors." But work, she says, is her driving passion. Working with burn victims is a challenging specialty, not for the faint of heart. But for estheticians who might like to try working with this special-needs population, Reed has some tips.
"Get your technique down and know what you're doing," she says. "Practice using the makeup, even if just on your friends or people who aren't scarred. Become comfortable putting that makeup on, because it's a different consistency from most makeup. You have to warm it up, and it's definitely harder to work with."
Go to workshops, she advises. Watch videos. Find an experienced esthetician who can mentor you in proper technique. And don't forget to call on doctors and others who work with burn survivors. "Often, they don't even know there's help out there," Reed says. For information on Reed and the Houston Skin Clinic, visit the clinic's website, http://hsc.datastack.com/.
Rebecca Jones is a longtime newspaper reporter and freelance writer based in Denver, Colorado. Contact her at killarneyrose@comcast.net.
