Femininity restored through permanent color

After the ravages of chemotherapy, radiation and surgery, breast cancer survivors next face the visual reality depicted by the loss of an innately feminine feature – the areola complete with its bumps, its color variations and its nipple.

Sure, guys have a similar feature – yet the emotional and psychological elements associated with the male chest isn’t the same.

Coping with the absence of a breast and all of its delicate features – a symbolic representation of all that is female from motherhood to sexuality – is often as difficult if not more so than accepting a cancer diagnosis and the straining treatment options.

So says one Valley woman specializing in areola restoration.

“For some women, having their areola restored is life changing,” Deena Wilson Williams. “It gives them back something very precious that they lost.”

She is the owner of Ageless Beauty Permanent Makeup and the Center for Permanent Makeup Training. She applies permanent makeup such as eye brows and eyeliner to clients at the Selah Salon and Spa in Wasilla. Two years into her career as a permanent makeup artist, Williams took the advanced training necessary to be certified as in areola restoration.

That was 15 years ago and since then she’s helped more than 150 breast cancer survivors regain some of what the disease took.

Williams creates the visual appearance of the areola through the injection of pigments in a manner similar to that done with tattoos. The difference is that the work Williams creates has a softer, more natural look in its color and lines, she said.

An areola is not something that should look like a round piece of pepperoni, she jests just slightly in an effort to hint at the reality of its color, shape and size variations within the female population. Symmetry is not necessarily the rule of thumb either as many women have slight or even more noticeable differences between the areola on their left and right breast. A single areola is often comprised of differing shades – a feature of Mother Nature’s creativity that Williams strives to re-create as closely as possible. Every areola has darker and lighter sections.

It goes without saying that her work is intimate.

She and the potential client spend as much time as the client needs for emotional processing of the client’s cancer experience before planning the procedure and mapping out the color scheme. Williams said she does not press clients for details, but most want to talk about their diagnosis and treatment as those things are part of what has lead them to her.

“There does become bond of some sorts that you do make with this person when you help them by providing this type of service,” Williams said. “For some women, working with me is the first time they have allowed anyone to see the scars left after their treatment. Some of these women have not even let their husbands see because they are so self-conscious. It truly is a very personal, very emotional experience.”

Williams uses pigments to create 3D areola images complete with the Montgomery glands circling the perimeter of the female areolas as well as a 3D replication of a nipple. As each woman in unique, so is her restoration plan. Some take few sessions; others are more complicated. Some women have “before” surgery photos from which Williams can mimic her work. Others ask for a completely different-looking nipple than what was there previous. For many women, simply having the “image” of a nipple present is adequate emotional restoration.

“You would have to feel it to actually be able to tell that there is not a physical nipple there,” she said.

While few folks – with the exception of the women themselves, husbands, lovers and bosom buddies girls share anything with – see the actual results of her work, Williams is not bothered that this handiwork is not on public display.

She sees its results in the smile and returned confidence of her clients.

“They do it to feel feminine again,” she said. “They do it to feel attractive after having gone through all that having breast cancer does to the body.”

Editor’s Note: Amy Armstrong is a freelance writer from Eagle River. Contact Deena Wilson Williams at Selah Salon and Spa at 907-357-3155.