The Love of Beer
For the most part, tattoos fall into one of two categories: beautiful pieces of body art depicting something a person is passionate about or terrible ideas brought on by drunkenness or poor decision-making (tribal tramp stamps, anyone?). But there’s a third category that many don’t realize is prevalent as well: survivor tattoos.
Jeanee Lusby’s been providing breast-cancer survivors with areola restorations from her La Jolla-based permanent-cosmetic center, NaturaLook. That entails tattooing nipples and areolas onto women after they’ve undergone a mastectomy, so their breasts can retain the look they had before.
Lusby creates what she calls the “allusion of protrusion” by using an instrument similar to a tattoo gun to color, shadow and build depth on the breasts to give the appearance of a nipple. She even builds areola glands to be as authentic as possible. The service is free.
For many women, it’s important to be able to look in the mirror and see the person they were prior to the trauma—and Lusby’s happy to give them that possibility.
“It’s always an emotional thing with these women,” says Lusby, who’s been doing the procedure for 12 years. “They go through so much. When they finally get to me, they’re at the end of a long journey. I’m the final step in the process. The cherry on top of the sundae.”
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