‘Permanent Makeup’ Raises Some Eyebrows in Torrance

To Irene Hatate, every face is a blank canvas waiting for an artist’s colors.

Under her tiny, pigment-loaded needles, missing or faded eyebrows come to life. Pale, colorless mouths glow ripe with color. Shy, retiring eyes seem larger, commanding new attention.

“Permanent makeup,” as the process is called, has won growing acceptance in the beauty world.

In the eyes of Torrance law, however, Hatate is no different than a tattoo artist etching dragons and butterflies on customers. And in Torrance, tattooing is illegal.

Last month, city officials sent Hatate and permanent makeup artists for two other beauty salons a letter ordering them to stop doing the procedure.

Hatate, who now keeps her technique honed by practicing on turkey drumsticks, has enlisted the aid of an attorney friend to ask the city to either change the law or exempt her from it.

On Tuesday, the City Council will hear her case and decide whether Torrance’s 1959 tattooing law should be changed to catch up with modern beauty trends.

Hatate, who says she has traveled around the country studying various techniques, says she does not think of herself as a common tattooist. “It is not a simple type of work,” she said. “It takes a lot of technique and understanding of technique.”

Hatate said the procedure accounts for half her income and, without it, she is not certain she will be able to stay in business in Torrance.

“Irene is probably one of the most qualified people in the business,” said Pati Pavlik of Laguna Beach, president of the newly created National Cosmetic Tattooing Assn.

Popular in the Orient for centuries, the procedure began to attract interest in the West about five years ago, when ophthalmologists and a handful of cosmetologists began advertising it here.

Permanent makeup is applied with extremely fine needles, either loaded onto a pigment gun or dipped in pigment, which slip color into the skin beneath eyebrows, around lips and along the eyelash line. Cosmetologists use a topical anesthetic but doctors often inject a local anesthetic before the procedure begins.

Women who have all three areas tattooed--at a minimum cost of $250 per area--appear to be wearing subtle makeup 24 hours a day.

Although used by women who simply want to avoid reapplying makeup every morning, the technique has proved particularly popular among both men and women who have lost their eyebrows due to burns or accidents, arthritis victims who cannot grip makeup tools or whose hands are too unsteady to apply the color, and women who are losing their sight or are allergic to regular makeup.

In some cases, women who have undergone mastectomies go to permanent makeup artists to restore color in breast reconstructions.

Eye doctors and plastic surgeons praise permanent makeup, when properly done, as an excellent way to restore a damaged face or enhance a plain one. Unfortunately, done by an inexperienced person, the procedure could lead to eye damage, infection, allergic reaction or a host of other complications, according to doctors and cosmetologists.

State cosmetology regulators, however, say the Legislature has yet to create laws allowing them or any other state agency to oversee permanent makeup artists. As a result, they say, it is all but impossible to determine who has been properly trained to do the procedure.

“We have very few complaints,” said Denise Ostton, executive officer of the state Board of Cosmetology. “Because it is unregulated, we’re less likely to hear complaints because they don’t know where to go.”

Hatate, who opened her Torrance salon 20 years ago, has been offering permanent makeup for about three years.

Ben Murdoch, Torrance’s revenue administrator, said he sent out the letter after a cosmetologist requested a business license for a salon that would have offered permanent makeup.

“We said, ‘No, it’s tattooing, and tattooing isn’t allowed in Torrance,’ ” Murdoch said. “She produced these advertisements and said, ‘It’s already being done.’ That’s when we sent out a letter saying, ‘Cease and desist.’ ”

The city’s order, mailed to the three Torrance beauty salons named in those advertisements, “was rather shocking because I had been doing it and advertising it without any reaction,” Hatate said. “It just never occurred to me that we were doing tattooing.”

Li-Yuan (Lisa) Koo, who had been offering permanent makeup at the Rolling Hills Beauty Salon until Torrance ordered her to stop, said her difficulty speaking English prevents her from challenging the city’s order.

Koo said she spent “several hundred hours” learning the specialized tattooing techniques in Japan and Taiwan before she began practicing the craft here a year ago.

“I guarantee it for a lifetime and I guarantee to do it a second time if they want it darker, but now I can’t do that second time,” she said.

Tacheng Liao, whose parents opened the Cosmetic Beauty Center on Pacific Coast Highway two months ago, said the family had a store in Ecuador until recently that attracted as many as four customers each day.

Their new salon specializes in permanent makeup. The city’s letter, which effectively shut down their business, arrived four weeks ago.

Torrance officials never asked specifically what kind of cosmetology services the salon would offer when they granted its license, Liao said. His parents, who were not aware they could appeal the city’s ruling, hope to move the salon outside of the Torrance city limits.

Council members declined to comment on the issue until staff members have briefed them on the subject.

“We’re not even a port town, so I don’t know why this law was passed,” Mayor Katy Geissert said. “I just don’t know enough about it.”

Ostton said the state will conduct hearings in January about possible future regulation of the procedure.

The cosmetology board recently asked the state’s Medical Quality Assurance Board to issue a legal opinion on whether permanent makeup is a medical service, subject to medical regulation.

“Right now, it’s something that doesn’t fall under anybody’s jurisdiction,” Ostton said. “Done properly and done well, it’s fabulous. The problem is--and this is where the board is focusing its attention--there is a tremendous amount of risk.”

Dr. Albert Davis, one of several Torrance ophthalmologists who continue to offer permanent eyeliner as part of their practice, said he considers the tattooing to be a medical procedure.

“Picture, if you will, a rapidly vibrating needle less than a millimeter from the eyeball on the edge of the lid in a person who is not anesthetized,” Davis said. “It’s fraught with danger. One false move and that thing could puncture the eye.”

Murdoch said he did not order the doctors to stop doing the procedure because he believed the city’s anti-tattooing law would be nullified by state medical regulations. Assistant City Atty. Liz Clark said she is still researching that issue.

Pavlik of the National Cosmetic Tattooing Assn. said she hopes the city will recognize permanent makeup as a valuable service.

“The people we see--the cancer patients, the people with scars, the people with arthritis--they have a need to be here and when somebody has a need like that, the word ‘tattoo’ and all its negative connotations goes right out the window,” Pavlik said.