Trying to Save Face : Group Aims for Cosmetic Tattooing Standards

As owner of Permanent Eyes in Laguna Beach, Pati Pavlik has seen effects of cosmetic tattooing that aren’t pretty.

One woman came to her in desperation after another permanent cosmetics technician lined her lips in what looked like black ink.

“I looked like the bride of Frankenstein’s monster,” says the woman, who asked to remain anonymous.

Pavlik suspects that the technician failed to properly clean the tube that held the pigment and that residue from a previous eyeliner job turned the lip liner from red to black.

Such ugly mishaps have become increasingly common as more people turn to permanent cosmetics to enhance their looks.

Pavlik has seen everything from crooked eyeliner to “lips that made one woman look like she’d (just) eaten a Popsicle.” In the past five years, she says, she’s noticed an increase in botched jobs by inexperienced technicians who often jump into the business before they are qualified.

To clean up the industry, Pavlik and Denise Tibbs, vice president of Permanent Eyes, formed the National Cosmetic Tattooing Assn., which will hold its first convention Sunday and Monday at the Airporter Inn Hotel in Irvine. The association’s goal is to teach permanent cosmetic techniques and establish health and safety standards.

“We’re afraid if there are no standards, (the government will) shut down our industry,” Pavlik says.

In untrained hands, permanent cosmetics can have unsightly, even dangerous, results. A slip of the needle can put out an eye, destroy eyelashes or scar delicate skin, Pavlik says.

“I’ve watched some people work. It’s dangerous,” Tibbs says. “I want to run and hide.”

Applying permanent cosmetics isn’t like painting on paper or applying makeup.

“You need to have a good knowledge of skin and muscles,” Pavlik says. For instance, skin swells as the needle implants pigment, so trying to straighten a line in the midst of a procedure can result in crooked lips or eyeliner after the skin returns to normal.

Technicians also need to be skilled makeup artists. Placing the brows too close to the nose, for instance, can “close down the face,” Pavlik says, while drawing the lip liner too far out on the corner of the mouth can make one look like a clown.

“Eyeliner goes in the lash line. It does not go in the wet tissue and it does not go below,” says Sue Church, a Fountain Valley woman who performs permanent cosmetic procedures for a Newport Beach plastic surgeon and a Santa Ana dermatologist. Church offers advanced training in permanent cosmetics.

“I’ve seen (technicians) enclose the eye in black pigment. It makes the client look like a raccoon,” Church says. “I’ve seen lip liner that’s not placed on the lip line, and eyebrows that look like Groucho Marx’s.”

Some mistakes are permanent; others can be erased with a laser or concealed by tattooing a lighter color over the pigment.

Beckman Laser Institute in Irvine currently has 10 patients receiving laser treatment to remove permanent cosmetics. In most cases, patients were unhappy because “the (makeup) lines were uneven or one would be thicker than the other,” says Joyce Zeiler, nurse director for the institute. Although the tattoos are difficult to remove, “all of the cases look promising,” Zeiler says.

To help hide her customer’s black lip liner, Tibbs applied white pigment over the area, which lightened but did not eliminate the mistake. The woman now hopes to have the tattoo removed by laser.

“I wish I’d never had this done,” she says ruefully.

For Kay Thomas of Fullerton, undergoing a permanent cosmetics procedure at the hands of an inexperienced technician was “torture.”

“I was under the needle eight hours,” she recalls, while the technician attempted to apply permanent eyeliner. A few days later, the color faded--the technician hadn’t injected the pigment deep enough into the skin. Thomas then went to Tibbs at Permanent Eyes.

“She had the eyeliner done in 15 minutes,” she says. Thomas was so pleased with the results she had Tibbs “pencil” in her brows.

Thomas, who is allergic to cosmetics, can now wear “makeup” all the time without worrying about her skin swelling and turning red.

“Before, I couldn’t wear makeup more than three hours,” she says. “I couldn’t go out on a long date. I’d have to ask, ‘How long do you think this dinner is going to take?’ ”

If done properly, permanent cosmetics can have other benefits, Pavlik says.

Technicians can hide scars caused by surgery, accidents or birth. Often, a mark that has caused a lifetime of embarrassment can be concealed in minutes.

“We know how to trick the eye,” Tibbs says.

To enhance the face, technicians not only apply eyeliner, lip liner and brows, but they can tattoo lipstick, blush and eye shadow.

“Brows are the most popular. People don’t like having to worry about them,” Pavlik says. Many of her customers are men who have scars through their brows and want the bare spot filled in, and women who plucked too much of their brows in their youth, when pencil-thin brows were in fashion.

Technicians can also give people with thin lips the illusion of having larger lips by adding permanent liner, Church says.

Women like the convenience of waking up in the morning with their makeup intact. Church, who has had permanent eyeliner for more than three years, says:

“You can be active in sports and your eyeliner won’t smudge. You can go swimming. You can get up in the morning and look great. It’s also perfect for people who have oily skin and constantly need to reapply makeup.”

Prices for the procedures vary greatly from place to place. Permanent Eyes charges $300 for brows, while others charge as much as $1,500.

In addition, choosing a reputable technician can be tricky. Even people who have paid higher prices to have their faces tattooed in a doctor’s office have come away with poor results, Pavlik says. There’s no state certificate needed to practice permanent cosmetics.

To protect themselves, Pavlik suggests clients ask about a technician’s training and experience before going under the needle. They can also check a technician’s references and ask to see a portfolio of previous work.

She says the new association is working with the American Board of Intradermal Cosmetics in El Segundo to offer certification exams to technicians, which will be offered at the convention.

Others recommend simply staying away from permanent cosmetics.

“Anything permanent is not a good thing,” Zeiler says. “Our culture changes, our fashions change. Today everyone wants full lips. Who’s to say a model with thin lips won’t come along and everyone will want those?

“Plus, it isn’t easy to get (permanent cosmetics) off and it costs a lot of money,” she says. “It’s a lot easier to buy an eyebrow pencil.”