Can Makeup Serve as the Foundation for a Better Life?

I’m not saying people who use frosted eye shadow should be thrown in jail, but bad makeup is definitely up there on my list of antisocial behaviors.

It’s not on par with armed robbery or homicide, of course, but if fewer women used Too Too Blue on their upper lids, the world would be a better place.

A better-looking place, anyway.

I don’t know how you would actually test this theory. I guess you’d have to find a concentrated population of offenders--a local high school, maybe--and institute behavioral modification procedures in which girls would be forced to look at juxtapositions of bad makeup and Edvard Munch’s “The Scream.”

Or maybe the local women’s jail, whose inmates have most certainly committed--among other transgressions--mayhem with Maybelline.

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So here we are, on a weekday afternoon, at Sybil Brand Institute. It’s pretty quiet. Attorneys confer with clients in a cramped visiting room. At the other end of the jail, in a mint-green auditorium (disastrous color for eye shadow, by the way), 50 inmates sit at small chairs with attached desks.

In their pale blue jail duds, which seem to have been modeled on surgical scrubs, they look like a bunch of orderlies. They range in age and race. Some look hard and mean. Others, angelic.

Women in jail fascinate me. What did they do wrong? How did they end up here?

On each desk is a basic makeup kit: foundation, sponge, eye shadow, eyebrow pencil and mascara.

At the end of this 90-minute session, the women will be able to keep only the mascara, a gift from makeup-maven-to-the-stars and infomercial queen Victoria Jackson, who is standing in the middle of the room, explaining why makeup is important.

Jackson, soft-spoken, good-natured and seemingly devoid of Hollywood attitude, has been teaching Sybil Brand inmates makeup techniques for a couple of years. She used to visit once a month, but stopped after her second child was born 10 months ago. Last week was her first time back in a year, so all the faces were fresh. More or less.

Jackson’s sister, Audrey Honig, is director of psychological services for the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department. It was Honig who helped Jackson navigate official channels.

“Victoria was doing work with cancer patients,” Honig said. “What she was doing was building confidence and self-esteem, and our inmate population certainly would benefit from that. It’s a benefit to the organization, too--the inmates are happier, more content. . . . So I put her together with our people.”

During one of Jackson’s first visits, the magnitude of her challenge became clear when she asked the women what they were trying to achieve with their makeup.

What, she wondered, were they trying to say?

One inmate, a hooker, raised her hand.

“Yes?” Jackson said.

“Pull over.”

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Mariana Valles is a 36-year-old mother of five children--18, 17, 3-year-old twins and an infant. She says she is a heroin addict and is serving a 90-day jail term for prostitution, and has two months to go on her sentence.

She has striking, thick eyebrows, dark eyes and a full mouth. She has gone to town with the Victoria Jackson makeup in front of her.

“It’s true,” she says. “You feel better when you look good.”

In the past month, Valles says, she has become proficient at laying tile and thinks she may be able to earn $9.50 an hour doing that when she gets out--if she can keep clean and resist the easy money of the street.

Unfortunately, she has disregarded Jackson’s advice to use restraint when applying blush and mascara. Old habits die hard.

Jackson suggests that the goal of eye shadow is not to see how many colors can be crammed between the brows and lashes--one or two will do. Three shades and you’re out.

Also, she adds, “this thing with razors” some of the women do to their eyebrows is not especially tasteful.

When Jackson tells the women to use foundation to “erase the mistakes you’ve made on your face,” I can only wonder whether learning to apply makeup can help them erase the mistakes they’ve made with their lives, too.

Later, I ask Jackson if she has any illusions that good makeup can change the world.

“Well,” she replies a little wearily, “if you can get some of the women to stop shaving their eyebrows, it’s worth it. It certainly gives a different message when they go out for a job interview.”

It’s tempting to dismiss Jackson’s visit as a nice way to pass an afternoon if you happen to be in jail. But the fundamental lesson she imparts is right on the money: How you look has a lot to do with how you’re treated.

And if you look like you value yourself, maybe someone else will value you, too.

Robin Abcarian’s column is published Wednesdays and Sundays.