She Prefers the Real Her, Flaws and All

It was a compliment really, from a child who finds it hard to understand her mother’s lack of success with the opposite sex.

Her friend’s mom has a boyfriend. Another just acquired a stepfather. Why, she wonders, can’t her own mother manage to attract a man who might be suitable stepfather material?

She studies my image in the mirror for a moment, then turns to me and utters six little words that could break a mother’s heart:

“Maybe you should get a make-over.”

*

I stifle myself before delivering the obvious rejoinder: The only make-over I need is one that makes me over with a couple fewer kids.

Then I take a look in the mirror and discover she’s right. . . . My hair, hanging limply around my face, has been stuck in that awkward growing-out stage for years. My face is beginning to look haggard, cursed with the blotches of approaching middle age.

I look like what I am: a suburban mom, too busy working and tending the kids to spend much time on hair care or beauty routine . . . pretty enough by “mom” standards, but way short of the kind of glamour that’s apt to stand out in the dating arena.

And so it becomes my mission--a sort of Mother’s Day gift to myself--to find the professional help I need to transform myself into what men of my father’s era used to call “a looker.”

It might not land my daughters a stepfather, but it could mean, at the least, fewer Friday nights home watching “Jerry Springer.”

*

Consultations with The Times’ beauty experts produce a quick consensus: The Elgin Charles Salon in Beverly Hills, where proprietor Elgin Charles tends the tresses of some of Hollywood’s top black singers and actresses.

One week later, I’m seated at Elgin’s private station--upstairs in his Santa Monica Boulevard shop--giving him carte blanche to produce a new and improved me.

I’m nervous at first, as he begins parting my hair into sections, coating each one with a dollop of shiny glop, then folding it into a wad of tinfoil pressed against my head.

The last time a hairdresser did this to me, I emerged hours later with two bright, orange patches in the middle of my head.

Elgin says we’re going for subtle, caramel-colored highlights. I remind myself silently that even the worst hair disasters eventually grow out.

I’m sitting there questioning the wisdom of this venture when things suddenly get worse. Times photographer Bob Carey shows up, armed with a battery of lenses and lights . . . all aimed at capturing me on film at my absolute worst.

The men stop me as I reach for my makeup bag. No mascara or blush, not even a touch of lipstick allowed. . . . In the name of journalistic integrity, I need to be completely unadorned, Carey says.

Better that the “before” shots be as ugly as possible, Elgin chimes in. Makes the “after” shots look even better, you know.

I think briefly about jumping out a nearby window--tinfoil plastered to my head and all--rather than appear this way for a million readers of The Times to see.

*

I sit as Elgin checks and rechecks, then brushes on more goo, waiting, he says, for the color to “lift.” I glimpse what look like blond strands in the midst of my dark brown hair.

His assistant, Maria, shampoos my hair, then wheels me back over to the mirror and uncovers my head.

There are no orange patches, no neon brights. Just shimmery, brown highlights glistening in my shiny, wet hair. It is beautiful. I am amazed.

It takes just minutes, it seems, for Elgin to cut my hair and blow it dry, then roll it with a hot iron into giant, loopy curls that make me look like I’m wearing hair rollers the size of soup cans.

Then it’s off to makeup . . . downstairs to the main salon, to a chair in front of a giant picture window, facing one of Beverly Hills’ busiest boulevards.

Good light for the photographer, they tell me. Big laughs for everyone walking by outside, I think.

But makeup artist Pamela Kaye is so smooth, she makes me forget the spectacle I’ve become. She blends and rubs, blends and brushes. . . . She spends more time working on my eyes alone than I spend most mornings on my hair and face combined.

“You have nice lashes,” she says. “I only need to add a few . . . to enhance your eyes.”

Add a few? We’re talking false eyelashes. I have never--not even the Halloween I dressed as Elvira--worn fake eyelashes. I expect to look in the mirror and find Tammy Faye Bakker staring back.

When she’s done, Elgin comes down for the final comb-out, brushing and fluffing my hair into a giant, coppery-red bouffant. He wraps up with enough hair spray to keep my hairstyle intact in the midst of a tornado.

They finish--more than four hours after we began--and spin me around to look in the mirror. I hardly recognize the woman staring back.

*

The hairstyle is a little stiff and froufrou for my taste, the lipstick a tad too dark and dramatic, the fake eyelashes too . . . well fake.

But I am prettier, more glamorous, than I have ever been. My new hair color is gorgeous beyond my wildest dreams. My face looks as smooth and flawless as those models’ on TV.

I can hardly stop checking the mirror in my car on my ride downtown. Is that really me with those sultry eyes, that lustrous hair?

I imagine that people are staring at me and wonder what they see. Have we gone too far? The makeup, the hair, the eyelashes. . . . I feel too extreme for even glitzy L.A.

The reality is nobody gives me a second glance.

I stroll into my office feeling self-conscious and braced for the worst. Teasing, laughter, rude remarks. . . . But no one seems to notice me, which could mean I still look like the everyday me or I look so bizarre they are trying not to stare or don’t know what to say.

What’s the right reaction to a make-over anyway?

“What have you done? You look so much better!” would flatter me, but imply I looked really bad before. But not noticing my $275 transformation seems even worse.

Finally a reaction, but not what I expect.

“Hey, fake eyelashes,” a colleague says. “Cool.”

*

I call home from the car to tell my kids of my make-over.

“No, it’s not like on TV. My clothes are the same,” I tell them. Just different hair and a different face.

Danielle--whose offhand comment launched this whole business--bursts into tears.

“Will you ever be able to get your old face back?” she asks, her voice choked with guilt and fear.

It’s not plastic surgery, I reassure her. Just makeup . . . lots and lots of makeup. It’ll all come off with soap and water.

They run out to see me when I get home, and greet me with smiles that melt my heart. “You look beautiful, Mommy,” the little one tells me. The oldest starts angling for a make-over of her own. And relief shows clearly on Danielle’s face.

“You still look like yourself,” she says. “Only pretty.”

As we head upstairs, I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror. And, for a moment, I wish I were in the arms of a man, spinning around a dance floor someplace, captivating the room.

Instead, I head for the bathroom, let the girls pluck off my false eyelashes and run hot water to wash my face.

Danielle watches in fascination as I scrub, her forehead creased with worry lines. My thick, brown makeup disappears, and I see in the mirror a smile cross her face.

“Your freckles are back,” she says with glee, throwing her arms around my waist.

Yes, indeed, my freckles are still there. And so are the dark circles under my eyes. And the dent in my forehead from the night I banged into a door in the dark, rushing to comfort a crying child.

All the things that make me Mommy are still in place, and somehow the loss of that glamorous veneer comforts me.

The make-over was nice, I tell the girls, as we watch TV in bed while they take turns brushing my hair. It was fun to see what I could be . . . but even better to return to who I am.

* Sandy Banks’ column is published Mondays and Fridays. Her e-mail address is sandy.banks@latimes.com.