Helping Them Face the World

Lexi Marman held up a hand mirror and examined the glamorous face staring back at her. She paused, then smiled broadly at the friends who awaited her reaction.

“Oh, cool!” the 18-year-old Cal State Northridge freshman said, as she ran a finger gently over her lightly shadowed eyelids. “That’s beautiful.”

Natasha Ofili, Jessica Guarino, Christina Jimenez and Brianne Burger agreed.

“This is so professional,” Ofili said.

“I love my fresh, clean face,” Jimenez chimed in.

The five CSUN freshmen--four of them contestants in the upcoming Miss Deaf CSUN pageant--were taking a breather from their hair and makeup lessons, offered free by Barbara Gauthier, owner of the Gauthier Total Image Spa in Sherman Oaks.

The Valley Village resident and her staff are contributing their time and services to the deaf or hard-of-hearing students, who will display their creative talents and extemporaneous speaking skills during the April 24 pageant at the Greater Los Angeles Council on Deafness building in Eagle Rock.

“We get more out of this than they do,” said Gauthier as she experimented with Ofili’s lipstick color. “They’re such wonderful young women. I want to help them to strive to be their best.”

The four contestants and their pageant coordinator were seated around a table at the salon on a recent Friday afternoon, comparing notes about dress colors and hairdos.

One by one, Gauthier and makeup artist Kristin Mackey called the girls over to the makeup chair, where they learned to accentuate their eyes and cheekbones with the stroke of a brush and a dab of color.

“It’s amazing, during the pageant, to sit in the auditorium with hundreds of people, completely quiet, yet supporting the contestants with hand movements overhead,” Gauthier said. “I loved watching the girls dance to the beat of the music. They act by signing. It’s incredible.”

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Gauthier, who communicates with her hard-of-hearing clients through a TTY (teletypewriter) machine and a computer, heard about the pageant two years ago when a CSUN client asked her to lend her beauty expertise the day of the pageant.

The Canada native happily obliged, opening the door to a deaf clientele that has grown to about 25.

“We’ve had two or three CSUN winners who’ve gone on to become Miss Deaf America,” said Herb Larson, director of CSUN’s National Center on Deafness. “We can’t express how grateful we are for the time and energy Barbara gives the girls.”

Gauthier, the married mother of two grown daughters, credits her generous, community-minded father with instilling in her a strong desire to reach out to others.

“You can receive only if you offer an outstretched hand,” Gauthier said.

Gauthier put the finishing touches on Ofili, then grabbed her Polaroid camera and snapped a photograph of each of the contestants. They will return in two weeks to meet with their hair stylists, who will design hairdos to complement their makeup.

The stylists and Gauthier said they can’t wait to arrive on pageant day, curling irons and lipsticks in hand. The young women wouldn’t have it any other way.

“It’s incredibly generous of Barbara to help us,” Burger said. “Without her, we’d be even more nervous on pageant day. She’s awesome.”