Fernando Sanz |
Valladolid (EFE).- Cosmetics not only draw contours and cover imperfections, but creams and makeup can also be used to fight cancer, gain confidence and self-esteem.
These are the workshops of the ‘Look pretty, you’ll feel better’ program, organized by the Stanpa Foundation with the mediation of the Spanish Association Against Cancer (AECC).
56 hospitals participate in them, through which nearly 10,000 patients have passed since this initiative was launched ten years ago, with the aim of using creams and makeup to combat cancer.
This is the case of Laura Rodríguez, 29 years old and affected by breast cancer, who arrives at the Río Hortega University Hospital in Valladolid to meet a dozen participants in this activity, in this case, on the other side of a large screen.
The online modality has been extended after the covid-19 pandemic by having to remove the mask to receive beauty care.
Creams and makeup
Laura noticed a lump in her chest when she was getting a sternum massage as part of the care derived from a previous traffic accident and, after the pertinent tests, she was diagnosed with breast cancer on November 23 of last year.
“It was relatively quick, in twenty days,” Laura explained to EFE, adding that it was at the day hospital, where cancer patients are monitored, where she received a call from the AECC and they offered her “the paper” to sign up. to the workshop given by the Stanpa volunteer, María José Treceño.
You can’t talk about cancer, only about beauty
“The only thing that they are not allowed to do is talk about the disease or the treatment, because here they only come to talk about beauty and getting pretty,” Treceño details.
At the same time, he emphasizes that with these tips they not only seek to teach the participants to take care of their skin or hide the side effects of medications or chemotherapy, “but also to have a different time.”
“May your moment of beauty be yours,” Treceño proposes a few minutes after starting the workshop, in which, with a free cosmetic bag that all participants receive, they learn about facial hygiene, skin hydration and sun protection. Although the most important thing is to gain confidence and improve the sociability of patients.
Online training is a double-edged sword for patients since technological barriers keep middle-aged and older users away, especially those affected by breast cancer, since in this pathology “hair loss may occur at fifteen days.”
The positive side is underlined in statements to EFE by the hospital volunteer coordinator of the AECC Valladolid, Tania González, who assures that with the face-to-face modality “the groups were a little smaller, about seven people, but in online format we open the possibility of doing so in other hospitals and between twelve and fifteen women are usually connected from their homes”.
“We were the ones with the creams”
In Valladolid, where the project was installed in 2013, the university hospital offers these workshops on a monthly basis as one more part of the treatment. However, its promoters had to deal with misunderstanding in its early years: “we were the ones with the little creams, who came to get their makeup done, to ‘paint themselves’,” recalls Treceño.
A memory replaced by that of the ovation when they expanded these formations to a second hospital in Valladolid, the Clínico Universitario. A feeling shared by the director of ‘Look pretty, you’ll feel better’ from the Stanpa Foundation, María Muñoz, who highlights the role of the head of oncology at the Gregorio Hospital, Miguel Martín, a pioneer in hosting this proposal.
Muñoz explains that this social responsibility program is the heir to ‘Look good, feel better’, which has been underway for a quarter of a century in the United States, and that in its Spanish version 20 employers and 12 collaborators from the cosmetics sector support it. EFE