Makeup tips make a difference

When Jean Kraft was diagnosed with breast cancer last May, her self confidence plummeted. “I didn’t look good; I didn’t feel good,” she said. “It was especially bad once my hair started falling out.”
For Kraft — and 90,000 New Yorkers diagnosed with cancer each year — feeling good returns a sense of normalcy to life, said celebrity makeup artist and beauty artist Ramy Gafni.
On February 6, Gafni showed Kraft and three other women at the Queens Hospital Center how to pencil in realistic eyebrows and other makeup tricks.
“When I went through chemo [therapy], my hair grew back remarkably straight,” Gafni said of his own bout with lymphoma.
Gafni, whose celebrity clientele includes Lindsay Lohan, Cher, and Renee Zellweger, has put out both a makeup how-to book and DVD for women with cancer but says these guides and his makeup line can be used by any woman.
The results of his afternoon makeovers left Lorraine McTigue grinning. McTigue, who had been diagnosed with colon cancer in 2003, had a relapse in 2005 and had just come off treatment a few months ago. “Oh yes, I am very happy,” she said.