Permanent makeup master and client: confrontation and compromise

Elena Onufriychuk , hairdressing master, make-up artist-stylist, international make-up master, certified make-up judge of Ukraine, bronze medalist of the World Hairdressing Championship in the Body Art nomination (Paris, 2010), a graduate of the Ukrainian branch of the international training center Bogomolov` Image School (2010)

We all meet different clients - both seriously, consciously approaching the issue of PM, and making decisions spontaneously, under the influence of fashion or a momentary whim. It is important that in any case the consequences of your interaction with them, namely the permanent makeup you performed, not only bring joy to the client herself, but also replenish your collection of works for which you are not ashamed

Any beauty treatment procedure associated with the transformation of appearance is accompanied by certain fears. These fears arise in clients about the final result (it will work ⎼ it will not work), its durability, the process of carrying out the procedure itself (will it hurt? and how much? can I endure it?). The masters of the beauty industry also have their doubts: how clearly will the client set the task? how feasible will it be? Is the degree of trust of the client to the master sufficient?

Often the success of the procedure depends on a positive psychological attitude and complete trust in the master. Having studied the fears of both sides - the client and the PM master, you can delve deeper into the process itself and understand it in more detail: what can really be redone and what will not work, what the expected result can be.

What are the clients afraid of when they come to the PM procedure and how justified are these fears?

Trends and tastes

Today's fashion is increasingly promoting natural beauty. Most clients have been asking the same question lately: would there be a clear gray or blue stripe instead of an eyebrow? The powder technique of PM eyebrows (I would rather call it in makeup ⎼ pencil, or shadow) in a healed state looks more like eyebrow makeup with decorative means and does not at all resemble tattooing. There is a small nuance: the fresh work differs from the healed one in greater contrast and clarity. And you have to be ready for this.

There are clients who are not satisfied with the result of naturalness, because no one noticed that they had done the procedure. Here it is necessary to correctly understand who wants what.

Most clients come for symmetry, which has to be perfect. I would call it "mirror eyebrows", or "stencil". Symmetry is a separate topic of appearance analytics. The structure of the two halves of the face is completely different, which can be checked with a focus mirror. Advice to clients: look carefully at the rendered form, at the form in the process of work, rising from the couch. If the puffiness of the arrows and lips does not always allow you to see the asymmetry in the process of work (there is a correction procedure for this), then the shape of the eyebrows is clearly visible. Here the nuance is this: they can be made as symmetrical as the structure of the bones of the skull allows. And it is strange to demand the impossible from the master of PM, because even a plastic surgeon cannot cope with the asymmetry of the bones.

Fears of the client and the master

The fear of pain passes very quickly, with the first touch of the needle on the skin. No stories about clients sleeping during the procedure will reduce the level of adrenaline in the blood, except perhaps a sedative and painkiller tablet before the PM. Faith in their saving action will add courage.

The client's concerns regarding the hygiene of the procedure are completely justified. My honors degree from the Faculty of Biology gave me a knowledge base in microbiology, mycology and zoology of invertebrates, and, accordingly, added a lot of fears about infection with them. Ask, ask questions ⎼ it is necessary and important! In this case, fear is often a self-preservation instinct, so there is nothing wrong with a person being afraid of something. He just wants to protect himself from this something. Often the cause of fear is a lack of information. By understanding the issue, we can free ourselves from many fears.

And what are the masters of PM afraid of or, rather, afraid of in their practice?

Let's simulate the situation: you are a PM master, a nice lady calls you on the phone with a request to refresh the once (say, four years ago) tattoo done, to add brightness to it. You write it down and find yourself in a rather difficult position in a personal meeting: Moroccan eyebrows “come” to you, which can be refreshed in one way - turn them into a monobrow with a beautiful soft shading. Agree, a difficult situation that can form quite serious concerns for the future among masters, especially beginners. Thanks to the Internet, today you can see a client’s photo in advance and decide whether to do the procedure or delete the old work first. Bright, dark tattoo works do not overlap, it is better to remove them first. And we must be prepared for the fact that this process is not one-day and time-consuming.

The agony of choice

Excitement causes the masters and the moment of determining the upcoming color. If with eyebrows and arrows the choice of color is not so difficult, then the lip color described by the client does not always coincide with reality, as there are many color nuances: peach color can be called pink, nude can vary from beige-pink to caramel. In this case, a palette of pigments comes to the rescue, as well as the contents of the client's cosmetic bag, which is better to devote an extra five minutes. But you need to understand that the photo of the lips in a dense matte lipstick and the healed PM of the lips in reality are often far from each other. No matter what golden hands the master has and no matter what luxury pigments are used, even if the mix invented by the PM master exactly matches the shade in the picture, they will not give such an effect by 100%. In this case, a professional can dissuade the client from wanting to get “fashionable lips, as in the photo” and convince her to use the color that suits her.

This also applies to form. Experienced masters can surprise with a variety of forms that "come" to them for the procedure. There are “easy” clients who admit their inability to draw their own shape and completely trust this to a professional. They are our joy, such a client usually heals without problems. A more complex case, when the form does not lend itself to any logic, moreover, spoils the face: “stick”, “spermatozoon”, “baseball bat”, etc., but this is what, according to the client, the PM master should repeat. There are two ways out here: to do and keep silent, or, which is more energy-consuming, to convince and do it beautifully. The client also has a choice - to come to the master in order to assert himself (!), confirming his incompetence in the matter, or to trust a professional and give himself the opportunity to become different, be better, be more beautiful.

“I want to enlarge my lips a little!” In the era of hyaluronic acid, the need to increase the size of the lips with permanent makeup, going 2⎼3 mm beyond their contour, disappeared. The PM procedure is primary in relation to hyaluron injections into the lips, besides, a slight swelling of the shape of the lips after the PM will allow you to look at yourself with enlarged lips and affirm your desire to change their shape or refuse it. But you shouldn’t go beyond the lip contour with pigment if you don’t want to get an inaccurate effect after a while. It is important to remember that the way a client draws lips with a pencil is often not a sketch of a lip permanent.

Subtleties of psychology

And what should the master do when the client urgently needs new eyebrows (the plane is in six hours, what a rest without eyebrows!), And the sketch drawn by the master is noticeably higher than the morning mist-colored tattoo on her face? "I'll come - I'll delete it!" ⎼ the client swears, looking at you with devoted eyes. And I want to help, so as not to spoil the rest of a person, but the question stops: would you indicate your authorship under the photo of this work? "The demon beguiled" - this expression is not in the arsenal of a professional, and a triple tariff should not win in the fight against professional conscience.

Another case: the slowly opening door of the office trembles from the transmitted trembling of a timidly entering client. The office is filled with fear for color, thickness, width, puffiness and all other characteristics of shape and color. “Maybe we can have a coffee and leave?” ⎼ you ask. “No, make a permanent,” they answer you. In the anamnesis - a plucked eyebrow, leaving a barely perceptible mark on a rather large face with huge eyes and full lips. Here it would be logical to look at a fairly wide bright eyebrow line, but in the fresh state it will look even brighter and thicker due to swelling, which will lead the client to a pre-infarction state. There are two ways out: to take the risk of immediately offering your own version or go towards it, gradually increasing the color and thickness, that is, the correction (and more than one) will be a little later, after the client gets used to the new shape and color. Here miracles of courage can be shown by a PM master with endless experience working with a client.

Alternative story: a very competent client, having read the Internet, comes with the deepest knowledge of the procedure, while calling PM microblading. Edification questions can be endlessly poured in, the main thing is that this does not interfere with the process itself.

And here it is, the happiness of the PM master ⎼ the client who saw your healed work on someone, who gathered his thoughts, plucked up courage, came and said: “I trust you!” In this case, success and good healing are guaranteed!

When communicating, you need to be a good psychologist in order to first of all identify the reasons that led the client to the master. Then you will be able to explain competently and without pressure that the motives for changing the appearance with the help of permanent makeup are sometimes unreasonable and the PM procedure will not solve, and perhaps even aggravate the far-fetched complexes about appearance.