To some, Yarra Fong may be a gift­ed med­ical tat­too artist, beau­ti­cian and en­tre­pre­neur. To many of the women she has worked on, she is a hero. Self­less, dar­ing, brave–Fong has pushed bound­aries in the beau­ty in­dus­try to boost the con­fi­dence of women with skin con­di­tions and de­fects; in­clud­ing can­cer pa­tients and women who as­pire to be suc­cess­ful in the field of beau­ty. Her pas­sion, how­ev­er, may have al­most cost her her life.

At 28, Fong's peo­ple-cen­tred ap­proach has tak­en her from dress­ing women and do­ing make-up to es­tab­lish­ing her­self as a savvy med­ical and cos­met­ic tat­too artist and the proud own­er and di­rec­tor of Soigné (pro­nounced Swanyay and means el­e­gant­ly dressed and well-groomed in French) Beau­ty Aes­thet­ics Acad­e­my. She al­so con­trols the Caribbean fran­chise of the French brand, Yu­mi Beau­ty which con­sists of Yu­mi Lash­es, Yu­mi Skin and Yu­mi Feet.

In her eight-year pres­ence on the lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al beau­ty land­scape, she has learned from lead­ing ex­perts in beau­ty and found­ed her Acad­e­my in San Fer­nan­do which of­fers var­i­ous beau­ty ser­vices and pro­vides train­ing to women in­ter­est­ed in be­com­ing beau­ty tech­ni­cians. She re­cent­ly opened an­oth­er branch in Wood­brook.

Of her many roles, be­ing the moth­er of an en­er­getic four-year-old, Ava and a med­ical and cos­met­ic tat­tooist are Fong's dear­est.

“I tru­ly be­lieve that this is what I was meant to do. I love to talk to peo­ple. I love to teach; ex­plain what I do and how I do it and help oth­er women do it too. I en­joy hav­ing women come in from all walks of life. They say that my room is a safe space and I've de­vel­oped so many friend­ships,” she shared with Sun­day Guardian on Tues­day.

“(With clients who are can­cer sur­vivors) you hear sto­ries of hus­bands leav­ing wives, women be­com­ing de­pressed, alien­at­ed from their friends. They stop talk­ing to every­one. And these are things that women live with on a dai­ly ba­sis,” she said.

Her abil­i­ty to iden­ti­fy and em­pathise with the strug­gles of women led the beau­ti­cian to ex­tend her ser­vices to med­ical tat­too­ing over three years ago.

Fong works every day of the week, ap­ply­ing per­ma­nent make-up to help clients deal with skin con­di­tions by dis­guis­ing the ap­pear­ance of dis­coloura­tions or de­for­mi­ties. Her ex­pe­ri­ence spans are­o­la restora­tion tat­too­ing on breast can­cer sur­vivors, tat­too­ing for vi­tili­go (skin dis­or­der where white patch­es de­vel­op all over the body) on clients re­ferred by a der­ma­tol­o­gist, burns and light scars. Soon, she hopes to in­tro­duce tat­too­ing of ra­di­a­tion mark­ers on can­cer pa­tients (tiny dots used so that the cor­rect area would be treat­ed every time the pa­tient needs ra­di­a­tion).

For her per­ma­nent make-up pro­ce­dures on the cos­met­ic end, Fong sees clients with stretch marks and does var­i­ous eye­brow tech­niques, as well as, Dark Lip Neu­tral­i­sa­tion for women who wish to ad­dress dis­coloured or un­even lips. She has al­so had ex­po­sure to scalp restora­tion (tat­too­ing tiny dots which make the scalp ap­pear to be re­gen­er­at­ing hair), a pro­ce­dure which in T&T, most­ly ap­plies to men.

While tra­di­tion­al tat­too­ing us­es bold pig­ment to cre­ate dec­o­ra­tive or sym­bol­ic im­ages, Fong's work en­tails in­sert­ing a spe­cial pig­ment be­neath the in­ner lay­er of the skin (der­mis) to match or co­or­di­nate with the client's skin tone. She has tai­lored her tech­niques to suit the di­verse skin tones of Caribbean women and com­pletes most pro­ce­dures in two to three ses­sions. Pro­ce­dures are re­gard­ed as per­ma­nent how­ev­er, some fad­ing over time oc­curs de­pend­ing on the client's skin con­di­tion, skin type and dai­ly rou­tine.

Per­ma­nent make-up and cos­met­ic tat­toos have been around since the days of Cleopa­tra in an­cient Egypt. Fong not­ed that de­spite glob­al ad­vance­ments in cos­met­ic and med­ical tat­too­ing over the years, it was un­for­tu­nate that lit­tle fo­cus was placed on their use and aes­thet­ics in gen­er­al in med­ical surg­eries like mas­tec­tomies in the Caribbean.

“In West­ern Eu­rope, North Amer­i­ca, South Amer­i­ca, in Brazil par­tic­u­lar­ly, this is some­thing they of­fer to­geth­er with the mas­tec­to­my. We don't re­al­ly think about the af­ter ef­fects on these women and how they are go­ing to con­tin­ue to live their lives.

“I dis­cov­ered this in 2017 and I said what do you mean some breast can­cer sur­vivors don't have nip­ples? Breast can­cer is quite com­mon through­out Trinidad and the Caribbean, but we don't have any­thing in place to as­sist the af­fect­ed women and when I found out back then I was: no, you al­ready take so much from a per­son (with treat­ment, mas­tec­tomies), you should be able to give some­thing back,” she said.

In many cas­es af­ter un­der­go­ing a mas­tec­to­my or breast re­con­struc­tion surgery, can­cer sur­vivors strug­gle to come to terms with what they see in the mir­ror, of­ten bat­tling with de­pres­sion and low self-es­teem. For Fong, giv­ing back has meant do­ing are­o­la restora­tion tat­toos on over 60 breast can­cer sur­vivors, pro­vid­ing her ser­vices free of charge through her “Pay with a Smile” cam­paign launched in Oc­to­ber 2017.

Are­o­la restora­tion tat­too­ing seeks to pro­mote men­tal heal­ing. It is done on the breast area to re­de­fine the ap­pear­ance of the nip­ple and/or are­o­la (the dark skin sur­round­ing the nip­ples), mak­ing them ap­pear more nat­ur­al. In some cas­es where the pa­tient's nip­ples/are­o­las were re­moved, en­tire cos­met­ic are­o­las are tat­tooed on­to the skin with de­tails to make the ap­pear­ance re­al­is­tic.

Fong said she is hap­py to give these clients op­tions in terms of size and shape and some have even re­quest­ed heart shapes.

With her line of work come moral and eth­i­cal is­sues which the beau­ty boss said she is care­ful to bal­ance. She said some women have come to her des­per­ate for a boost af­ter en­dur­ing surgery or a tragedy. She has had to turn away some cas­es.

Then some peo­ple in­sist such pro­ce­dures con­tra­dict re­li­gious or spir­i­tu­al be­liefs. Apart from med­ical tat­toos, Fong felt that many pro­ce­dures like eye­brow tat­too­ing to treat women with alope­cia, for in­stance, could be com­plete­ly jus­ti­fied as they im­prove the men­tal well be­ing of clients.

Fong said she aims to main­tain a nat­ur­al aes­thet­ic and does not seek to dras­ti­cal­ly change the ap­pear­ance of her clients. In­stead, she gives them an “en­hanced ver­sion of them­selves” in an every­day look.

Trac­ing her ap­pre­ci­a­tion for beau­ty back to her ear­ly years, Fong re­called par­tic­i­pat­ing in East­er pageants, the Shiv Shak­ti Dance Group and ad­mir­ing her “su­per-pret­ty” moth­er's con­sis­tent reg­i­men of self-care and spa days. Her en­tre­pre­neur­ial spir­it was nur­tured al­so in her grow­ing years as her grand­fa­ther en­cour­aged her to be a part of their fam­i­ly busi­ness as soon as she could reach the store counter to serve cus­tomers.

“Learn­ing every­thing about any­thing in which she par­tic­i­pates” is a phi­los­o­phy that has dri­ven the ca­reer of the for­mer bou­tique own­er and St Joseph's Con­vent, San Fer­nan­do stu­dent. She earned qual­i­fi­ca­tion af­ter qual­i­fi­ca­tion in the USA, Cana­da and France, in­clud­ing Yu­mi Lash­es cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, a City and Guilds award in Ed­u­ca­tion and Train­ing, cer­ti­fi­ca­tion in Mag­ic Ink Med­ical Tat­too­ing by Brazil­ian Mas­ter, Fer­nan­da Jaf­fre, and in ear­ly 2020 head­ed to France to be­come the youngest mas­ter train­er in the world for Yu­mi Beau­ty.

Fong's break­throughs, how­ev­er, did not come with­out chal­lenges. She has strug­gled with en­dometrio­sis since her teens. Di­ag­nosed with epilep­sy in 2019 as a re­sult, when COVID-19 hit T&T last March, Fong was al­so hit with an epilep­tic seizure which left her in a pool of blood on her bed­room floor. She re­gained con­scious­ness with a large gash on her head and had to crawl to seek her moth­er for help.

“All I could think about was not let­ting my daugh­ter see me.”

Hav­ing suf­fered two con­cus­sions, she was ad­vised by her doc­tors that she had been over­worked and need­ed rest. Ly­ing on a hos­pi­tal bed and sad­dled with fears of nev­er us­ing her hands and mind to work again, Fong said she re­solved that her voice still worked and she could still teach. She was de­ter­mined to be back on her feet and built up her faith. About five weeks lat­er, she was mak­ing trips to her Acad­e­my and try­ing out her mo­tor skills by tat­too­ing her own eye­brows.

To­day, de­spite re­duced busi­ness op­er­a­tions due to COVID, Fong keeps the em­pow­er­ment of women fore­most on her agen­da. Hav­ing part­nered with a few med­ical prac­ti­tion­ers, she plans to height­en her ef­forts to pro­mote med­ical tat­too­ing as an op­tion for women who are suf­fer­ing in si­lence. Over 26 lo­cal tech­ni­cians she has men­tored con­tin­ue to earn $1,000 to $6,000 ex­tra per month from the med­ical-grade cal­lus re­mover tech­nol­o­gy, “Yu­mi Feet” she brought to T&T on­ly last year.

“I have tech­ni­cians who were house­wives and even make more than their hus­bands now,” she laughed. “I al­so see my cus­tomers con­fi­dent and that makes me hap­py...and that is why I'm here. I have a pur­pose that is much greater than me.”

A con­fi­dence boost­er

“It's re­al­ly a con­fi­dence boost­er at the end of the day. You look in the mir­ror and it's not that you see some­body dif­fer­ent; you just see the po­ten­tial that you had all along. The small changes can be re­al­ly im­pact­ful. Maybe it's some­thing that on­ly I no­ticed, but I did it for me. It made me hap­py and it made me feel bet­ter.”

Se­an­dra, a San­ta Cruz res­i­dent, made no apolo­gies for her de­ci­sion to un­der­go two cos­met­ic pro­ce­dures at Soigné Beau­ty Aes­thet­ics Acad­e­my as she spoke with Sun­day Guardian re­cent­ly.

She dis­cov­ered Soigné Beau­ty, owned and man­aged by a beau­ti­cian and med­ical tat­too artist, Yarra Fong, on her sis­ter's In­sta­gram feed last De­cem­ber, and since then has done two ses­sions of mi­croshad­ing where pin-like dots of pig­ment are used to fill in the eye­brows with a tool, and two ses­sions of Dark Lip Neu­tral­i­sa­tion which sorts out lip colour and sym­me­try.

Cur­rent­ly in her 40s, she be­lieves that women should be free to make slight en­hance­ments to their ap­pear­ance, es­pe­cial­ly as they age, with­out back­lash from so­ci­ety.

She felt while some would say se­mi-per­ma­nent/per­ma­nent make-up pro­ce­dures are about van­i­ty and buy­ing-in to su­per­fi­cial so­cial me­dia cul­ture, her aim was to gain a soft­er look from well-groomed eye­brows that frame the face and en­hance her lip colour, thus cre­at­ing a more youth­ful ap­pear­ance.

She said such pro­ce­dures re­duced the morn­ing rou­tine, al­low­ing work­ing pro­fes­sion­als who still had to par­tic­i­pate in Zoom meet­ings dur­ing COVID, for ex­am­ple, to look “cam­era-ready” and re­freshed.

Be­sides, the cost-ef­fec­tive­ness of per­ma­nent make-up which can last up to two years was al­so a plus, Se­an­dra added.

Hail­ing Fong as “car­ing,” “ded­i­cat­ed” and “easy to talk to,” she said the work of the med­ical and cos­met­ic tat­tooist was “de­tail-ori­ent­ed” and “im­pec­ca­ble”. She al­so had high praise for Fong's are­o­la restora­tion work with can­cer pa­tients which the mas­ter beau­ty train­er and artist of­fers for free.

“I know she does a lot of restora­tion work and that is some­thing else to be com­mend­ed. She's re­al­ly do­ing tremen­dous ser­vice. I'm not sure if there's any­one on this is­land who is do­ing a sim­i­lar ser­vice.

“The time, re­search, ef­fort, care and love she puts in­to that process...and not many peo­ple...and I have had fam­i­ly mem­bers with mas­tec­tomies, but not many peo­ple know that is a ser­vice avail­able in Trinidad.”

Se­an­dra said next on her beau­ty shop­ping list is a lash lift that curls the eye­lash­es and gives the ef­fect of wear­ing mas­cara.

“These things put a lit­tle pep in your step. It's all a part of do­ing some­thing good for your­self,” she said.