Ebony O’Neal: ‘I Would Have Felt Like an Ugly Duckling’
Ebony O’Neal, 23, went to the hospital for her regular cancer treatment. The last thing she expected that day was to be a makeup model for a Look Good Feel Better workshop. After all, like half of all patients undergoing cancer treatment, Ebony didn’t exactly feel like a model -- her skin tone darkened, despite regular moisturizing her skin became ashy, she lost all of her hair. Her outward appearance became the worst side effect of her cancer treatment.
“I was always part of the in crowd, so there were always people around me always calling me always wanting to see me, and the way I felt, I didn’t want to be around anybody because I didn’t look nice,” she says. So when asked to be a model, she hesitated. “I was like, ‘I’m in no position to be somebody’s model. But they said, ‘We think you are and we think you’re beautiful.’”
So Ebony got her first lesson in how to apply makeup, use mascara to fill out those thinning eyelashes and use nail polish to cover up her blackened nails. “It helped me,” says O’Neal, who is battling sarcoma. “People are like, ‘Oh my gosh who put your makeup on!’ and I’m like, ‘I did!’ That last part of my treatment, I would have felt like an ugly duckling, but they turned me around.”
