Anoush Smith: Make-up artist to the dead

She hates funerals and gets emotional along with family members when their loved ones die. She’s not a fan of scary movies or horror stories and she maintains a pretty normal life for someone who has been tagging toes since she was eight.

At 34, Anoush Jones Smith can’t imagine doing anything other than making the dead look beautiful again. This she does from a room at Madden’s Funeral Parlour in downtown Kingston, using a wide array of make-up, hair and cosmetology tools to “create a few Miss Worlds” before they are officially sent off by family to meet their maker.

Smith, a fourth-generation Madden, is cosmetologist and make-up artist at the family’s funeral parlour, as well as cremation manager and one of the co-directors at Dovecot Memorial, which the family also owns. She said she doesn’t like the grieving process, crying or sadness. “I’m more of a wedding person,” she said. “I can count how many times I’ve been to a funeral on one hand, yet I’ve prepared several thousands of people for their funerals.”

When she does go to a funeral, Smith is always itching to change something about the departed’s

look that she knows she could have done better.

When all woman caught up with her last Wednesday, she was in the process of preparing a woman for burial the day after. A quick tour of the facilities took the team through the body-entry point, storage rooms, embalming process, and the preparation room.

Smith said she offers wigs for those who would look better with one, and uses everything from bandeaux to blow-dryers in the quest for perfection. It’s not an easy task: a non-base cream has to be used to soften the look, and trauma, as well as cause of death can affect skin colour. At the family’s request, she will shampoo, blow-dry and curl as well as do twists, corn-row and rollerset.

Smith’s days usually start around 7:30am at Dovecot, where she assists with cremations – Madden’s owns two of the three crematoriums in Jamaica – till around 3pm. Then she heads off to Madden’s downtown, where she works up to 8pm sometimes, preferring to do her job late when it is cooler, quiet and she can pay more attention.

She does five to seven women per day, and on weekends, the company oversees some 15 funerals a day.

The beautification process involves making dead women and some men look picture-perfect, and Smith uses her hands-on skills as well as those learnt at Leon’s School of Beauty Culture to make clients look g. The reward, she says, comes when the family members are able to see their loved ones looking beautiful, as they were in life.

The only child of Patricia Madden-Jones, Smith was raised by her grandfather, Ferdinand Madden Sr, son of Leslie Ferdinand Madden, the founder of the company, which has been around for 75 years. Her own father died when she was seven months old.

Her childhood was spent at the mortuary – which does private and government-contracted mortuary and storage services – answering phones, tagging toes, and playing among the coffins. So there was no room for the heebie-jeebies, duppies weren’t a fear and all the spirits that visited were good ones. “I’m not superstitious in the least. I know that there are spirits – I have good spirits,” she said. “Death is sure. Death makes you appreciate life, makes you happy to live, happy to beautify those persons who don’t have life anymore.”

The St Hugh’s and Hillel old girl was officially trained in cosmetology for a year at Leon’s and she did workshops here and abroad.

“You learn to work on the living because [when you work on the dead] you want them to look alive,” she said.

She received hands-on training at Madden’s where she came on board fully at 18, offering the ‘female touch’ where her male relatives had dominated before.

“The female touch gives a softer look – I work with the young, the old, with children. I help out sometimes with the men,” she said, adding that if the men had dreadlocks or took pains with their appearances, she makes suggestions. “It’s something I’ve always wanted to do,” she said. “I always knew I’d get into it. I love working with the ladies. I love the ‘before and after’ effect.”

And when she adds a wig and some carefully applied makeup after embalming, the right hairstyle and outfit, the results are often amazing.

“The ladies take a bit more beautifying. Some look even better [than they did before]. Some are unrecognisable in a nice way. The families are always pleased,” she said. “The reaction and the compliments afterwards make me feel like I’m doing a good job.”

Smith said that the strangest request she’s had was from someone who asked that their loved one get highlights in her hair, and there are others who want the grey dyed, painted nails and weaves, and so offers has a full range of options to choose from. Storage and preparation – which involve the make-up services – are free at Madden’s.

“We like to see them as they were before and not as they died,” she said. “It’s like doing a makeover. We want them to look like they’re just sleeping.”

She admits that it’s a bit tedious to do some people – the average woman can take about 20 minutes – while those with trauma have to undergo reconstruction at the hands of her uncles before she makes them beautiful, usually in about an hour.

Of course, being in the business has its interesting highlights. Revealing her occupation is a sure way to stop unwanted attention and she said that people usually go quiet for a good 10 minutes after hearing what this perfectly coiffed and manicured woman does.

And people stop and stare in traffic whenever they see her driving a company hearse.

“Many people are taken aback, they say, ‘Why aren’t you working with the living?'” she laughed. “The first thing they do is look at my hands. But you can’t be a Madden and not know what it’s like to work here.”

In fact, another girl cousin, Isiaa, also a fourth-generation Madden, operates the Montego Bay Dovecot. And her own children – aged four, eight and 11 – are at the mortuary after school, answering phones and playing among the coffins, though none have expressed a desire to enter the business yet.

“I would hope they’ll be in the business,” Smith said. “They don’t know what it is to be scared of death. They know how to mourn and how to cry, but they’re not scared -not my kids.”

Smith recalled that her uncles would pick her up in the hearse from school and whenever a teenaged boy got too fresh, he was taken on a ‘tour’ of the parlour.

And now she has even roped in a few friends who were once taken aback, but now come to watch her work. “After a couple of hours, they’ll pass me the comb and help adjust the neck…” she said.

And though she’ll talk to her clients, cajoling an unwilling body into an outfit – dressing is the hardest since the limbs are so stiff – she maintains a grip on the live world, by taking breaks, listening to the radio and watching TV. She said that children are the hardest to do, and she often gets emotional when working on them.

Smith, an avid gym enthusiast and a regular at Spartan, loves to cook and bake. When she’s not at the parlour she likes to hang out with friends and read fashion magazines.

As for cosmetologists who might be interested in working in a funeral parlour, she cautions that it’s something they have to really appreciate. “I have lots of requests to train younger females, but it’s something you have to really want to do.”

She explained that for most, it’s hard at first for their minds to accept that the clients are not alive but “after a few hours”, the feeling passes. “If you think you can try it, it’s something you’ll like because of the effect you’ll have on the survivors,” she said. “The last presentation is what stands out in their memory.”

And for the sceptics: “Someone has to do it and someone has to do it well.”