Jeannie Marshall after her Power of Self Image session;...

...Jeannie before;...

...Yolanda, left, and Yanka;...

...Yanka, left, and Yolanda with camera.

At a recent launch party for Iris Nowell's book Joyce Wieland: A Life in Art, guests were heard murmuring about the beautiful author photograph on the inside back flap. Iris is an attractive woman in her fifties, so the talk wasn't about the portrait being misleading but rather that it seemed to have captured the person they all knew and another mysterious one they might have glimpsed only in conversation. Several people noted how the photograph had caught both Nowell's elegance and her intelligence.

The photo was taken by an old friend of Iris's and her daughter. Yanka Van der Kolk was a fashion model in the 1960s and 1970s and Iris Nowell used to work as a commentator for Toronto fashion shows. Yanka's daughter Yolanda is a photographer, and Yanka has put her years of experience in the world of beauty to work in a beauty coaching/photography business she calls Power of Self Image. The two are becoming known for turning out beautiful pictures of business people, writers, artists, CEOs and actors. Their studio in the back of Yanka's east Toronto home is decorated with photographs of people such as TV host Pamela Wallin, actress Sonja Smits and fashion designer Linda Lundström as well as lesser-known subjects. Everyone seems to radiate an attractive confidence.

Yanka claims to be able to coax out the hidden beauty in all of us. I found it hard to fathom the notion that she could take someone like me -- I generally look like a drunken sailor in photographs -- and create an image as appealing as those on her walls. The reason I don't photograph well, she told me, is that I don't know how to see my beauty and project it. Yanka insists everyone is beautiful, everyone is unique and everyone who accepts those two things is photogenic. That was enough to convince me to hop on the stool in front of Yanka's mirror and let her slap my jaw.

"You've got face cramp," she says knowingly. She has me make some faces in the mirror and tells me to blow air between my lips, making a noise like a speedboat. Then she has me sit for 10 minutes with a two-inch length of straw between my front teeth, propping my mouth open so that my jaw can relax. She uses this opportunity to discuss the relentless negative pressure we are under in a society with a narrow view of beauty. She asks me to consider how my own view of myself has been shaped by external forces. "Assume you are what you want to be," she instructs. She asks me to tell her what I see when I look at myself. I go through the list of complaints ranging from crooked smile and square face to square nose. I tell her I would prefer to have a straight, pointy nose like hers. "But what would my nose look like on your face?" She doesn't wait for me to answer. "Wrong." I nod, chastened. "And what's wrong with a square face? My daughter has a square face." Again, I nod. I've seen Yolanda and she is beautiful.

She hands me a box, a sort of do-it-yourself kit she calls the Powerbook. It contains a video introduction to the program with beautiful shots of Yanka and testimonials from some of her clients. It also has a workbook and several audio tapes. She's working on a line of face creams and makeup. "This is for when you can't have Yanka with you," she tells me.

"I think beauty is a process," explains Yanka. "It's not just one thing. It's what you see when you look at your own face. It has to do with what you see and how you feel about it." Yanka points to a small sunflower on her table and explains that flowers are beautiful even though they don't know they are and that flowers don't compare themselves to other flowers. The sunflowers are not consumed with anxiety about not being as beautiful as the tulips. This neurotic tic is uniquely human. Yanka tries to make me stop comparing and see my own unique qualities. She tells me I have to embrace those qualities and enhance them. She will not let me out of her studio until I have given up trying to be a tulip and accepted my essential sunflowerness. I must vow to see myself as the most beautiful sunflower I can be. She tells me that when we are finished, I will never again compare myself to the beautiful tulips in magazines. She will reveal me to myself and I will then become my own standard.

We go on in this vein for about two hours until Henk, Yanka's husband, sticks his head in the door and reminds her that Yolanda is arriving in half an hour to take the photos. She waves him away, but also gets down to business with the makeup. She applies a natural-looking base to even out my skin tone, arches my eyebrows with a brush and pencil and applies some light eye makeup. She uses eye pencil, mascara and then lipstick. It's not a lot of makeup, but the effect is dramatic because I rarely wear even that much. "Look in the mirror and repeat after me: 'I am beautiful.' "

I look in the mirror and I see that my features are subtly defined, my hair is arranged attractively, my eyes are sparkling. I recognize myself but it's startling. It's as though I have always been out of focus and now I am there, sharp and clear. I do as she says and imagine that I am confident and attractive. I try to say "I am beautiful" but I feel stupid. So Yanka takes hold of my shoulder. Clearly she's not letting me up until I say it. I say it quickly but as convincingly as possible. "I am beautiful." And she lets me go. She doesn't care if the statement has been coerced out of me. If I say it, I might soon start to believe it.

In the meantime, Yolanda has been setting up the camera. She talks to me and starts taking pictures. Surprisingly, I don't feel self-conscious or uncomfortable. After several hours with Yanka, I have grown accustomed to being the centre of attention. "Ultimately, I can grab a great shot without all this. I can take beautiful pictures of people just by directing them, without them knowing it," says Yanka. "And because we're very talented that way and Yolanda does beautiful work, I could steal a beautiful shot." But she thinks that by making someone believe they are beautiful, they will project it and the image in the photograph will be more honest. I think of Iris Nowell and I try to project a sort of demure confidence.

Yolanda places a tall chair in front of the camera and tells me to lean forward and push my head out because my natural inclination has always been to retreat from the camera. They shoot pictures of me wearing the sweater I arrived in, then wearing Yanka's denim jacket and her raincoat. Then Yolanda asks her mother to give me more makeup. She wants to create a "smoky" look. It's part of the role-playing they like to put their clients through. "Don't worry," Yolanda tells me. "I just want you to see that you are capable of a whole range of looks." Yanka darkens my lipstick, puts on lots of eye makeup and enhances a mole above my lip. I look in the mirror and barely recognize myself, but by now I don't care. Yanka has put on a CD with the theme song Run Wild, Run Free that Rena Gaile composed and recorded for her. She cranks up the volume and plays it again and again, singing along while she musses up my hair. I'm now so far outside my normal world, I decide to go along with it and be the star in my own cabaret.

They push me out in front of the camera in a leather jacket that Yanka has opened to reveal my bra. Normally, I would be horrified, but I don't even care. Then Yolanda ties my scarf around my neck and slaps a black cap on my head. I just smile, wink at the camera and say danke schön. It's not until I am on my way home, laughing to myself, that it dawns on me I'm going to have to take the pictures to work.

I spend two anxious days wondering how disastrous this is going to be. I looked fine in the mirror, but worry that I will be exposed as a ham. When Yanka calls me to come over and look at the contact sheets, I am apprehensive. She spreads them out on the table and Yolanda brings out some that she has blown up. I am stunned to see there are only a handful of bad ones out of more than 100. I laugh when I see the seductive leather-jacket look and I tell Yolanda I'm only laughing because it's not me. "Ah," she says. "But it was you. Even if you don't choose to look like that again, you have this proof that you could."

I look again at the makeup, the mole and the heavy-lidded eyes. That's good to know.