Why Did Jabba The Hutt Force His Favourite Dancer To Wear Strange Make-up?

Because she reminded him of his mother. Jabba had been very close to her as a young Huttlet, and when he first laid eyes on the Askajian dancer Yarna d'al' Gargan he decided her larger frame resembled that of a Hutt. He made her wear special make-up to push that resemblance further and look more like his mother, which is how she became his favourite, and how she stayed out of the rancor pit. (Star Wars: Absolutely Everything You Need to Know; Star Wars Character Encyclopedia)

Six hundred years of bad habits#

In Legends, Jabba Desilijic Tiure was born on Nal Hutta in 600 BBY, and he died above the Tatooine desert in 4 ABY, which gives him roughly six centuries to develop his tastes. He spent most of them running a criminal empire out of a palace in the Northern Dune Sea, moving goods across the Outer Rim through a network of smugglers, and building the sort of court where everybody present is either owned, employed or plotting. (Star Wars: The Ultimate Visual Guide; Return of the Jedi)

One of the fixtures of that court was dancers. He collected them, mostly Twi'leks, and the whole palace was arranged around the assumption that there would be someone performing while he held audience. His majordomo Bib Fortuna was a Twi'lek. The enslaved dancer Oola was a Twi'lek. It was a very specific and very consistent appetite. (Return of the Jedi)

Which is what makes Yarna d'al' Gargan stand out. She was not a Twi'lek and she did not fit the pattern at all. (Return of the Jedi; Star Wars: Absolutely Everything You Need to Know)

The Askajian who broke the pattern#

Yarna was an Askajian female, a species built quite differently from the willowy performers Jabba usually favoured. By the ordinary logic of that palace she should have been nothing to him. (Star Wars: Absolutely Everything You Need to Know)

She became his favourite instead, and the reason is genuinely strange. As a young Huttlet, Jabba had been very close to his mother. When he first saw Yarna, he looked at her size and thought she resembled a Hutt. That was the connection his brain made, and once made he did not let it go. (Star Wars: Absolutely Everything You Need to Know; Star Wars Character Encyclopedia)

So he had her painted. Special make-up, designed to push the resemblance further and make her look more like his mother, worn every time she performed for him. (Star Wars: Absolutely Everything You Need to Know; Skin Deep: The Fat Dancer's Tale)

Why this mattered more than it sounds#

It would be easy to file that under grotesque and move on. It is worth staying with a moment longer, because in that palace the arrangement was the only thing standing between Yarna and the floor giving way. (Return of the Jedi)

Jabba's throne room had a trapdoor. Underneath it was a rancor. He used both. (Return of the Jedi)

The clearest example is Oola. She was enslaved, she danced for him while the Max Rebo Band played, and when Jabba demanded a repeat and tried to drag her over to him she resisted. He pressed the button, the floor opened, and the rancor took her in front of everyone. That is what happened to a dancer who stopped being compliant, and it was not a private punishment. It was theatre for the court. (Return of the Jedi)

That was the standing threat every performer in the building lived under. Leia Organa got a version of it herself when Jabba had her put in a dancer's costume and chained by the neck to his throne. (Return of the Jedi)

Yarna sat outside that system, because Jabba had attached something to her that had nothing to do with whether she pleased him on a given night. She was not just a performer he liked. She was a reminder of the one relationship he seems to have valued. The make-up was humiliating and it was also, in the coldest possible sense, armour. (Skin Deep: The Fat Dancer's Tale)

A court where everybody was working an angle#

It helps to picture the room properly, because the makeup arrangement was not the strangest thing happening in it. (Return of the Jedi)

Jabba's palace ran on a permanent low-grade conspiracy. Bib Fortuna held the majordomo post and spent his time scheming like everyone else. By the time Han Solo was hanging frozen on the wall, at least three separate parties were actively planning to kill the Hutt. J'Quille was spying for Lady Valarian and got hold of Leia's thermal detonator, only for Fortuna to steal it off him. Tessek had a bomb planted on the sail barge. Ree-Yees had his own scheme running in parallel and no idea about either of the others. (Of the Day's Annoyances: Bib Fortuna's Tale; Let Us Prey: The Whiphid's Tale; A Free Quarren in the Palace: Tessek's Tale; Goatgrass: The Tale of Ree-Yees)

Nobody in that building was safe, and nobody was loyal. Which puts Yarna's position in sharper focus. In a court where the majordomo was robbing the assassins, being the one person the boss had attached a piece of his childhood to was about as secure as anyone got. (Of the Day's Annoyances: Bib Fortuna's Tale; Skin Deep: The Fat Dancer's Tale)

What happened to her afterwards#

She outlived him, which almost nobody in that palace did. (Skin Deep: The Fat Dancer's Tale)

After Jabba died, a hunter named Doallyn escorted Yarna across the Tatooine desert. On that journey he killed a krayt dragon and recovered five krayt dragon pearls from it, the kind of haul most monster hunters spend a career failing to find even once. (Skin Deep: The Fat Dancer's Tale)

There is something fitting about the ending. The dancer who survived six hundred years of Hutt appetite by resembling a dead mother walks out of the Dune Sea alongside a man carrying a fortune in dragon pearls. (Skin Deep: The Fat Dancer's Tale)

A note on continuity#

Yarna turns up in both continuities. The make-up explanation appears in current canon reference material as well as in the old Expanded Universe stories built around Jabba's court, but her escape across the desert with Doallyn belongs to Legends. (Star Wars: Absolutely Everything You Need to Know; Skin Deep: The Fat Dancer's Tale)

Jabba himself is canon in the broad strokes, and so is the rancor pit and the fate of Oola. Canon gives the reason in a single line. Legends tells the whole story, and the answer is somehow both sentimental and appalling. (Return of the Jedi)