Model says beauty ‘more than meets the eye’ after face mauled
A model has undergone an eyewateringly expensive amount of facial surgery since a debilitating dog mauling.
A US model whose entire upper lip was torn off by a relative’s pet pit bull says the horrific attack has transformed her ideas about beauty.
Brooklin Khoury, 24, has undergone $US400,000 ($A568,000) worth of facial surgery since the incident in November 2020, which also destroyed part of her nose.
And while doctors have been able to improve Ms Khoury’s appearance, the model says she’s not interested in achieving physical perfection, the New York Post reported.
“My family, my friends needed to be in my life for a reason, to help me realise there’s so much more to beauty than what meets the eye,” she declared in an interview with US morning show Good Morning America.
More than three years on from the attack, the Californian — who is also a pro-skateboarder — added that she has finally learned to “love herself” regardless of what she looks like in the mirror.
Ms Khoury was set upon by the pit bull just one day before she was set to film her first TV commercial.
She had appeared in a Vogue spread about female skateboarders just a month before the incident.
The pit bull pounced on November 3, 2020, with the attack lasting “a good 30 seconds,” whereby the dog shook the model’s head “like a chew toy”.
Ms Khoury didn’t realise the severe damage that had been done to her face until she went to the bathroom and looked in the mirror. She said she looked “like a skeleton”.
Ms Khoury eventually found a surgeon who worked to reconstruct her top lip by taking skin from her wrist and placing it just below her partially destroyed nose.
“My doctor literally described me as an art project,” she told Good Morning America, saying he “moulded and moved and formed the skin to how he wanted it to look like”.
After several painful procedures, the surgeon also helped to recreate the model’s nose.
“Things happen to us and sometimes we will never understand why,” she explained.
“But always remember to take each day as it comes. Always trust the process. Even when it seems impossible.”
This story originally appeared in the New York Post and reproduced with permission