Katie Piper - "A Tragedy Can be the Making of You"

Happy Holiday’s everyone and cheers to a New Year! Over the years I’ve stopped fussing over resolutions as I believe these should be set and achieved all year long, but there’s also something about a New Year that lets you stop and think about the way you live your life and things you can do to change it.

At many points throughout the year I begin to fixate on my looks and what I wanted changed. ‘I hate my nose’, ‘I want bigger boobs’, ‘My skin makes me look so ugly’. I whine about my stomach, thighs or my hair. Then, around this time last year, I saw this documentary that changed my thinking and seemed to sink in deep.

 The show documented British model Katie Piper, who, in 2008, was the victim of a brutal acid attack.

Katie before the attack. Source: NooNews

Katie, a budding UK TV personality and model, had just ended a volatile relationship with a man she had met on Facebook. Unbeknownst to her, this man had been charged previously with throwing boiling water on a man’s face. When their relationship went sour, Katie’s ex-boyfriend became enraged. In the weeks before the attack, he had taken her to a hotel where he beat and raped her, leaving her terrified for her life. After his pleas of forgiveness were rejected by Katie, he instructed an accomplice to follow Katie to an internet café, where he doused sulphuric acid – some of which she swallowed - on to her face, neck, chest, hands and eye in public on the street outside.  Both men were later arrested and are serving life sentences.

Katie was left blinded in her left eye and surgeons completely removed all skin from her face and replaced it with Matriderm, a skin replacement. A skin graft was then used to cover the Matriderm and this became the first procedure of its’ kind to be done in a single operation. Katie received treatment designed to break down scar tissue and was given a plastic face mask to wear 23 hours of the day, for two years, which flattened her scars; stretching the scar tissue, and helped keep her skin moist.

Katie wearing the plastic face mask she had to wear 23 hours a day

In 2009, Katie chose to waive her anonymity she’d garnered from the sexual assault and decided to show her face and bring awareness to people with burns, scars and/or disfigurement. She documented her daily struggles from the attack itself (which was caught on camera) to the day she decided to emerge outside her home in Katie: My Beautiful Face. The documentary attracted more than 3 million viewers worldwide.

2 years later, Katie had begun her own charity: The Katie Piper Foundation, and debuted a new documentary titled Katie: My Beautiful Friends detailing the struggles of other young people with scars, disfigurements or burns due to accident or injury.

  Catching one episode of this in early 2012, I was immediately moved, particularly with a featured graduate named Emily. Emily had been burned in a house fire as a child, a fire which the rest of her family escaped unscathed. She did not seem to flounder having to grow up with a prominent disfigurement, and Emily went on to finish law school. During the aired episode, Emily begins her search for a job to start her career, and while impressing potential employers with her resume, the possibility of discrimination seems to become apparent when she does not ace the interviews. While watching this, you might be overcome with sympathy for Emily but she doesn’t let the discrimination phase her, eventually accepting an unpaid internship with a local firm. What struck me hardest was when she read a magazine where a celebrity proclaimed “it’s hard to be beautiful”. “Would she rather look like me? Would that make it easier?” she scoffed. Suddenly everything about my face, body, or hair that I disliked seemed completely insignificant. My scars are small and barely visible, my face is intact, my vision is clear, my limbs are all here. Surely being as intact as I am, I can suck it up –or at least I can according to Emily, and, coming from her you’d best agree.

Emily Savage

Mere months after watching this documentary, I became absorbed in the controversy surrounding Samantha Brink, a writer for the Daily Mail, and her article titled “There are Downsides to Looking This Pretty: Why Women Hate me for Being Beautiful” (no this is not a joke). The intro begins:

“On a recent flight to New York, I was delighted when a stewardess came over and gave me a bottle of champagne.

‘This is from the captain — he wants to welcome you on board and hopes you have a great flight today,’ she explained.

You’re probably thinking ‘what a lovely surprise’. But while it was lovely, it wasn’t a surprise. At least, not for me.”

I found this article appalling and obnoxious. The writer begins to whine about how her female friends and coworkers treat her differently because she is so beautiful. After seeing the struggles of someone like Katie and Emily, people I consider to be truly beautiful people, it makes me worry about the rest of our somewhat superficial society. So much focus is laid on being beautiful, where is the attention for people who are different? Think of a world where indifference was the norm. Acceptance and love and happiness would replace all the garbage about attaining unrealistic standards and skewed views of superficial characters.

Samantha Brink. Source: Daily Mail UK

But I don’t want to take the attention away from Katie Piper and the wonderful light she is shining on helping support others like herself who now have to live their lives in a way most of us cannot even imagine.

  Her foundation gives support to people suffering with burns and/or scars from all over the world and offers information on hair and laser treatments, as well as medical tattooing – which Katie gives as a gift to Emily in the featured episode.

Katie in 2011. Credit: Ray Burmeston. 

In early 2012, Katie’s sight in her left eye was restored following a successful stem-cell surgery. Her positive outlook assures her she is winning.

 “I always try to look at what could have been and how it could have been worse.

“I could be in a wheelchair, could be in a coma, could have brain damage. So I’m actually really lucky.”

 “Everything is falling into place. The charity is going well, I’m doing work that I love, I’m living on my own and I’ve got a new boyfriend. I’m really, really happy.”

Please visit the Katie Piper Foundation website here: http://www.katiepiperfoundation.org.uk/

You can Google Samantha Brink’s article, of course she had received lots of backlash from people all over the world and has since apologized for how her article was interpreted. I’d rather not bring attention to her.

Sources:

http://www.katiepiperfoundation.org.uk/

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/features/4563702/Katie-Piper-on-acid-attack-and-finding-love.html (The Sun UK)

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2096767/Katie-Piper-Acid-attack-survivor-eye-sight-restored-stem-cell-surgery.html (The Daily Mail UK)