A California model whose entire upper lip was torn off by a relative’s pet pitbull says the horrific attack has transformed her ideas about beauty.
Brooklin Khoury, 24, has undergone $400,000 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 Khoury’s appearance, the beauty says she’s not interested in achieving physical perfection.
“My family, my friends needed to be in my life for a reason, to help me realize there’s so much more to beauty than what meets the eye,” she declared in an interview with “Good Morning America.”
More than three years on from the attack, the SoCal native — who is also a pro-skateboarder — added that she has finally learned to “love herself” regardless of what she looks like in the mirror.
Khoury was set upon by the pitbull 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 Pitbull pounced on Nov. 3, 2020, with the attack lasting “a good 30 seconds,” whereby the dog shook the model’s head “like a chew toy.”
Khoury didn’t realize 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.”
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 “molded 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.
Although she is still set to undergo several more procedures, including the tattooing of her new top lip, Khoury says she learned to become confident in her skin.
She has talked openly about her body image transformation on TikTok, racking up more than 1.1 million followers.
“Life is beautiful,” Khoury declared in a recent viral video, featuring following the pitbull attack and her subsequent surgeries.
“Things happen to us and sometimes we will never understand why,” she explained in the clip.
“But always remember to take each day as it comes. Always trust the process. Even when it seems impossible.”