Katie Piper: ‘Im In Awe of What My Body Has Endured’

Katie Piper comes off set from her Grazia shoot in a sculptural white dress, with slicked-back hair and a huge smile on her face. ‘I never get to do shoots like this,’ she says. ‘Normally they want me in pastel-coloured knitwear.’

The TV presenter, writer, campaigner and supporter of St Tropez’s new You Set The Tone campaign might have an earful
of piercings and a keen eye for fashion, but over the last decade she’s become one of the nation’s favourite girls-next-door. She won a place in our hearts when she first appeared in the Channel 4 documentary Katie: My Beautiful Face in 2009, which charted the early stages of her recovery after an acid attack in 2008. Today, she is in a very different place in her life. Last year alone, she took part in Strictly Come Dancing and launched the podcast Katie Piper’s Extraordinary People, while her eponymous charitable foundation opened the UK’s first residential burns rehab clinic.

The St Tropez gig, though, makes the 35-year-old nostalgic for her first job as a beautician, when she used to offer the brand’s spray tans to customers. Today, she’s an icon for the ‘visibly different’ – those with burns scars in particular – but she still believes that beauty products can offer a confidence boost. ‘Not so long ago, people would say to me, “You know what
I like about you? You still wear make-up and you’re still glamorous.” It’s like, how patronising, of course I still wear make-up! I’ve got terrible bags under my eyes. All these things, they’re not vanity, they’re not frivolous – this is our armour, this is our tool kit and this is what makes us feel ready to face the world.’

That said, I’ve met Katie three or four times, and she has a composure and self-belief that very obviously radiates from within – I suspect she feels just as strong when she’s make-up-free. ‘I think my body confidence is high,’ she agrees. ‘My body has taken a battering, and it’s always recovered and renewed. It’s made me feel in awe of what it can endure. To not love your body after going through any of that – what was the point of it?’

Katie and her husband Richard, a builder/carpenter, now have two daughters: Belle, five, and Penelope, 15 months. She’s conscious of how she speaks to them about appearances. ‘Even though my eldest is still very young, it is important that we’re using the right language and educating her,’ she says. ‘I mean, things have changed: it’s so easy now to get children’s books with different ethnicities or people in a wheelchair. It’s good to have those kinds of conversations in a safe place so that when we go out, she can reference it.’
Then she pauses and starts to laugh. ‘Although I’ve had some diabolical situations with my daughter.’

Mum may be a role model for acceptance and diversity, but kids don’t always get the memo. One such mishap was at Bristol Fashion Week, where Katie was hosting two fashion shows a day with the same models, each of whom had a visible difference. Richard brought their children in to see her every day, and backstage they met one of the male models, an amputee. ‘Belle runs in and shouts, “Your leg’s gone!”,’ recalls Katie. The model patiently explained that due to an illness, his leg had been amputated.

‘But the next day she runs in and does the same thing again, and I’m like, “Oh my God, I’m supposed to be the front person for diversity – this is so embarrassing.”
That night I said to her, “You’ve got to understand that the story behind him losing his leg might be connected to sadness in his life, so now he’s told you once, you can’t keep asking him to repeat it,” and she was like, “OK, OK.” The next day she runs in and goes, “My mum says it makes you sad to talk about your leg.”’ Katie cringes at the memory. ‘I thought, “I can never bring this child to work again.”’

It’s been 10 years now since she made My Beautiful Face – at a time when scars and disabilities weren’t so often seen on TV.

‘When I first watched it, I’d never seen myself in footage disfigured,’ she recalls.
‘I would never look in the mirror, I didn’t have a camera and the only time I saw myself was in medical photography. Seeing myself on camera felt quite final – quite definite: “This is what I look like forever.”’

Being on TV under those circumstances didn’t feel exciting. She watched it alone with her mum. ‘But I suppose that was the start of my journey, and everything I talk about now and even this campaign is all about acceptance. When you can accept what is, then you can move forward and do whatever you want to do in your personal and professional life. But you must accept, you mustn’t stay stagnant – you must only aspire to change your situation.’

That’s what she’s done. She’s become a household name, carving out a busy career and doing more than anyone I can think
of to normalise different kinds of faces on British TV. Things have improved not only for her, but for anyone living with a visible difference. ‘I think it’s fantastic,’ she says.

‘I mean you can go online and see make-up brands and clothing ranges using girls with burns, skin graft s, surgical scars, missing limbs. After what happened to me, I didn’t even know if I’d get employed in any professional world, let alone work with a brand like St Tropez – and you know I’m not airbrushed [in the campaign], I’m not photoshopped, I’m not pretending
to be something I’m not.’

It’s part of a much larger shift in perception, she believes. ‘When I got burnt, so many people placed limitations on me and said, “How are you going to do this?” But years ago, that’s how we treated anybody who wasn’t white; it’s how we treated anybody who wasn’t male. And we look back now and we’re shocked by it. In a few generations, they will look back and say, “Really? So if you had any kind of disability you were just [considered] unattractive?”’

There’s a lot to admire about Katie, who is funny, tough and smart. But perhaps her greatest triumph – though she won’t take much credit for it (‘It’s named after me, but you couldn’t do something like that on your own’) is the work of the Katie Piper Foundation. Its new centre for burns rehab in St Helens, Merseyside, offers a whole spectrum of treatments that previously haven’t been available in one place.
‘It’s a mixture of physical rehab – your physiotherapist, your occupational therapist, your lead consultant, your laser therapy – and then psychological rehab. We’ve got a psychologist, a sexual intimacy therapist, a sleep therapist,’ says Katie.
The centre also offers help with practical challenges, like learning to cook over a flame again after the trauma of being burnt.

It’s an achievement that will change many lives, and it’s blossomed from her own personal trauma. Katie says that after that first documentary, people in her parents’ village would put cheques through their door, wanting to help: ‘So much kindness.’ She opened a bank account with charitable status and started the foundation the following year.

‘It was good for me, you know – everyone needs a purpose. I was brought up to work, always. My mum’s a really nice person but even after the acid attack, she said, “Well, you’re going to have to get a job!”’ Katie laughs. ‘It’s British, isn’t it – you’ve got to pick yourself back up and get on.’