The Price of Looking Like a Doctor

“You don’t look like a doctor!”

I’ve heard that quite a few times, less and less over the years… People usually mean it as an observation. Sometimes it’s a compliment. Sometimes it’s criticism disguised as curiosity.
My response is usually simple, ” I know” or “I don’t want to!”
Because to look like a doctor, I first have to conform to someone else’s idea of what a doctor should look like. And I’ve never been particularly good at conforming to norms.

There have been days when a patient’s father has looked at me and laughed, “You look like a rockstar.”
I smiled and replied, “I am a rockstar that fixes smiles.” I took that as one of the nicest compliments I’ve ever received.
Why should medicine and personality be mutually exclusive? Why can’t a doctor have long hair, a beard, pierced ears, tattoos, colourful socks, or a loud laugh? Why is competence so often judged by appearance before character?

But then not every interaction is pleasant, though.

Once, I was about to consult a patient whom I had already been warned could be rude. As I began taking the medical history, the patient muttered one word— “Gay kahin ka!” —and walked out.
Perhaps there was another medical history she didn’t want to disclose. Perhaps there were mental health struggles beneath that moment. I’ll never know.
I simply told her that if she had something to say, she should say it out loud. And that there are always people willing to help, whatever someone might be going through.
She chose to leave. And while the other doctors around me were understandably flustered, I wasn’t. I just said “See people are entitled to their opinions. I’m resilient enough to survive a passing remark from a stranger. I’ve done enough of this over the years.”
What struck me wasn’t the insult. It was how easily someone could decide who I was based solely on the way I looked. She had barely met and spoken to me for 5 minutes. My appearance—or perhaps simply the way I carried myself—had become enough evidence in someone else’s mind. None of it had anything to do with the conversation we were supposed to be having.

When I pierced my ears, let my hair grow long, and grew out my beard all the way back in 2020 during the lockdowns, the comments multiplied…
From senior healthcare professionals more so:
“Are you becoming a sanyasi?”
“Are you quitting your practice?”
“This isn’t how a doctor should look.”

I listened quietly and let it pass through me without allowing them to rent a heavy space in my mind. I’ve learnt that not every opinion deserves access to your mental peace.

Being a doctor comes as a privilege. Society places enormous trust in us. People allow us into the most vulnerable moments of their lives. They place their fears, hopes, pain, and sometimes their future into our hands.
That respect is precious. But it also comes with a price — the burden of responsibility, of judgement, of conduct. And often, the burden of looking a certain way so that people feel reassured before you’ve even spoken a word.
Somewhere along the way, we’ve confused professionalism with uniformity. As though compassion wears a haircut. As though knowledge lives in clean-shaven faces. As though integrity can be measured by the length of someone’s hair.

One of my favourite quotes captures this contradiction beautifully:

“We have turned doctors into gods and worship their deity by offering up our bodies and our souls… And yet paradoxically, they are the most vulnerable of human beings…
… they have aptly been called ‘wounded healers.'”
— Barney Livingston, M.D., in Doctors (1989), by Erich Segal

I read these lines when I was still in highschool and they remained with me, like an anchor, to push through the hardwork that needed to be put into becoming a doctor. Perhaps that’s the irony. Doctors are expected to heal everyone else while quietly carrying their own humanity.
We are healthcare professionals, But we are also artists, musicians, athletes, poets, parents, partners, dreamers, and flawed human beings.
My earrings don’t make me a worse orthodontist. My beard doesn’t change my diagnosis. My long hair doesn’t alter the biomechanics of tooth movement.

Over the years, things have become better, easier. I’m glad to see more and more doctors today, being their ‘self’ and not caring about the world view. But I also know that the world has not yet stopped talking.

So now I let the world talk…
and if I happen to look more like a rockstar than the doctor you imagined…
That’s okay.
I’m still the one fixing your smile…

Happy Doctor’s Day

1st July 2026, 10:18AM