Mia Kang
Mia Kang is a fashion model, Muay Thai fighter, body positivity advocate, and television host. Kang grew up in Hong Kong as an overweight girl, but halved her weight at the age of 13, and was immediately scouted as a model. She modeled across Asia and Europe through her high school and college years. Kang got a master's degree in finance in England, and left modeling to work as a commodities trader, before returning to modeling in New York City and winning the 2016 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue model search and 2017 Rookie of the Year.
Despite her modeling success, Kang was miserable with the eating disorders that she felt the modeling industry demanded to stay thin, until she took up the martial art Muay Thai in Thailand. Training and fighting gained her respect for her body, healthy eating habits, weight and muscle. She now advocates for women's body positivity, while continuing to model at her larger size, and hosting Spy Games, an American reality competition television series.
Early life and modeling
Mia Kang was born and raised in Hong Kong, though she has Swiss nationality. Her father is British and her mother is South Korean; they met while living in Taiwan, then moved to Hong Kong for business. Both parents were academics, with her father being a physicist from Oxford University. She has four older half-siblings, but they lived in other parts of the world as she was growing up.As a teenager, Kang studied at and eventually graduated from the international Island School in Hong Kong, but never felt like she fit in. She says the Asian kids would socialize together and the western kids would socialize together, but she was half Korean and half British, and never felt she belonged with either.
Kang grew up bullied and overweight, though a Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue cover with model Tyra Banks hung on her wall. When she was 13, a doctor told her she was obese, and at risk of weight related diabetes. So she went to the other extreme and halved her weight in a couple of months, using fasting, purging, and laxatives. She says that she was around before dropping to around ; she was size 14 and became size 0. At the same time, she grew. The boys who had bullied her now asked her out on dates.
Getting thin led to her being scouted as a model while still 13 years old, by her dance teacher. One of her first jobs was a Levi's campaign, and she remembers being surprised seeing her picture in shops in Times Square.
After graduating high school, Kang modeled abroad, in Tokyo, Singapore, and London, and walking runways in Paris and Milan at the age of 17. For several years she was signed with the London Models 1 agency.
Higher education and finance career
Despite Kang's modeling success, her father advised her to go to college, since modeling could be a short-lived career. So Kang also studied in England, getting first a bachelor's degree in philosophy and economics at Bristol University, then a master's degree in finance and financial law at the School of Oriental and African Studies. She says her education is the thing in her life that she is proudest of, and intends to return one day for a doctorate or an MBA.After graduating, Kang left modeling to use her degree in finance as a London commodities trader. She was on the path to becoming a derivatives consultant in her mid-20s, when she realized she felt stifled and decided to try the modeling profession one more time.
Return to modeling
In 2015, Kang signed with Trump Model Management and moved from Hong Kong to New York City, home of most of the world's top models. Sports Illustrated was her first New York City modeling assignment, and she was the first Hongkonger to become a Sports Illustrated model. She also worked in three campaigns for Guess. In August 2016, she defeated five other models from around the world in a public vote and was named the winner of the magazine's Swimsuit 2016 Model Search, to be featured in the 2017 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue. She was also declared the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue 2017 Rookie of the Year.However, she was very unhappy. She was being asked to starve herself, and go on 10-day liquid diets between photo shoots. It was normal for her to go four days without eating. She was obsessed with being thinner, and living off of "Marlboro Lights, black coffee, and alcohol." At her low point, she was contemplating suicide.
Muay Thai and body positivity
Kang's family have a home in Koh Samui, an island off the east coast of Thailand. Kang was taking a 10-day holiday from modeling there in 2016, when she noticed young fighters from a local gym training in the combat sport Muay Thai by the side of the road, and asked if she could try it; initially just to help her lose more of the weight that she was told she needed to. The coaches were impressed enough by her workout that they suggested she join. The 10 days turned into a six or nine-month training camp, of six day a week routines. The martial arts training taught her to respect her body. The workouts were so intense she forgot she smoked. She stopped restricting what she ate, added 20-30+ pounds, became more muscled, and gained definition. Her dress size went from a size two-four to a size four-six.Kang began to alternate her time between training and returning to New York for modeling. She kept training in New York with Phil Nurse at The Wat, and Hollywood Hino of Church Street Boxing, for about three hours daily, and in Thailand at the Bangkok Yokkao and her first gym, Yodyut, on Koh Samui, for about six hours each day. She decided to compete in her first professional Muay Thai fight in May 2017. She would have done it earlier, but her modeling agency objected strenuously; the money wasn't much compared to US modeling fees, and being injured in a fight would put her career in doubt. At least she needed to first shoot the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue. Sports Illustrated promised to film the fight for a digital documentary. She took a month long training with legendary Muay Thai fighter Saenchai to prepare for her fight. She said she was recommended "to have as much sex as possible" before her fight, to increase testosterone levels.
Kang's first professional fight was on 7 May 2017. She was matched against Thai fighter Nong B, who had 5 bouts experience. Kang took an elbow to the eye in the first round, which, she says, made her mad, since her face is her livelihood. She won the second round, then went in with "heavy hands" in the third round, hitting her opponent hard, and winning by technical knockout. After her victory, Kang was excited to continue into mixed martial arts, and signed with manager Malki Kawa of leading MMA agency First Round Management.
Kang credits Muay Thai for teaching her to love her body and even saving her life. She became a body positivity advocate, encouraging all women to have strong and healthy bodies. She started her own all-female boxing club in SoHo, New York, called "Killa Girl Gang", after her fighting name, "Killa Kang", for all levels of fitness. She hosted a body positivity retreat on Koh Samui with travel agency 109 World. A May 2018 Instagram post in which she compared photos of her emaciated size two, body in 2015 with her size eight, body in 2018, drew 14,000 "likes" and international press coverage. Kang was named a 2018 Today Show Style Hero, and the 2019 Self magazine New Year's Challenge star.
Kang continues to model, but says that her new size, eight or ten in 2018, puts her above the standard model sizes, and yet below the plus-size model sizes, so clients ask that she either gain or lose weight.
In 2020, Kang became the host of Spy Games, a reality competition television series on the American television channel Bravo, in which ten contestants compete in spy-inspired exercises for $100,000.