Model Mia Kang on How Becoming a Muay Thai Fighter Saved Her Life
Mia Kang doesn’t want to be categorized. Nor can she be. The 30-year-old is a model, but at a size 8–10, she doesn’t fit into the industry’s straight size or plus size buckets. She’s also a martial arts fighter, having recently competed in her first professional Muay Thai fight (she won, by technical knockout in the third round). And she’s even had a stint as a commodities trader in London, a job she took after completing her master’s degree.
No matter how you try to describe Kang, one thing’s for certain: She’s not interested in fitting into anyone’s boxes anymore, more than 15 years into a modeling career that, until recently, has affected her wellbeing in a number of negative ways. “My health has suffered from this industry my whole life,” she tells SELF. After losing weight in her early teens, Kang was encouraged to try modeling. She had immediate success. “I didn’t know what I was doing when I went into my first modeling agency,” she says. “I booked my first photo shoot three days later, and honestly the rest is history.” She engaged in dangerous weight loss habits for years, desperate to live up to modeling’s restrictive standards and never questioning any of it. “I grew up in this world, in this bubble, thinking that this is normal,” she says.
It wasn’t until about two years ago, after getting a call asking her to go on a liquid-only diet before a shoot—a relatively routine request for her, and something that she had done numerous times before—that Kang realized she couldn’t do it anymore. “At 27, the industry wanted me to look how I looked when I was 17, and my body was fighting,” she says. “I was resisting more. I was emotionally resisting, mentally resisting.” She burst into tears.
Kang ended up doing the shoot, but she knew she needed a change. She’d reached a low point, even contemplating suicide during a particularly rough time. She decided to go to Thailand for what she thought would be a 10-day reset. That’s where she discovered her love of Muay Thai, a martial art also known as Thai boxing. “I was driving down the road my first day there and saw a Muay Thai gym, pulled over the car, tried it, and fell in love with it,” she says. “I just loved how it made me feel.” She ended up moving into the gym and staying for nine months.
Kang’s time at the training camp allowed her to begin to heal from the damage her involvement with the modeling industry had inflicted on her mental and physical health over the years. Her life became simpler: Wake up, train, eat, rest. Maybe go the the beach. Repeat. Sleep. “I was so concerned with how I looked and my measurements and even that mentality of, ‘Oh my God, I’m gonna die if I don’t get this new Gucci bag,’” Kang says of her time before training camp. “I detached from all of it. I lived a really simple life where I was me. I really focused on me.”
It’s no wonder that Kang credits Muay Thai with changing—and saving—her life. And now, back modeling on her own terms and as in demand as ever, she wants to see change for others, too. “It took me to the point where I was like, ‘I’d rather not live life than live this life,’ for me to realize that something has to change. Not only for me but within this world and within this industry,” she says. She says she feels she has a duty to do something, as someone whose idealized body has graced billboards and magazines around the world. “[I want to] make a difference in the industry and make sure that the imagery that I put out there is the imagery that I wish that I had when I was a vulnerable, impressionable teenage girl suffering from eating disorders, subscribing to that standard of beauty that was just dictated to me and held above my head,” she explains.
Kang does that by showcasing herself as a strong and healthy role model, whether through posting fierce training videos of herself on her Instagram or walking in New York Fashion Week for the first time last September, after previously not being cast because of her size. She’s also a vocal body-diversity advocate, campaigning for the fashion world to recognize models like her, who are currently considered in between sizes.
“I find it ridiculous that I was always being referred to as ‘you’re too this or too that’ or ‘not quite this or not quite that,’” she says. It might seem ironic that someone so defiantly against fitting into a mold would be fighting to be categorized, but Kang is determined to make a difference. She’s doing it to help the fashion industry become more inclusive and accepting of all types of bodies. She’s doing it for the girl she used to be, desperate to be successful in an industry where there she felt that there was only one way to do so. An now, whether it’s as a model, fighter, or advocate, she’s ready to take on her next chapter, whatever that may be. “I'll do whatever I want to do,” she says.
Model and Muay Thai fighter Mia Kang is our 2019 New Year's Challenge star and the cover model for our SELF 28-Day Challenge Special Issue. Find out more about the challenge (and join us!) here.
