Mia Kang’s modeling career was shaped by extreme pressure to make her body smaller. Bullied for being overweight as a child in Hong Kong, she was told at 13 that she was obese and at risk of weight-related diabetes. She responded by essentially stopping eating, dropping from approximately 86 kilograms (190 pounds) to 43 kilograms (95 pounds) in only a few months while also growing several inches. That drastic transformation led to her being scouted as a model, including an early Levi’s campaign, creating a damaging association between starvation and professional opportunity from the beginning of her career.
After earning degrees in philosophy, economics, finance, and financial law and briefly working as a London commodities trader, Kang returned to modeling in New York in 2015 after signing with Trump Model Management. Her public breakthrough came when she won Sports Illustrated’s 2016 Swimsuit Model Search and appeared as a 2017 Rookie. Behind that success, however, she described an increasingly dangerous routine: being asked to starve herself, following ten-day liquid diets between shoots, sometimes going four days without food, and existing on “Marlboro Lights, black coffee, and alcohol.” She later said that her obsession with becoming thinner reached a point at which she contemplated suicide. A 2016 training holiday in Thailand became a turning point when she began intensive Muay Thai, eventually abandoning severe restriction, gaining substantial muscle and weight, and rebuilding her relationship with food and her body. Kang’s experience became a prominent body-confidence and eating-disorder recovery narrative, culminating in her 2020 memoir Knockout and her advocacy for healthier standards in fashion.
