Mia Kang - Knockout

Copyright 2020 Mia Kang

Cover 2020 Abrams

Published in 2020 by Abrams Press, an imprint of ABRAMS. All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020932370

ISBN: 978-1-4197-4332-0

eISBN: 978-1-64700-016-5

Disclaimer: This is a work of nonfiction. The events and experiences detailed herein are all true and have been faithfully rendered as the author remembers them to the best of her ability. Some names and identities have been changed to protect the privacy of those individuals. All dialogue is as close to an approximation as possible to actual conversations that took place, to the best of the authors recollection.

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Here we go again, I thought.

When my agent, Deborah, called me one morning in 2016 to let me know that the lifestyle brand Guess was asking me to return for their next campaign, at first I was ecstatic. My career was at an all-time high and I had worked all over the world, but I was just breaking into the American market. And America was tough, man. Were talking the highest level of competition I had seen in my fifteen years as a model. I had shot for Sports Illustrateds swimsuit model search a few months earlier, and this was another amazing opportunity. There was one caveat: I needed to lose weight.

Whatever you did for SI, you need to do it again, because they dont think youre in your best shape right now, she said, hesitantly. She knew how bad that sounded.

To shrink down as much as I possibly could for SI, I had put myself through a ten-day liquid-only diet. Ten days. All liquids. Absolutely no solid food. It was extreme, and I hated every minute of it. But in my world, that was normal. I had been asked to starve and lose weight more times than I could remember, but this campaign had much more pressure attached to it. I was also twenty-seven years old, which for the modeling world was past my expiration date. This time, thinking about putting my body on an intense starvation regimen made my stomach drop with apprehension.

Whats the worst part of starving yourself? Take your pick: Hunger thats so intense you cant sleep at night? The chain-smoking to curb your appetite and keep your hands and mouth busy? The anxiety that consumes you as you live in fear of being fired and sent home from the shoot for being too large? The paranoia that everyone on set is talking about you? The embarrassment and insecurity that plagues you when clients criticize your body, telling you that you are too big? The whirlwind of emotions you have when you dont fit into the sample-size clothes laid out in your dressing room? The stress that comes after the job is done, wondering if youre ever going to work with that clientor anyoneagain? The body dysmorphia when you look at images of yourself and see a whale, even though you are far from it? The worry that you will never be thin enough, and your modeling agency will send you packing? Its a relentless cycle of anxiety and crippling self-doubt.

So that fleeting feeling of happiness from booking a campaign was quickly overshadowed by the immense pressure of what was to come in preparing for it. I know it sounds crazyafter all, this was a huge worldwide campaign for an iconic American brand. I should have been grateful, right? Yet more and more, I had been feeling that all the crazy shit I put myself through to be as skinny as possible was just not worth it. But I didnt know what else to do. I hadnt yet gained the personal strength and the self-respect that I would later learn from Muay Thai. At this point, I was still fighting with myself rather than someone in a ring.

I could feel the tears well up.

My body was literally saying, Fuck, I cant do this again, and I started bawling on the phone.

I didnt say anything as I tried to catch my breath and stop crying. Deborah finally broke the silence. I think she was taken aback by my reaction, and the mother in her kicked in. Im so sorry. I hate delivering news like this. You know I think of you like a daughter.... A moment later, she added, I hate this part of my job. She started crying, too, and soon we were both sniffling into our phones.

Ill do it. Ill do it. Ive had enough, but Ill do it, I said. And then I added, But, after this, I am done.

It was true. I couldnt do it anymore. The pressure to look my best (i.e., as skinny as possible) had worn me down, and after modeling for more than half of my life, the extreme dieting was taking its toll on my physical and mental health. I was unhealthily thin already, but in the warped world I lived in, I didnt know that my weight was abnormal or that the stress I was putting on myself was dangerous. I only knew that I was miserable.

Whatever I did, it never seemed to be enough. I was never pretty enough, never thin enough, never good enough.

And here I was again, being asked to take another hit to the body.

I dropped the weight and got through the shoot, but I needed to get away. I needed to escape the pressure cooker I was in, or... I didnt know what Id do. On the outside, I had a modeling career that other models would kill for. But on the inside, I was living with crippling anxiety and depression.

So I went to Thailand for a ten-day vacation, which was about as far away as I could get from the crazy merry-go-round of the fashion world. Little did I know that my whole life was about to change, and I certainly didnt know that it would happen in the sweaty ring of a remote Muay Thai gym.

I never aspired to be a model. Growing up in Hong Kong in the nineties, I never thought I would grace the pages of Vogue or walk the catwalks in the clothes of coveted designers. Because back then I was overweight. Back then, my biggest aspiration was to get through a school day without being bullied, teased, and ridiculed for my weight. Every day, for years.

Those years took place on a beautifully manicured enclave of Discovery Bay, about a twenty- to thirty-minute ferry ride from downtown Hong Kong, also known as Central. The road systems in Discovery Bay were such that cars were not permitted, and everyone rode around in golf carts. My street, Seabee Lane, ran along the western edge of the bay. My house was built into the hillside. It was three stories: On the top floor were the dining room and kitchen; downstairs opened to a large living room with a balcony that had a gorgeous view overlooking the beach and an inlet. Down another flight of stairs were our bedrooms.