Today we’d like to introduce you to Katy Johnson.
Katy, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
As a little girl, I always wanted to travel but being from a middle-class family very complacent on staying where they were and having no interest in travel I never was able to. My first flight was at 18 years old for a modeling job and my first international at 20. I went to LA at 19 for modeling and knew I needed to live in a big city and I needed to travel and see as much of the world as possible. I modeled for years and was able to travel to a lot of some amazing places and the more I traveled the more I wanted to travel and see more as you only get one life, right? I loved modeling but I hated the pressure I was always under. I was sick of being told I was too much or too little of something.
Too skinny, too big, not toned enough, too fit, need shorter hair, longer hair, darker hair, blonde hair. I was so tired of being told what to do and how to look and I was so tired of this ever-growing unrealistic standard of what beauty is or what the ideal look was. Social media has really made beauty even harder to obtain as nowadays, everything is so photoshopped and edited that women, especially young girls have unrealistic standards of what beauty is and how we should look and feel. We see this makeup photo of a girl that doesn’t have one flaw or even one visible pore and we look at our great skin but it doesn’t look great enough next to this altered image. It’s quite sad.
Anyway! I had always been interested in teaching self-esteem and empowerment to young women since overcoming a serious eating disorder and depression as a teen so one-day, last year, I thought why don’t I combine my two passions together, I was devastated over a divorce and wanted to find myself again and my purpose so I decided I was going to travel the world to find “beauty for a purpose”. I wanted to find true beauty in every country and get different perception, different ideas, different information. I wanted to show that beauty is so much more than the size of your lips or how thin you are. I want to show that beauty is seen so differently everywhere but that no matter how different we see it we still are quite similar in the way we see the beauty within inner traits such as self-love, confidence, and kindness. I want to travel and empower women and I want to show different types of beauty to eradicate these ridiculous standards within the Western world. I also want to discuss women’s equality in countries and really spread awareness about just how lucky we are living in the US and having so many freedoms, rights, and the safety we have. I want to do all this while learning as much as I can about the world and myself. I want to change my life and the life of one woman at a time, one country at a time.
Has it been a smooth road?
It took so much planning, my first leg of my journey around the world consisted of 51 countries in Europe and the transcontinental countries so to plan that schedule, find hotel sponsors and other sponsors, and to raise money and do all the research?! It was very stressful and so much work. I luckily had two amazing interns that worked hard to help me get all of the proposals out for sponsorship etc.
Traveling alone is also not easy and gets lonely but I just do these interviews with women in these countries I visit and it gives me such a buzz that it’s all worth it.
So, as you know, we’re impressed with One Model Mission – tell our readers more, for example what you’re most proud of as a company and what sets you apart from others.
At this point, I’m a nonprofit, I’m traveling and interviewing these women for my documentary One Model Mission so hopefully, I can get the funds to shoot the entirety of it around the world and get the documentary out into the world with 196 interviews from 196 countries. 🙂
Let’s touch on your thoughts about our city – what do you like the most and least?
I miss LA loads, It’s my city. I love the weather, the palm trees, the number of things to do, the cafes and bars. There is no place like LA.
It’s the very best the only complaint in LA is the traffic and parking, that’s it!
Contact Info:
- Website: www.onemodelmission.com
- Email: katy@onemodelmission.com
- Instagram: @iamkatyjohnson and @onemodelmission
- Facebook: @onemodelmission
- Twitter: @katyjohnson1
Getting in touch: VoyageLA is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.
