Katrina McCain is a former Fashion Model who has been on TV, graced the pages of best-selling magazines such as Vogue and Italia, and cat-walked on the runways of New York’s fashion A-list. She is the founder and president of Pearls of Hope Outreach, a women’s Bible study group that seeks to provide Godly and encouraging friendships and she is passionate about encouraging women of all ages to, live for Jesus authentically. She is the director of Fashion Beyond Borders Charity Runway Show, an event created by Pearls of Hope. She is also the author of the book, Beyond Being Good: Seeking Christ’s Perfection for Our Imperfect Hearts. She is a wife and mother. Katrina speaks on her career as a model and life after retirement. Be inspired.
Hi Katrina. I am looking forward to our chat, and I was hoping that you would begin by telling us a little bit about yourself.
My name is Katrina McCain; I am from Charlotte North Carolina. I have been married for five years, and I, am growing, and I am learning, and I am really excited about what the Lord has planned for me moving forward.
That’s awesome. So, you were a fashion model up until two or three years ago. Could you please tell us how you got into this line of work, what it was like, and whether you always wanted to do it?
Okay. No, it wasn’t (she laughs). The majority of my adolescent, young adulthood, was pretty timid. I had a few insecurities; you know the typical thing that most girls go through in terms of just their looks and social acceptance and all that. No, modelling wasn’t something I was pursuing, I did model for nine years but how that started was, an opportunity in Charlotte arose called Charlotte Fashion Week, and it was a pretty legitimate fashion show, smaller than New York Fashion Week but had a lot of New York industry influencers that were part of the show. So, there was someone in my class who needed an extra person for a gown she wanted to showcase, and she had a hard time finding someone with the right measurement. I don’t really think the girl, and I had much of a relationship in class, but she turned just around one day and was like, you’re really tall, and you’re really skinny. Would you like to try out and see if you could fit this dress? And at the time, like I said, I was really trying to find myself, really trying to like emerge from my shy character, so I said yes, I fit the dress perfectly, and did the show. It was incredible, I’d never been in an environment like that and like I said, because it was a new show, it brought along a lot of buzz and there happened to be two agents from New York in the audience that came backstage and offered me a contract so that’s how I got into modelling. It was not intentional at all; I didn’t pursue it exclusively because I was in school still, working on a bachelors degree. Still, I would spend a lot of my summers going back and forth to Atlanta, going to New York, going to L.A, and then I would pick up local work that I could while I was actually in class. Those experiences really did shape up my personality in terms of just forcing me to be more of a girl which was my hope and goal for myself all along, because I spent a lot of my high school years just feeling overlooked and feeling left out. And I just thought, you know what I am in college I want to kind of look differently, I want to have friends, I want to go out, I want to have a social life, so I am going to have to recreate myself. So modelling allowed me the platform to do that. Yeah, it was crazy just because I was going through school and fashion at the same time, which most girls only did fashion. I had a lot on my plate but I made it work, and it’s something that I would never ever ever forget
Hmm….well, it does sound like something very memorable. This was sort of a defining moment for you, you were not expecting it, someone had been invited to the show, and you just happened to fit into the extra dress that she had, and you went along to the show, and it opened up an entirely different experience to you. If that had not occurred, what do you think would have happened in your life? So, if you had not gone to that event on that day, what path do you think you would have taken, what path did you already have planned?
Oh, that’s a really good question. Honestly, I don’t know. I don’t know what my life would have looked like. I think I just kind of would have gone about life like normal. I think I would have been more involved in college life. I think maybe I would have tried to be more outgoing by joining different college organisations maybe. I probably would have got a regular job, and you know, focused on my studies. I certainly would not have been able to travel the way I did. I certainly wouldn’t have met the people that I’ve met, so I think yeah, it definitely would have taken a different path in my life for sure.
Great. So what was life like as a model and what did you find most fulfilling about that line of work?
Life of modelling is crazy (she laughs). It’s very fast; I had to prioritize. Most of the time I would do my school work in the middle of the night, like two, three, four, five o clock in the morning. And I had to be available during the day because you never know when you’re going to get a call and they’ll be like, hey, we need you in Atlanta in six hours. And from where I live in North Carolina to Atlanta is like three and a half hours so most times I would drive to Atlanta for three and a half hours and do an interview for twenty-five minutes and have to drive another three and a half hours back home.
So, we’re talking about seven hours of driving to have a twenty-five-minute session?
Yes. Yes. (She laughs). Also when opportunity came from New York, I pretty much had to commit on the spot because if I had not, the opportunity might have been given to someone else. So I really couldn’t plan ahead, which did cost me a few opportunities in terms of just experiencing college life, but you know, I really wanted to commit to modelling because I was really trying to be a cover girl, I was really trying to make this a career, something that would make me famous and so I was willing to compromise a lot of time and my own personal interest to pursue this once it landed in my lap. So yeah, it was really fast-paced, a lot of different types of people that I met, a lot of different ways of living. It was fun, it was scary sometimes, but it was fun. I really enjoyed it.
Okay. So, how did your parents feel about this? You were in college, and this wasn’t something that was part of the plan, it just happened. How did they take this on board?
They were okay when I was doing local work, like when I would just go down to Charleston or just do things in Charlotte. But the plan was to get a bachelors and then go get my masters, and move on to a Ph.D. was the plan that we had all kind of decided on and this definitely put a wrench in the plan. I think that they were mostly concerned because of some of the negative things that are sometimes associated with modelling and fashion and so my parents are ministers, and they were really concerned about me not being taken advantage of and me not being able to protect myself from the world in general. But they never told me I couldn’t, but they made it pretty clear that they felt like I could be doing other things with my time, except for my dad he was like, finish your degree, if anything, just finish your degree. So I modelled part-time at first, I didn’t drop out of school, I finished my degree, I learnt how to juggle modelling professionally and college at the same time which I am very thankful for. I am really thankful that my dad insisted that I finish school.
That’s great. So, what are some of the challenges that are generally associated with a modelling career and what did you find most challenging about the career?
That’s a good question; I think it is different from person to person because some people have tougher skin than others. I am a very sensitive person; I don’t have a tough interior or exterior, I’m a mushy girl (she laughs). I cry very easily; I take things to heart, my emotions are on my sleeves, so for me, handling the rejection was very challenging. But it’s typical, and I tell people all the time this is the only industry where it’s legal to discriminate. I mean, it is, and if you go to any other career path someone can’t dismiss you because there’s a way you look, right? That’s against the law. But with fashion, it’s part of the culture, so I had to put on some big girl pants. But I guess for me, my security blanket, my protection mechanism was that I just kind of developed a sort of vanity and to the point where it didn’t really matter if I didn’t get the job. I don’t care I am still gorgeous right, and I’ll just get the next one, that was my mentality. I don’t think; I developed it intentionally; I think it was just sometimes you hear yes yes yes and then you hear like fifty nos. And sometimes, because of the industry, there were times when people would just kind of share their opinion of me right in front of me, they didn’t care. I mean I have heard it all. I have heard, oh you’re gorgeous, you’re beautiful. I have heard that I am lanky. I have heard that I wasn’t dark enough. I have heard that I wasn’t light enough. I have heard that they need to put extensions in my hair, I have heard it all, and so I think that over time, I just decided in my own head, well, I don’t care what you say, I’m gorgeous, so if you don’t want me, that’s fine, I’ll go to the next person. So it worked because I didn’t allow it to break my spirit, but then that kind of started pouring into my everyday life and how I carried myself in my personal life, which can be pretty problematic if you can imagine (she laughs). Walking around with that kind of vanity, but some of that was just immaturity, but I’ve definitely grown out of that. I am in a place now where I can appreciate everybody’s beauty, and it doesn’t matter if you’re a model or you’re working in the check-out line, everybody has something beautiful that you can celebrate. But I think modelling allowed me to learn about the world, to accept different types of people and then find where my place is, you know.
Yes. Amazing. Why did you choose to retire? In my opinion, I don’t know what it is like in that world, but in my opinion, you’re still very young, and I thought that you would have wanted to stay on and do some more work. So, why did you choose to retire and what are your plans going forward?
Yeah. So I am young. I am very young in the regular world, in the modelling world, I am not. So, the regular model would start her career at 13 years old; I started my career at 19. So I was already like years behind all these other girls. There was my first contract, like I said, I was 19, but they signed me as being 17 years old. And I had another contract, maybe I was 21, but I was 18 on paper. I laugh about it. I was 17 for like four years. And you know it’s almost like you’re working for everybody. So I am working for the designer, I am working for my agent, and now I am working to blend in with the other girls that I am doing jobs with. I am five years older, but I am trying to blend in with high school girls. And that wasn’t so bad, but I think that as I began to grow and mature and I met my husband, and we got married, it was just a mess. There were times when I had to hide my wedding ring; I would take my wedding ring off before I went into an audition because an 18-year-old shouldn’t have a wedding ring on it doesn’t make any sense. And so that was going on, and then all of the travelling was just starting to weigh on me because I was in a different stage in my life. I was ready to just be a little bit more authentic and it’s hard because I was trying to convince myself, this is all you’ve ever known, there’s no reason to stop a bad thing. But I found myself being just a little less available, so I signed a local contract where I wasn’t travelling quite as much, I wasn’t going to New York anymore and from there I decided that because it was local because it was so small that it was very very part time, I probably didn’t even work every week, I then decided to go back to school and get my masters degree. And then my husband and I found out that we were pregnant, and I was just like okay, I think I am ready to move on, I think that I am ready to call it quits, just take a little break and have my baby and just be a wife and a mother and finish my masters degree. So, that’s kind of what happened. I just needed to slow down; I just needed to kind of put some breaks on it because it was taking me away from the life that I had started cultivating for myself and it just came down to making that choice of who I wanted to be.
Awesome. So, it there anything that you miss at all?
Oh, yes! (She laughs excitedly). There’s so much I miss. I miss being pampered; I miss all the make-up, I miss it all, I do. It’s okay though because the Lord has really opened up doors for me to still have a toe in so I still have opportunities to model obviously not in the same caliber that I was. But sometimes through the social media especially, I still have a photographer reach out to me and say, hey, I am a photographer, I am trying to get published, would you mind working with me? Sometimes I’ll get models, aspiring models reach out to me, especially the mothers, like oh, I know about you from such and such, or I saw you in this magazine, I didn’t realise you were local to the area, my daughter wants to be a model could you maybe do some coaching sessions? So, I am not necessarily in the spotlight anymore but definitely behind the scenes, and I am finding that I am really enjoying that a lot, just helping other people and still being able to do what I love to do.
That’s great. So, what skills, experiences and or lessons did you take away from that season of your life which are now required or necessary for this season of your life?
Well, I think the biggest lesson I learnt through modelling is learning how to just love who you are and learning that everybody has something to offer. And I think that’s such a valuable lesson for this generation and for me personally because if you just talk about the different statistics of social media and how celebrities, their platforms, sometimes can create low self-esteem in the quote and unquote average person’s life. People are comparing themselves to other people, and it’s just a mess, you know, like where is our identity? Because if we have our identity, we wouldn’t be flicked away by somebody else’s lifestyle, we would celebrate each other instead of competing and comparing. And I feel that this modeling though I went about it the wrong way in terms of just kind of developing a vanity but as I began to grow and mature and just kind of get connected with God, He started softening my vanity out to just self-love and self-appreciation, meaning I don’t have to put myself above somebody else to feel good about who I am, and I don’t have to make sure that I am the prettiest girl in the room. I just have to be happy with who He’s made me to be and celebrate who He’s made other people to be. And I feel that with modelling I was able to just learn from so many different types of people from so many different walks of life and that has made me rounded in terms of just being able to love all kinds of people and knowing that none of us are perfect, but we all have something to offer. So I think that the greatest lesson I’ve gained from modelling is that everybody has their own beauty and it deserves to be celebrated no matter who they are.
Awesome. No doubt the young ladies that you coach are blessed to have you coach them.
Thank you (she laughs). I like to think so.
Let’s talk about Pearls of Hope, which is the Bible study group that you founded in 2013; I believe it was. What motivated you to start this group?
I don’t have these big vision board plans so, with Pearls of Hope, it was not anything like I’m going to sit down and start a non-profit organization, absolutely not. It just kind of came about (she laughs). I just got married, and we were trying to figure out what we were going to do in terms of churches in a new area. We’d moved to Greensboro from Charlotte, and so I didn’t want us not having a church home to affect my relationship with the Lord, so I started my own personal Bible studies. At the same time, I had friends who lived in Greensboro who are part of the ministry that did not have a women’s group. They had asked the leaders in their church like there’s a lot of women at this church, we serve, and we volunteer, we would really like to have our own women’s ministry. Well, for whatever reason the leadership was unable to adhere to their request and my friend just kind of confided in me and I was like, I do Bible study in my house, it’s just me, but you’re welcome to come if you want. So one friend actually came, and she loved it, and I said I do it every day but maybe you and I can do it once a week, and she was like, okay. So the next week she brings Jessica, and the next week Courtney hears about it, and she comes and before you know it I had nine girls coming to my house every week, and that was pretty encouraging. Jarrett and I had only been married not even a month yet, so having nine people in our house every week and that went on for four years. So for four years, every week in our living room, we would have Bible study with these girls, and they would bring friends and so a typical night it could be anywhere from nine to twelve people in our living room. And just this last year, we were given the opportunity to meet at an off-site location. Someone volunteered their meeting room for us, so that gave us an opportunity to not be in my house anymore. And so from there we just felt like we’re doing Bible studies, we’re having these great conversations, we’re getting closer to God, but there’s no point in us just learning and not practising what we’re learning. So we started volunteering, we started creating our own outreach opportunities, and that led us to a pro-bono programme that would sponsor an organization and get them, accredited for a non-profit. And so we applied, and we were accepted, and a few weeks later, we were an official non-profit organization. So that’s how that happened.
Sounds great. And Pearls of Hope has a project called Fashion Beyond Borders Charity Runway Show. So, what is the vision of this charity, runway show?
So that show is a product of a mission trip that we went to in 2016. We fell in love with one of the schools there, the school is actually in an impoverished area where there was a lot of crime and sex trafficking going on in the public school, so they opened up this private school so that the families had an option because a lot of the kids were being recruited, into drugs and sex trafficking in the public school. So when we came back home from this mission trip, we were like we want to do something, we want to give back, we don’t want to just say we had a great experience, and then move on with our lives. So we were trying to figure out how can we raise money to help them money that would acrually go a long way, and the only way I knew to make any kind of big money was fashion. I mean I don’t know how else to get a whole lot of money, and so I just reached out to some people in the industry that I had kept ties with, and they were like yeah let’s do it we’ll help you all we can, and so Fashion Beyond Borders was born. And it’s really great because everybody volunteers and a hundred percent of the proceeds are given away. We’ve been able to bless the school; this is the third year doing the show, it’s been amazing. It’s given me another outlet into fashion, given me a chance to coach lots of models at the same time. I think last year we had forty models, and so being hands-on with forty aspiring models was really rewarding and fulfilling for me, and at the same time, we’re remembering people that the world has forgotten and so that’s the whole premise behind Fashion Beyond Borders.
You must be very fulfilled.
I am! But it’s all fun; I don’t see it as work, it’s fun. Because like I said I get to re-connect with old fashion comrades and old friends that had helped me in my career and now are helping me give back to the world.
That’s just phenomenal. Excellent job. Well done.
Thank you.
So, let’s talk about your book, Beyond Being Good: Seeking Christ’s Perfection for Our Imperfect Hearts. I love that title by the way. Why did you choose to write this book and what is the book about?
Okay. So, you’re not going to believe me, I promise you. I wasn’t trying to write a book (she laughs). Wonderful things that happen to me always happen by accident because I was not pursuing becoming an author although I’d always hoped that, in the back of my mind, one day I could pack on that kind of endeavour. So, once Pearls of Hope became a federal recognized nonprofit organization, we were told that you’ve got to keep people abreast on what you’re doing so that people can know what they’re giving to. So we started a blog post about what we’re doing, and somewhere I kind of turned towards what I’m learning and people were like oh, that’s really good that’s really great, and then we were transitioning from one site to another site and I was afraid to lose some of the blog posts, so I started saving them and reading them just kind of critiquing my own work and next thing I knew I just had all these thoughts, and it just felt like a book that I didn’t mean to write. At that time I was working on what ended up being the third chapter of the book, and I was reading it to my husband, and he was like, it’s really good, this is really good. And I said I think I want to write more, I think I want to write a book, and he was like well do it, so I did it (she laughs). I did it, and it took me about nine months, and I finished it. And I remember closing my computer and thinking what’s next and I don’t know what else to say I think it’s done, And I told Jarrett, and he said, I think we need to start looking editors. And I said, are you serious? And he said, yes, let’s start looking at editors and see if maybe we can get published. And I was like, okay. So that’s how it happened. That’s how I started the book and the book itself is a lot about what we’ve talked about in terms of knowing that everyone has worth and plugging in to the Lord to find out what it is that He has for you specifically and then being able to encourage other people in the journey that they’re going through, knowing that none of us are perfect and none of us are going to do things perfectly. But God’s not looking for our perfection to do the work that He’s called us to do, right? I think a lot of times, oh, I can’t do that because I’m struggling in this area, or I made that mistake in my life so I am not the right person to do this or to say that and I just think we just have so many insecurities in our heart based on the things that we’ve done that we cannot take back but God’s interested in the future that He has planned for us, and I think that once we’re able to let go of our attempts at being perfect, the Lord’s love begins to do the changing and the perfecting in us. And so the book is really basically about knowing that you are loved for who you are, where you are, God has something beautiful just for you that you can turn around and encourage somebody else. And when we walk in that truth and that understanding that’s when the whole beauty of who we were all along begins to really shine. And so beyond being good is basically, we’re not here to be good girls, we’re here to be loved by a good God, and He’s going to take care of everything exactly the way that He wants to, in His perfect way. So that’s what this book is about.
Awesome. I love it already. Where can people get the book to buy?
They can get the book on Amazon.com, BarnesandNobles.com or christianbooks.com. And if you’re local, like right here in North Carolina, there are a few bookstores that I have been corresponding with about having me come to visit to do book signings so I’ll be sure to update all of that on my social media but it’s just a click away, Amazon, Barnes and Nobles, Christian books.
Great. So now, Katrina, how can people contact you if they would like to know more about you and the work that you do?
The best way is on my website which is just www.katrinamccain.com, and so there you get like a whole kind of write up about my history, and about the book. There’s a primer video of the book available there too so you can see the book visually. And it has my social media links, my Instagram, my Facebook, and my email address as well, so that’s the best way to get in touch with me. And I also have other blog posts that I have been writing since the book has been going through publication. These are all new things that I’ve been writing about. And then there are pictures of me, and my daughter, my husband, my friends, it’s a very interactive website I have been told, so I hope people enjoy it. That’s where you would go to get directly to me and learn more about me.
