My perfect weekend with Los Angeles beauty queen Khailing Ho

Who: Model and TikTok creator Khailing Ho, 20, a Singaporean living in Los Angeles since 2022. The winner of Miss World Singapore in 2021 was a special guest and judge at Miss World America in October 2023.

A former competitive dancer and aspiring singer, she was scouted in 2023 by XO Team, a content creation house on TikTok that produces dance videos and skits.

She is the first Singaporean to join the Los Angeles-based collective founded by Russian content creator Gary Grey and Ukrainian TikTok star Mary Senn. To date, the team has five members who appear sporadically and a 41.5 million following on TikTok. 

Ho’s TikTok account @khailia.g has 21.6k followers and 2.4 million likes.

“A typical weekend for me involves journaling, which puts me in a headspace to start my day. I will go to the gym afterwards.

At 4pm, I will frequent one of my favourite dance studios, Millennium Dance Complex or Playground LA.

Dance and music are ways in which I practise mindfulness. On days I don’t feel like speaking, dance empowers me to tell stories through movement and to feel most comfortable in my body. 

I am a self-taught musician, so naturally, an ideal weekend for me is spent cooped up in my home studio in Los Angeles. I remember a period of two months in 2023, when I would spend up to eight hours in the studio, five days a week.

Songwriting is when I am most vulnerable and authentic, as I draw from my experiences with heartbreak and mental health struggles. My dream is to share my music with the world one day and assure listeners that their feelings are validated.

Content creation is something I have pursued since young. Between the ages of eight and 10, I began editing and posting videos about my life on YouTube on my mum’s iPad.

My sister, who is four years older than me, would make fun of the videos I posted, but I remember having the goal of 100 views. 

When I was 16, I was bullied in school for the YouTube videos on my channel, which nearly killed my confidence.

I started gaining traction online when TikTok became popular in Singapore around 2020. I would post video compilations of my travels and behind-the-scenes at Miss World events, as well as of me dancing and hanging out with my friends. My videos attracted between 11k to 200k views in 2021.

I often post singing covers on TikTok now, something I would not have imagined doing years ago.

On days when I am filming content, I create a list of what to film and research viral videos on the platform. I try to optimise every moment for content creation, even if it means bringing eight different outfits to shoot a video.

I have been very fortunate with making friends in Los Angeles. I spend the most time with them on the weekends – going to the arcade, hiking, and having movie and barbecue nights.

All my peers are in the entertainment industry, so our schedules are constantly hectic. During the rare times our schedules align, however, we love to go for road trips and drive out to random places.

Spontaneity is a huge factor in my social life. My friends and I are always game to create content whenever we are together.

I often round my weekends off by indulging in a homemade smoothie bowl, which I have become an expert at whipping up.

However, I do miss the local fare such as black carrot cake, cheng tng, chilli crab, and sweet and sour fish from Newton Food Centre, which I used to frequent on the weekends.

Now in Los Angeles, I often find myself wishing I could teleport back home to get my fix of local food again.”

Correction note: Ms Khailing Ho’s occupation and her sister’s age were stated wrongly in an earlier version of this story. This has been corrected. We are sorry for the error.