NEWSYvette Diaz Went From Teen Mom and Cannabis Hustler to One of Modeling’s New Faces
Jan. 23 2026, Published 3:04 p.m. ET
While the average Los Angeles teenager was navigating high school dances, Yvette Diaz was navigating motherhood at just 14 years old.
Most people assume a life starting with such a heavy responsibility follows a predictable, difficult path, but she has spent her life defying it. Today, she is an elite model with over a million followers on Instagram, yet her journey to the top didn't start in a casting office. It started in the gritty, high-stakes world of the California marijuana industry.
For a decade, Diaz operated in the cannabis business, spending six of those years running an entire operation. Despite her success, she hit a ceiling where her contributions felt overlooked.
“Once I started to feel unappreciated, I knew I had to make a big decision,” she recalls. “That’s exactly what I did, and I never looked back.”
In a move that felt like a massive gamble to outsiders, she walked away from stability to reinvent herself as a model and content creator, going all in. She openly admits to investing over $70,000 into her physique to achieve her aesthetic goals, though she takes pride in the fact that her face remains completely untouched.
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This blend of artificial enhancement and natural beauty mirrors her approach to social media, rooted at the intersection of strategy, boldness and unapologetically authenticity. Naturally, when she first dove into modeling, she went viral almost instantly.
While many would crumble under the sudden scrutiny of the internet, Diaz viewed the inevitable "hate" as fuel. She maintains that people underestimate how strategic it is to go viral. Instead of retreating, she used the backlash as a springboard, hitting the one-million-follower mark on Instagram in less than two years.
She now views the early criticism as the best thing that ever happened to her career.
“I shut out the world and the negative comments, and had tunnel vision,” Diaz says, “My life changed quickly and drastically. I only wish I would’ve done it sooner.”
