‘Don’t do it’: Mia Khalifa’s warning to young women wanting to join OnlyFans

One of the subscription-based platform’s biggest earners has issued a plea to any young women considering following in her footsteps.

Former adult-film star Mia Khalifa has issued a plea to young women considering joining the subscription-based platform OnlyFans.

Ms Khalifa, who has a following of tens of millions of people across her profiles on TikTok, X and Instagram, is consistently reported as one of the site’s top earners.

But in the most recent episode of The New York Times’ podcast, The Interview, the 31-year-old told host David Marchese she hoped to ensure “that I’m not promoting (OnlyFans) as a platform that is an answer to women who are looking for easy money”.

“I have a responsibility to not promote it as something that any woman should join unless they’ve already been in the sex-work industry, unless they’re over 25, their frontal cortex is formed, unless they’re coming at it from a place that’s not – I don’t want to use the word ‘desperate’, but from a place of clarity and good intentions,” the Lebanese-American model and influencer continued.

“From a place of agency and bodily autonomy. Not from a place of, ‘I need to do this because I want to live this lifestyle.’”

Former adult-film star Mia Khalifa. Picture: The New York Times

Ms Khalifa said she’d received “a lot of backlash from women in the industry” for promoting the dangers of sex work, adding it was difficult to strike a balance between talking about this while not further stigmatising sex workers.

“It is contradictory of me to be on something and tell other people, ‘No, don’t join,’” she said.
“But I’m not saying ‘don’t join’. I’m saying don’t join so young, don’t join as an answer to all of your problems. Just don’t do something you could regret. The internet is forever.”

Ms Khalifa at the Saint Laurent SS24 show during Paris Fashion Week in September 2023. Picture: Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images

‘I’m not saying ‘don’t join’. I’m saying don’t join so young, don’t join as an answer to all of your problems.’ Picture: Instagram

Ms Khalifa, of all people, would know. A decade ago, the then-21-year-old, working in the adult-film industry, shot to infamy when she performed in a sexually-explicit scene while wearing a hijab.

The clip went viral, leading to death threats against Ms Khalifa, and photoshopped images of her being beheaded by the Islamic State.

Ms Khalifa has previously claimed the video also got her “essentially black-listed” from travelling anywhere in the Middle East.

“I became infamous by accident,” she told Marchese, reflecting on the footage.

“I entered the adult industry in October of 2014, and very quickly I was pressured to perform in a video where the context was that I was an Arab, veiled woman.

“The intent was to exploit the fact that I was Arabic and spoke Arabic, and I went through with it.”

Ms Khalifa said she ‘became infamous by accident’. Picture: Instagram

Within a matter of hours of the video’s premiere, Ms Khalifa said, “the avalanche started”.

“Every news outlet picked it up, and everybody had an opinion,” she said.

“I was completely out of control of my image, my reputation. I feel like a lot of people have sl*tty phases when they’re 20, 21. Unfortunately, mine was in 4K.”

Ms Khalifa, who was working at a law office at the time, said that the vitriol she received was what made her transition from an adult-film star to influencer.

“I realised, this isn’t going to change; this isn’t going to get better,” she said.

“I don’t like the women that I work with looking at me a certain way, and I especially don’t like the men looking at me in a certain way because it’s like (I’m) a zoo animal.

“So I reopened social media, and I decided to try to be an influencer and a public person if that was the fate that I had sealed for myself.”

Originally published as ‘Don’t do it’: Mia Khalifa’s warning to young women wanting to join OnlyFans