Mia Khalifa reveals the moment she knew she couldn’t live a normal life anymore
A former porn star has revealed what happened when she attempted to live a normal life.
Mia Khalifa has opened up about the moment she knew she couldn’t live a normal life anymore.
Over a decade ago, in 2014, Ms Khalifa went viral because of a scene in a porn movie that featured her wearing a hijab.
It prompted such outcry at the time that Ms Khalifa didn’t just become notorious her safety was threatened.
She was getting death threats, and the backlash made Ms Khalifa ditch the porn industry attempt to live anonymously.
“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,” she told The New York Times.
Ms Khalifia’s career in porn lasted just three months but she quickly became the most popular star in the industry.
The 31-year-old now has over 26 million followers on Instagram, but at the time, the response to the clip, which she wasn’t particularly comfortable making, made her practically go into hiding.
Ms Khalifia said in the reflection she feels like people in their twenties often have “slutty phases”, but hers just happened to be filmed.
The 31-year-old said that she felt her image span quickly “out of control” and didn’t know how to regain it.
So she went and worked at a law office in an attempt to embrace a 9-to-5 life and escape the vitriol being sent her way.
It didn’t work.
“Anyone who would come in, there would be whispers in the waiting room. I started to feel like a distraction and uncomfortable,” she said.
At that moment, she realised her situation wasn’t going to change or get better and she was left feeling like a “zoo animal” when she tried to just do a normal job.
“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.”
Ms Khaflia now runs a social media empire and a very successfully OnlyFans account that isn’t X-rated.
The 31-year-old doesn’t do nudity on the platform and has taken a fashion magazine approach to the subscription service.
Things will get as risqué as they would for a fun fashion shoot for a magazine. So, for instance, she might wear a see-through outfit or a bikini, but she’s not interested in getting naked to create content.
She’s also spoken out on X about how she regrets her short-lived porn career and said the experience made her “violated” which is why she left.
“I was offered millions to return for one video and felt violated all over again by the sheer audacity that they thought my body was contingent on the right price,” she wrote online.