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Mia Khalifa has reflected on her stint as a sex worker in the adult film industry, as she explained she left shortly after being persuaded to do an explicit scene cosplaying as a Muslim woman.
The Lebanese-American shot to fame as a 21-year-old, when she performed in the viral video dressed in the hijab, a headcovering and piece of modest clothing sacred to Muslim women.
The footage went viral within hours, with Khalifa receiving death threats from both Islamophobes and ISIS alike, after being ranked the number one actor on Pornhub.
Now 31-years-old, Khalifa – who was raised as a Catholic – recalls the experience and why it pushed her to walk away from pornography.
“My brand at the beginning wasn’t something that was much in my control,” she told the New York Times. “I became infamous by accident.”
She explained, “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. Not long after, I would say maybe a couple hours after it premiered, the avalanche started.
“Every news outlet picked it up, and everybody had an opinion. I was completely out of control of my image, my reputation. I feel like a lot of people have slutty phases when they’re 20, 21. Unfortunately, mine was in 4K.”
Khalifa says she was working at a law office at the time of the experience and was subject to “whispers in the waiting room” at her workplace.
She said she began to feel “uncomfortable” and “like a distraction”, forcing her to pivot to a career as a social media influencer.
“That’s when I realised, this isn’t going to change; this isn’t going to get better,” she explained. “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 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.”
