A brief but
intense career. Within a few months it has become one of the most known
pornstars in the world despite being largely ignored by the big productions.
All this thanks to the Internet and to her arab origins. We are talking about
Mia Khalifa. She was born in Beirut, Lebanon and moved with her family to the
United States in 2000. She has claimed that her family is Catholic and that she
was raised in that religion, although is no longer practicing. She lived in
Montgomery County, Maryland as a teenager and played lacrosse at high school. A
few years later she graduated from the University of Texas at El Paso with a
Bachelor of Arts degree in History. In February 2011, shortly after she turned
18, Mia married an American man. This pretty and busty american-lebanese girl entered
the porn industry in October 2014. She had been working at a Whataburger when
she was approached by a customer who asked if she had ever considered appearing
in pornographic films. With more than 1.5 million views, the 22-year-old Mia Khalifa
became the most searched-for star on adult movie site Pornhub. On December 28
that year, Pornhub revealed that she was the #1 ranked porn star on their
website.
Perhaps
better known as "The hijab porn star", Mia hit the headlines in 2014
when she infamously humped on camera wearing the traditional Muslim garb. The
BangBros film initially sparked outrage in her home country of Lebanon with
haters claiming she had brought disgrace to the nation and insulted Islam. Mia
stated in an interview with Loaded that she felt she is being made a scapegoat
for internet censorship in her native land, and many others there have since
demonstrated against the government, showing support for the American porn
star. They claim that although she may have sex, "She is still more decent
than they are". Mia Khalifa's newfound notoriety quickly drew strong
criticism from many in the Middle East, who branded her career choice as
shameful and Mia herself a disgrace to her country, especially for one of her
videos filmed by Bang Bros, in which she is seen wearing a hijab. She received
online death threats, including a manipulated image of a Islamic State of Iraq
and the Levant executioner preparing to behead her, and a message warning her
that she would go to Hell, to which she replied "I've been meaning to get
a little tan recently". Lebanese newspapers wrote articles critical of Mia,
which she considered trivial due to other events in the region. In an interview
with The Washington Post, Mia said the controversial scene was satirical and
should be taken as such, claiming that Hollywood movies depicted Muslims in a
far more negative light than any pornographer could.
Among those
who publicly spoke out to defend her decision to become an adult performer was
British-Lebanese author Nasri Atallah, who stated, "The moral indignation
... is wrong for two reasons. First and foremost, as a woman, she is free to do
as she pleases with her body. As a sentient human being with agency, who lives
halfway across the world, she is in charge of her own life and owes absolutely
nothing to the country where she happened to be born." Mia Khalifa herself
said of the controversy: "Women's rights in Lebanon are a long way from
being taken seriously if a Lebanese-American porn star that no longer resides
there can cause such an uproar. What I once boasted to people as being the most
Westernized nation in the Middle East, I now see as devastatingly archaic and
oppressed." According to data from PornHub, from January 3 to 6, 2015,
searches for Mia Khalifa increased five-fold. Around a quarter of those
searches came from Lebanon, with substantial searches also from nearby
countries Syria and Jordan. Because of the hijab-related controversy, she was
ranked #5 in a list of "The world's 10 most notorious porn stars" by
British men's magazine Loaded in July 2016. Almaza, a Lebanese brewery, ran an
advertisement showing an bottle of their beer next to Mia Khalifa's signature
glasses, with the slogan: "We are both rated 18+." In January 2015,
electronic music duo Timeflies released a song titled "Mia Khalifa"
in homage to her. In response, she posted a video to YouTube featuring herself
twerking to the song. In a July 2016 interview with The Washington Post, Mia
revealed she had only performed in porn for three months and had left the
industry over a year before, changing to a "more normal job". She
said "I guess it was my rebellious phase. It wasn’t really for me. I kind
of smartened up and tried to distance myself from that." We can see now
these compilations dedicated to her…
