Mia Khalifa

In early 2014, Khalifa and her then-husband posted several pornographic images to a popular NSFW subreddit on Reddit.[6] Khalifa entered the professional pornographic film industry in October 2014.[7] She came to widespread attention after the release of a scene from BangBros in which she wears a hijab during a threesome with Sean Lawless and Julianna Vega.[3][8] The scene brought Khalifa instant popularity, as well as criticism from writers and religious figures, and led to her parents publicly disowning her.[3][9] The scene's producer said "We weren't trying to exploit [Khalifa's ethnicity]. We wanted to embrace it. No one could have anticipated the negativity surrounding it."[3] Alex Hawkins, Vice President of Marketing for xHamster, said "The outrage it caused in the Arab world ended up being a bit of a 'Streisand effect'. Suddenly, everyone was searching for her. The effort to censor her only made her more ubiquitous."[3] With more than 1.5 million views, the 22-year-old Khalifa became the most searched-for performer on the adult video sharing website Pornhub.[10] On December 28 that year, Pornhub revealed that she was the No. 1 ranked performer on their website."[11]

She received online death threats after she ranked No. 1 on Pornhub, including a manipulated image of an 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."[12] Lebanese newspapers wrote articles critical of Khalifa, which she considered trivial due to other events in the region.[13]

In an interview with The Washington Post, Khalifa said the controversial scene was satirical and should be taken as such, claiming that Hollywood films depicted Muslims in a far more negative light than any pornographer could.[12] 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.[11][15] 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."[12]

According to data from Pornhub, from January 3 to 6, 2015, searches for Khalifa increased five-fold. Around a quarter of those searches came from Lebanon, with substantial searches also from nearby countries Syria and Jordan.[4] Because of the hijab-related controversy, she was ranked No. 5 in a list of "The world's 10 most notorious porn stars" by British men's magazine Loaded in July 2016.[14] Almaza, a Lebanese brewery, ran an advertisement showing a bottle of their beer next to Khalifa's signature glasses, with the slogan: "We are both rated 18+."[16] In January 2015, pop band Timeflies released a song titled "Mia Khalifa" in homage to her.[17]

In January 2015, Khalifa signed a long-term contract with Bang Bros' parent company, WGCZ Holding, who also own the largest free porn site XVideos. The contract required her to perform in multiple films each month. However, two weeks later, Khalifa had a change of heart and resigned.[3] The negative attention she received from her global attention prompted her to leave the industry: "It was an eye-opener for me. I don't want any of this, whether it's positive or negative—but all of it was negative. I didn't think too much into it about how my friends and family and relationships were suffering."[3] WGCZ Holding own a web page with a domain name using her stage name. Khalifa said it does not pay her for rights, even though it is written in her first-person voice.[18]

In a July 2016 interview with The Washington Post, Khalifa stated that she had only performed in pornography 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."[1] She said she continued to perform as webcam model for Bangbros for eleven months after she stopped shooting scenes before Complex offered her to host a sports show.[19] Carter Cruise, a former performer who became a disc jockey, criticized Khalifa for reinforcing the social stigma against sex work in distancing herself from her previous career.[19]

In January 2017, xHamster reported that Khalifa was the most searched-for adult actress of 2016.[20][21] In 2018, three years after leaving the industry, she was still the second-highest ranked person on Pornhub.[22] In August 2019, Khalifa stated that she made $12,000 working in porn by making an estimated $1,000 per scene – standard contractor compensation from production studios in the industry, according to Alec Helmy, president and publisher of adult entertainment industry news site XBiz – and that she did not receive residuals from Bangbros or from Pornhub and other free sites where Bangbros uploaded the videos.[18][23] While PornHub hasn't stated how much revenue Khalifa's videos had generated for the site, according to a 2019 estimate by SocialBlade CEO Jason Urgo based on YouTube-like advertising revenue per-view, she could have made over $500,000 had she been a PornHub partner.[23] In July 2020, more than 1.5 million people signed a Change.org petition campaigning for her videos to be removed from sites like Pornhub and BangBros and her Internet domains returned to her.[24][25] Bangbros sent her a cease and desist letter and set up a website to dispute statements she made about the company over the years as being defamatory.[25][26] According to Bangbros, she earned over $178,000 from them and their affiliates and was in the adult industry for more than two years.[26]

After three months working as an adult-film actor,[3] Khalifa worked in Miami as a paralegal and bookkeeper.[3] She transitioned into a career as a social media personality, webcam model and sports commentator. She runs a YouTube channel; live streams on Twitch; and performed as a webcam model; sells photoshoots, merchandise and access to exclusive content on membership website Patreon; and sold explicit photoshoots and videos on the social media website Findrow.[3] She and Gilbert Arenas hosted Out of Bounds, a daily sports show on Complex News's YouTube channel, from October 2017 to February 2018.[27]

Khalifa was announced to co-host SportsBall alongside Tyler Coe, with its second season premiering July 16, 2018, exclusively on RoosterTeeth. Its final episode was released on October 30, 2018.[28]

In May 2020, she had a guest appearance as herself in the Hulu show Ramy.[29]