By now, we’ve probably all heard about Mia Khalifa’s recent mainstream news attention blitz.

In the interest of recalling history, back in October of 2014, Khalifa started working in porn. She shot a handful of scenes, including one noteworthy and notorious one for BangBros wherein she’s wearing a hijab during a threesome.

According to a profile in Playboy, BangBros pitched Khalifa on “the hijab idea” in order to “play up the idea that she was ‘the pretty Persian girl gone bad.'” Khalifa accepted the idea, shot the scene and, unsurprisingly, riled up many different parties and garnered a lot of attention. Within months, she became the most searched for performer on tubesite Pornhub. 

“We weren’t trying to exploit [her ethnicity]. We wanted to embrace it,” Playboy reported a representative from BangBros saying. “No one could have anticipated the negativity surrounding it.”

Sure.

Post-porn, Khalifa made efforts to find 9-to-5 work and eventually transitioned into a social media personality, cam model and sports commentator. She even went on to become pals with Lance Armstrong.

Khalifa is back in the news this week due to comments she made during a recent interview with life coach Megan Abbott. During the interview, per the BBC, Khalifa said she’s “ready to shed light on every questionable moment from my past, because if I own it, it can’t be used against me.” She added that companies in the adult industry “trap women legally in to contracts when they’re vulnerable” and that she made around $12,000 during her time performing and “never saw a penny again after that.”

Based on data from IAFD.com, Khalifa worked in a sum total of 25 scenes, all released between 2014 and 2016, most of which were web-based. If her figure of $12,000 is correct, this works out to $480 per scene. This rate seems a touch low to me, however, for a new performer shooting web-based content back in 2014, this actually might be on-par. Not owning the content one performs in, nor receiving residuals, is not uncommon in the adult entertainment industry.

Here’s the thing… Khalifa clearly did not understand the business she was entering when she signed up. This is neither unique — Hollywood is not all that different, people! — nor uncommon. As a culture in general, we do not understand how porn works. Perhaps if there was greater transparency about how adult entertainment — a legal yet highly stigmatized industry — operates, there would be less after-the-fact upset-ness like Khalifa is currently experiencing.

What is uncommon about Khalifa’s situation, however, is the popularity she garnered via starring in a stunt PR-driven scene and her subsequent “career” in porn. Many, many, many performers have struggled with judgement and shaming from wider society post-porn. Khalifa is arguably far more recognizable than most performers who perform in a small number of scenes and then decide to move on, sure, but judgement from wider society is nothing new.

Khalifa’s recent assertions are frustrating — not because she has them (She’s entitled to her story!), but because of the wider social lack of understanding regarding adult entertainment that facilitates sustained demonizing and myth creation.

Many performers weighed in on Khalifa’s statements on social media, and there are a wider variety of takes on this entire thing.

to give you an idea, i have almost 400 movies out, @Abella_Danger has over 600 (fuck yes bish), belle has 38 & Mia has… 13. so why are they being held as the standard/spokespeople of the industry? it’s like making bhad bhabie the face of female rappers smh

— möther of kittens (@CarterCruise) August 14, 2019

i just deleted my tweets because i’m done giving any negative shit any attention. fuck anyone that talks down on my industry especially when they keep their porn name because they’re still so ashamed? like OK sis. with that being said, i’m about to have a great scene?✌?

— danger?️‍? (@Abella_Danger) August 13, 2019

Here is Khalifa’s interview in full: