Mia Khalifa: Former adult actress
The Interview
BBC
4.3 • 537 Ratings
🗓️ 26 August 2019
⏱️ 24 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The human preoccupation with sex is nothing new – but the internet has made it so much easier to explore and exploit every shade of desire. The online porn industry makes billions of dollars in profit every year, but the big winners are corporate players, not the women and men performing the sex acts. Stephen Sackur interviews Mia Khalifa; she was briefly a porn actress, garnering worldwide notoriety when she appeared in a sex video wearing the Islamic hijab. After years of threats and insecurity, she’s speaking out; what does her story tells us about the porn industry and 21st century culture?
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're listening to a podcast from the BBC World Service. This is Hard Talk with me, Stephen Sacker. |
| 0:07.0 | Thanks for downloading this edition of the program. I do hope you enjoy it. Welcome to Hard Talk. I'm |
| 0:13.7 | Stephen Sacker. My guest today is by some counts a seriously famous woman. Mia Khalifa has 16 million followers on Instagram. |
| 0:23.7 | If you put her name in Google, the algorithm will instantly come up with countless links. |
| 0:30.1 | But Mia Khalifa is not proud of her global fame because it's derived from a three-month period in late 2014 when she signed up as a performer |
| 0:40.1 | in the porn industry. In all, she made a dozen videos before deciding she wanted out. One of them |
| 0:46.7 | won her global notoriety. It featured her performing sex acts dressed in Islamic hijab. It provoked |
| 0:54.0 | condemnation and outrage. It prompted threats on |
| 0:57.7 | her life from sympathizers of so-called Islamic State. Mia Khalifa was born in Lebanon to Christian |
| 1:04.0 | parents, but her family moved to Maryland in the US when she was a child. She was insecure, rebellious, |
| 1:10.7 | when at the age of 21 she was |
| 1:12.5 | persuaded to get involved in porn. Nearly five years on and much soul-searching later, |
| 1:18.7 | Mia Khalifa has decided to talk openly about what happened to her. What does her story tell us |
| 1:23.9 | about the porn industry and 21st century culture. Mia Khalifa, welcome to Hard Talk. |
| 1:29.4 | Thank you for having me. |
| 1:30.4 | By many measures, you are a very famous woman. |
| 1:35.3 | For instance, you have more than 16 million followers on Instagram. |
| 1:39.7 | But the origins of your fame lie in your brief involvement in the porn industry. |
| 1:47.8 | Is that hard for you to deal with? |
| 1:51.3 | Absolutely. |
| 1:52.1 | After I left, I deleted my, well, I didn't delete my Instagram. |
| 1:55.5 | It got hacked by ISIS sympathizers and propaganda was posted all over it. |
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