This past week, social media personality and sports commentator Mia Khalifa has been open with fans regarding the lasting impact her three-month stint as an adult entertainment actress has had on her life.
Back in 2014, a 21-year-old Khalifa starred in 11 adult movies over a three-month period.
However, due to one of those videos gaining notoriety as a result of Khalifa wearing a hijab in various scenes, Khalifa's popularity in the industry sky-rocketed, and she remains one of the most-search actresses on X-rated sites.
Despite this, Khalifa maintains that she only ever made $12,000 from those movies - and in one TikTok video posted earlier this week, the now 27-year-old opened up about the lasting effect those three months are still having on her life today.
The video can be seen below:The Lebanese-American sports pundit wrote: "That hourly dissociative attack from remembering hundreds of millions of people's only impression of you is solely based on the lowest, most toxic, most uncharacteristic three months of your life when you were 21."
In an additional post to her Instagram Stories, Khalifa wrote: "Those 11 videos will haunt me until I die, and I don't want another girl to go through that - because no one should."
Amid support and criticism from social media users, Khalifa then revealed in a tweet:
"I just want B*angbros to stop actively putting me in harm's way by promoting my 6-year-old videos like they're new, making millions of ppl think I'm still active. The death threats are emotionally crippling, I haven't felt safe even going to the grocery store alone in years."
After sharing her side story, fans have rallied behind Khalifa, demanding that her videos are removed from any websites currently hosting them until she is fairly compensated.
Fans have taken to all social media platforms, using the hashtag #JusticeForMia to demand change:
One fan even started a change.org petition, which currently has over 550,000 signatures, as of this writing.
The petition - titled: "Justice For Mia Khalifa" - states that Mia's "infamous hijab video" lead to the star receiving "ISIS death threats" and consequenlty resulted in Khalifa undergoing "therapy on a consistent basis for trauma, emotional distress, and consequences of bullying."
The petition description adds: "Mia and her team have provided countless financial offers to the current owners of her domain name and pornographic videos to no avail. Big corporations are not giving Mia Khalifa a fair chance to demand her content in court due to financial advantage.
"We are demanding her domain names be returned, her videos be removed and fairly discussed in court without putting Mia Khalifa into deep financial ruin. Mia has stated her regret for her decisions in the porn industry multiple times."
The petition ends by asking people to consider signing, in an effort to "Mia Khalifa’s future endeavors and to bring her justice."
In response to the outpouring of support, Khalifa shared a heartfelt message to her 20.7 million Instagram followers that read:
"Look what y’all did... I love you so much. #GenZ, and especially the creator of the hashtag, Bella, haven’t stopped spreading awareness in 4 days and this is the result.
"I promise I will make #justiceformia the first step to change, this movement these girls have started will shed light on the predatory practices of that industry, and help save the annual thousands of girls from the same traps.
"Shop ethical. Support the WOMEN who own & distribute their content, not the ones exploited by having no control of their bodies.
"ALSO, please keep the momentum going for causes that need more attention than anything else right now. Most of which being the humanitarian crisis in Yemen, the ongoing BLM fight, and COVID safety (wear a f***ing mask)."
The message was accompanied with video that showed a mashup of social media posts supporting the 27-year-old.
This is not the first time Mia has attempted to speak out about her time in the industry.
During an interview with BBC HARDtalk's Stephen Sackur, Khalifa revealed that she had no choice but to do the controversial scene, even though she was opposed to it.
Watch Mia Khalifa discuss her former porn career:"I verbatim told them, 'You guys are going to get me killed'", Khalifa told Sackur, who proceeded to ask why she didn't just say no. "Intimidation," she replied. "I was scared. I knew that if i said no, it would... you know, they're not going to force you to do it, at that point that's rape. No one is going to force you to have sex. But I was still scared..."
"I mean, I have you ever felt scared to... not scared, but nervous to speak up and say something at a restaurant when your food's not right, and the waiter comes by and says, 'How is everything?' I was intimidated, I was nervous," she continued.
After the scene started making the rounds on the internet, Khalifa was threatened by numerous religious groups online, including ISIS. The militant group threatened to behead her, and also sent her mocked-up photographs of her own execution.
This, understandably, was one of the reasons why she decided to leave the adult industry, as she explains:
"They photoshopped a picture of me being beheaded and threatened that that would happen to me. It does worry me, but I try not to show it, because you can't show weakness.
"That's exactly what they're looking for. I really try and just make it look like it rolls off, but I'll admit, it gets to you after a while."
Despite her own struggles, Khalifa has since taken to Instagram to say that she will continue using her platform to prevent other young women from being taken advantage of.
Writing to her 3.3 million Twitter fans, she wrote in all caps: "EVEN IF I FAIL FIGHTING FOR MY LIFE BACK, IM NOT STOPPING UNTIL I CAN PROTECT EVERY YOUNG GIRL FROM GETTING TAKEN ADVANTAGE OF BY THESE PREDATORIAL CONTRACTS."
