Mia Khalifa

Sarah Joe Chamoun (born February 10, 1993 is a Lebanese-American media personality and former pornographic film actress. In 2014, she performed in a controversial porn scene featuring a hijab, which drew global attention. The scene made Khalifa immensely popular but also drew backlash.

Despite the brevity of her three-month career in adult films, Khalifa was voted the top porn star on Pornhub in 2015. The website xHamster reported that she was the most-searched-for pornographic actress of 2016. In 2018, she became the most-searched-for actress on Pornhub.

After leaving the adult industry, Khalifa has worked as a webcam model, an OnlyFans creator, and a sports commentator, and has advocated for sex workers' rights. in Beirut, Lebanon. She was raised Catholic in what she described as a "very conservative" home. She attended a French-language private school in Beirut, where she also learned to speak English. moving to the United States in 2001.

Khalifa lived with her family in Montgomery County, Maryland, where she played lacrosse in high school. She said she was bullied at school for being "the darkest and weirdest girl there", which intensified after the September 11 attacks. She supported herself during college by working as a bartender, model, and "briefcase girl" on a local Deal or No Deal–style Spanish-language game show. Her stage name was taken from the name of her dog, Mia, and American rapper Wiz Khalifa.

She came to widespread attention after the release of a scene from Bang Bros in which she wears a hijab during a threesome with Julianna Vega and Sean Lawless. including a digitally manipulated image of her being beheaded by the Islamic State. She also received a warning that she would be "the first person in Hellfire", to which she jokingly replied, "I've been meaning to get a little tan recently." Khalifa criticized Lebanese newspapers for printing articles about her instead of "more important" topics such as politics and terrorism.

In an interview with The Washington Post, Khalifa said the controversial scene was satirical and should be taken as such, claiming that Hollywood films depict Muslims in a far more negative way than any pornographer could. Almaza, a Lebanese brewery, ran an advertisement showing a bottle of its beer next to Khalifa's signature glasses, with the slogan: "We are both rated 18+." In January 2015, pop-rap duo Timeflies released a song titled "Mia Khalifa" in homage to her.

In January 2015, Khalifa signed a long-term contract with Bang Bros' parent company, WGCZ Holding, which also owns XVideos, the largest free porn site. The contract required her to perform in multiple films each month. However, two weeks later, Khalifa had a change of heart and resigned.

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." Carter Cruise, a former porn performer who became a disc jockey, criticized Khalifa for reinforcing the social stigma against sex work by distancing herself from her previous career. In August 2019, Khalifa stated that she made $12,000 working in porn by making an estimated $1,000 per scene, and that she did not receive residuals from Bang Bros or from Pornhub and other free sites where Bang Bros uploaded the videos.

In July 2020, more than 1.5 million people signed a Change.org petition campaigning for Khalifa's videos to be removed from sites like Pornhub and Bang Bros, and for her Internet domains to be returned to her. Bang Bros sent her a cease and desist letter and set up a website to dispute statements she made about the company. Bang Bros stated that Khalifa earned over $178,000 from them and their affiliates and was in the adult film industry for more than two years. Khalifa then co-hosted Sportsball with Tyler Coe on Rooster Teeth. Its final episode was released on October 30, 2018.

In May 2020, Khalifa made a guest appearance as herself in the Hulu show Ramy. The following year, she made a cameo appearance in Bella Poarch's music video for "Build a Bitch". She plays a woman created in a factory who joins a rebellion led by Poarch.

In June 2023, Khalifa launched a jewelry line called "Sheytan", an anglicized form of the Arabic word for "devil", alongside Sara Burn, a former Virgil Abloh collaborator. Khalifa was featured in the Fall/Winter 2023 campaign for the London-based fashion label Aries as well as a photo book that was released the same year, titled Mia by Aries. The founder of the brand, Sofia Prantera, considers Khalifa to be her muse, stating "I felt immediately inspired by Mia's 'Punk' attitude. She is strong but extremely humble, and under her glossy appearance here is a tough young girl who has had to fight her way through so much adversity. I wanted to capture her wild spirit; raw and unpolished."

Personal life Khalifa married her high school boyfriend in February 2011. They separated in 2014 and divorced in 2016. In 2019, she married Swedish professional chef Robert Sandberg; they separated in 2020. From 2021 to 2022, she was in a relationship with Puerto Rican rapper and singer Jhayco.

Religious and political views

In 2015, Khalifa stated that she was no longer a practicing Catholic. She has a tattoo of the opening line of the National Anthem of Lebanon in Arabic and called Israel an "apartheid state", which sparked backlash online. Following the Hamas-led attack on Israel on 7 October 2023, Khalifa voiced support for Palestine. In response to her comments, Playboy and an Amsterdam-based drug product company cancelled business partnerships with her.

In popular culture In November 2016, an online petition called for Khalifa to be appointed by President-elect Donald Trump as the next United States Ambassador to Saudi Arabia.

In 2018, the musical duo iLoveFriday released a diss track called "Mia Khalifa", in response to a fake tweet posted by a user impersonating Khalifa. The song became an internet meme after the "hit or miss" snippet gained popularity on the TikTok app. At the time, it was said to be one of the most well-known viral TikTok memes in the Western world, and had been used in over four million TikTok videos.

During a 2021 Brazilian parliamentary commission meeting related to the COVID-19 pandemic, Senator Luis Carlos Heinze mentioned that a study published in The Lancet on the effectiveness of chloroquine as a COVID-19 treatment was carried out by a company whose sales manager was a pornographic film actress. In response, Senator Randolfe Rodrigues jokingly proposed "summon[ing] Mia Khalifa". Khalifa then wrote on Twitter, "I'm not a doctor, so don't take medical advice from fake memes of me you found on WhatsApp."