It’s been nearly a decade since Mia Khalifa last felt safe on the internet.
In 2014, while completing a Bachelor of Arts degree in history at the University of Texas, Khalifa became the most searched adult-film star on the planet. Her stint in the sex industry lasted about three months, yet Khalifa still bears the scars of the industry.
From the handful of videos she starred in, Khalifa attracted more than a billion views. Despite being one of the most watched performers in the world, Khalifa took home only $US12,000, while videos of her body continue to circulate the web, generating profit for others.
Under the management of a group of older men, Khalifa was reportedly coerced into making a racially sensitive video where she wore a hijab, the aftermath of which has resulted in brutal public vilification.
“It was very much a mistake and I realised that immediately,” 29-year-old Khalifa tells marie claire from her house in Los Angeles. “It was a really low point in my life.”
Today, the adult industry has undergone a seismic rebrand, led by the rise of user-regulated subscription platforms, including OnlyFans, Sunroom and Playboy’s Centerfold.
Enticed by the opportunity to reclaim the narrative around their bodies, sex workers are prising the power back from an industry that has long undercut and exploited them.
As a result, production conglomerates, who once dominated the adult film industry, are now increasingly being held under the microscope.
In December 2020, both Visa and Mastercard suspended their credit card services with the adult site Pornhub after allegations it was profiting from videos of child sexual abuse and sex trafficking.
“If the porn industry is capitalism at its worst, OnlyFans is socialism at its best,” says Khalifa, who is now one of the highest-earning content creators on OnlyFans, pocketing approximately $US10,000 ($15,900) a day.
“It’s not perfect but it’s definitely more ethical. Porn production companies and tube sites are severely unregulated.”
All content created and distributed on OnlyFans is strictly controlled by the creator, as well as being watermarked, coded with anti-screenshot protection and monitored for child abuse and sex-trafficking breaches.
The opportunity to capitalise on your body within a tightly protected space has never been more accessible.
In 2019, the number of creators on OnlyFans sat at 100,000. Enter a global pandemic and mass redundancies, and the number of creators signing up to the site rose to more than a million.
The cultural conversation around adult-film stars has increasingly been stripped of stigma by a new generation that embraces the opportunity to profit from a free commodity.
The argument made is that we all, with the exception of the wealthy and the unemployed, take money for the use of our bodies.
To understand the power of porn, you need look only as far as the slew of actors dominating our screens.
From Game of Thrones’ Sibel Kekilli to Euphoria’s Chloe Cherry, bridging the gap between adult and mainstream content no longer requires a major rebrand.
For Cherry, the adult industry provided an opportunity to explore creative pursuits far from the restraints of her conservative hometown.
After being cast in Euphoria alongside Zendaya earlier this year, Cherry was strategic about taking every opportunity the adult-film industry afforded her, including walking the LaQuan Smith and GCDS shows at New York Fashion Week. “[I] never really planned on doing it past the age of 20,” Cherry told Paper Magazine.
Using porn as a career springboard is no new phenomenon.
In 2009, Sasha Grey left porn after landing a role in the hit TV series Entourage. “I thought that I would take the money I was making in adult films and become a producer of independent films. That was my trajectory,” Grey tells marie claire.
“The public reaction to my role in Entourage was a mixed bag. I remember people overreacted to my pubic hair, but I was really embraced by the show’s hardcore fan base – even to this day I get messages on a daily basis telling me they loved the show.”
A pioneer for sexual liberation and autonomous female pleasure, Grey reveals one of her goals during her time in the adult industry was to challenge the perception of women in porn.
“When I first started making adult films, I was looking for a place where I could explore things in a safe environment, but also encourage other people to not be ashamed of who they are.
“I used porn as a performance art to really strip myself of this guilt and the shame that I was riddled with,” recalls Grey, whose accolades include actor, international DJ, musician, songwriter and author of the successful book trilogy The Juliette Society.
“I couldn’t identify with any of the visual representations of women in the adult industry at the time. I was so used to seeing the early 2000s mould of what women were supposed to look like, and how they were supposed to act. Porn taught me what my worth was. I learnt so much about what I wanted and needed sexually and also as a businessperson, artist and woman.”
Dating back to 2400 BCE, sex work is one of the world’s oldest professions. However, despite widespread recognition of its legitimacy, sex work remains illegal in most of the world. “Until February this year, it was illegal to be a sex worker in Australia’s state of Victoria,” psycho-sexologist and author Chantelle Otten tells marie claire.
In a recent study evaluating the impact of criminalising sex work, repressive policing of sex workers was associated with increased risk of sexual and physical violence from clients or others.
“We have to recognise that not all sex work exploits women. For many sex workers it’s a job that makes them feel empowered,” says Otten.
“Instead, we need to focus on how we can better protect women who have chosen this profession. OnlyFans has meant that a lot more young people are welcoming of sex workers and recognise it as an essential service. There are Australian-based creators, including Anna Paul, who do amazing work. Anna doesn’t show her nipples or her genitals and most of her followers are femmes. She just shows her followers how to be sexy.”
While the public discourse around porn and sex work has facilitated a force for change, an underlying double standard between performative sex and legitimate sex work still persists.
“There’s a glamorisation of the sex industry, but it’s demonised if you are actually in the sex industry,” says Khalifa. “If you’re a rich girl who wants to be a stripper in her music video, that’s fine, but if you’re a stripper to pay your bills, it’s like, ‘How dare you?’.”
Selling sex under the guise of empowerment might be an age-old marketing strategy, but it’s also become increasingly problematic as celebrities blur the boundaries between performance and porn.
In 2020, actor Bella Thorne joined the wave of celebrities, including Cardi B and Denise Richards, dipping their toe into the world of subscription sex.
Within 24 hrs of joining the site, Thorne amassed over a million dollars, raising concerns around celebrities disrupting the market by taking away work from legitimate sex workers.
“The difficulty is that some [sex workers] rely on OnlyFans for income, so it’s an issue when celebrities take the attention away from smaller creators,” says Otten. “In the aftermath of Bella Thorne, OnlyFans announced that it would put a cap on how much performers can charge for pay-per-view content, which for some creators really affected their income stream because they were charging more for their services.”
While the OnlyFans model works to protect everyday sex workers from exploitative middlemen, celebrity endorsement not only saturates the space but more dangerously lures vulnerable people into a murky job description.
“Anyone who has not done sex work before should not do this. The glamorisation of the industry borders on grooming,” says Khalifa. “If someone is already in an adjacent field of work then OnlyFans or Centrefold are great options. Just because you’re in charge of what you’re creating and what you’re putting out there doesn’t mean that when you want to take it down in the future, some creep hasn’t [already] screenshot it and put it on a public forum.”
This article originally appeared in the December issue of marie claire.
