We are all Mia Khalifa

A ver­sion of this sto­ry appears in Issue 79 of Huck. Get your copy now, or sub­scribe to make sure you nev­er miss anoth­er issue.

We are all Mia Khal­i­fa. And not just in the tongue-in-cheek way that the world’s arguably most noto­ri­ous brown woman ref­er­ences, in the bio of her 27.6 mil­lion-strong Insta­gram account: ​“Are you even a brown girl with glass­es if you haven’t been called Mia Khalifa?”

It was­n’t entire­ly what I was expect­ing, when I first logged onto a Zoom call with the Lebanese-born, US-raised 30-year-old, but two min­utes into the con­ver­sa­tion with the barefaced Mia, sit­ting in a tan silk shirt in front of a colour-coor­di­nat­ed book­shelf in her Mia­mi home, it felt like we had long been friends.

It wasn’t just because I, like Mia, am also a Mid­dle East­ern woman in her ear­ly 30s who moved to the ​‘West’ at the age of eight. One who also lives out­side the stereo­types and expec­ta­tions of what cul­ture — both East and West – would like to box us into, although, for sure, that helped. Espe­cial­ly when we began the con­ver­sa­tion jok­ing about shav­ing our then-con­sid­ered bushy (now con­sid­ered on trend) eye­brows off, in our respec­tive school bath­rooms. It was the can­dour and authen­tic­i­ty of a woman who, despite hav­ing all the rea­sons in the world to be guard­ed, seems like she has nev­er been more herself.

Hav­ing moved to Mary­land from Lebanon in 2001, amid con­flict in her home coun­try, Mia is a third-cul­ture kid through and through, with all the push and pull that comes with that. ​“The push was my par­ents push­ing the cul­ture onto us so that we don’t for­get it, and the pull was me pulling back and try­ing to inte­grate into Amer­i­can cul­ture so I could have some fuck­ing friends,” she laughs. ​“It was not cool to be the kid bring­ing in a zaatar sand­wich for lunch…

“[My mum] didn’t know how to make a grilled cheese,” she recalls. ​“She’d be like: ​‘We have man­a­keesh with cheese, do you want that?’ I was like: ​‘No! I want it on the white toast with the cor­ners and the edges, I want the Amer­i­can cheese!’ She’d be like, ​‘I’m giv­ing you hal­lou­mi and you want gov­ern­ment cheese? Oh, this child is crazy…’

“There was a lot of inter­nalised racism that brewed until I was prob­a­bly like 25, when I start­ed ther­a­py,” she con­tin­ues. Inter­nalised misog­y­ny, too, she tells me, lat­er in the con­ver­sa­tion. Paired with grow­ing up in a world­wide cul­ture and a house­hold that shamed her – like it did many of us – for being a sex­u­al being, no safe out­lets through which to express that — in part due to inse­cu­ri­ty and lack of oppor­tu­ni­ty stem­ming from being a self-pro­claimed fat kid — and it was, as it almost always is, a poi­so­nous concoction.

Part­ly in reac­tion, Mia honed her now leg­endary sense of humour as a defence mech­a­nism of sorts. ​“I had to be fun­ny to sur­vive; I was the fat, fun­ny friend,” she tells me, laugh­ing. ​“I was obsessed with Sat­ur­day Night Live and 30 Rock. If I didn’t under­stand a joke, I would look it up like, ​‘Oh, this was a polit­i­cal joke, [or] ​‘Oh, they made a joke because this guy got caught with a sex worker…’

“That’s how I start­ed to form my sense of humour,” she con­tin­ues. ​“The more you know, the fun­nier you could be, because the more niche a joke is, the fun­nier it is. You can be offend­ed at some­one call­ing you a dum­b­ass and a fat bitch, but you can’t be offend­ed at some­one real­ly cut­ting deep and com­ing up with some­thing intel­li­gent and fun­ny.” That sense of humour has cer­tain­ly served her well over the years – and made head­lines. (She famous­ly replied to ISIS sym­pa­this­ers who threat­ened to cut off her head with: ​“As long as it’s not my tits. They were expensive.”)

Indeed, tes­ta­ment to the world’s obses­sion with the sin­gle sto­ry, in par­tic­u­lar when it comes to women, much has been writ­ten about the way in which Mia first became a house­hold name, and the vit­ri­ol and con­tro­ver­sy (see: ISIS) sur­round­ing it. Much less is known about the woman she has become – is becom­ing – in the almost 10 years since. Nor does the world — and espe­cial­ly the web­sites that house the videos, and con­tin­u­al­ly pro­mote them as new con­tent, despite peti­tions and pleas and finan­cial offers to take them down — seem con­tent to let her move on from it. With this in mind, I did not explic­it­ly ask her about any of that, though it was ever-present in the con­text of her responses.

“Inse­cu­ri­ties are so loud,” she tells me, when I ask about the most valu­able lessons she’s learnt in her years in ther­a­py. ​“Inse­cu­ri­ties will make you the most dan­ger­ous per­son to your­self. They will make you harm your­self. They will make you make deci­sions that you oth­er­wise…” she says, trail­ing off.

“It’s like dri­ving drunk,” she picks back up. ​“Being inse­cure will make you des­per­ate for any ounce of val­i­da­tion. I always thought that whole, ​‘self-love, you need to be the one to love your­self before any­one else can love you’ [thing] was a sham, but no,” she con­tin­ues. ​“As soon as I start­ed div­ing into why I made the choic­es I made, then I under­stood myself, and I felt empa­thy for myself, and all of those feel­ings of shame start­ed to dissipate.”

It’s a tes­ta­ment to her intel­li­gence and resilience that she has found – is find­ing – increas­ing­ly new nar­ra­tives for her­self, and an increas­ing­ly female fol­low­ing that sees them­selves in her. In her mis­takes, in her inse­cu­ri­ties, and in her hard-won redemp­tion of self.

“At the most basic lev­el, it’s the same thing that Megan Thee Stal­lion was fight­ing against her record label, [that] Tay­lor Swift was fight­ing for; uneth­i­cal con­tracts,” she explains. ​“It’s the same in every fuck­ing indus­try. The con­ver­sa­tion that needs to be had isn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly about porn, it’s about con­tract ethics, and what these com­pa­nies should and shouldn’t be allowed to put in front of 18-year-old girls.”

Unequal pow­er dynam­ics and con­sent as a blur­ry line are some­thing we as a world are only just begin­ning to talk about and under­stand. Maybe the chang­ing tide is in part why Mia feels more gal­vanised to speak out now. Or, maybe it’s some­thing to do with the fact she’s on the oth­er side of her Saturn’s return, so has more of a ​‘don’t give a fuck atti­tude.’ One thing is for sure, Tik­Tok, and the way its algo­rithm is designed, cou­pled with Mia’s per­son­al­i­ty and will­ing­ness to ​“get ugly”, cre­at­ed the per­fect storm.

“Once I just start­ed talk­ing and being vul­ner­a­ble, I found my lit­tle crew,” she tells me. ​“I know you said, ​‘Oh, you’ve been rebrand­ing,’ [but] I’ve been tech­ni­cal­ly rebrand­ing for 10 years. Every­thing that I did was for a short few months, almost 10 years ago. None of this actu­al­ly start­ed to pick up pace until I joined Tik­Tok dur­ing the pandemic.”

Like pret­ty much the rest of the world, Mia down­loaded the app dur­ing lock­down, at a time when she was par­tic­u­lar­ly strug­gling with her men­tal health. There, she can­did­ly doc­u­ment­ed her jour­ney with anti-depres­sants, as well as every­thing else. ​“The videos found the girls and the girls found me and I think that’s when it start­ed to click like, ​‘Oh, she’s not just some­one who’s in my boyfriend’s search his­to­ry, she’s a human being and her sto­ry is actu­al­ly a lot more relat­able and could very eas­i­ly be me, [more] than I thought. And that’s actu­al­ly kind of scary…’

“That’s what I real­ly want women to know,” she says. ​“How eas­i­ly a lot of these things could have been them. But thank God they either have the right sup­port sys­tems, good self-esteem, all of these things in place. But that was the biggest shock, I think. A lot of these girls were like, ​‘Wow! That’s actu­al­ly not what I thought had hap­pened.’” Her female audi­ence grew from 7% on Insta­gram to 30% with­in three years. On Tik­Tok, her audi­ence is now 45% women. With an ever-evolv­ing fash­ion sense, root­ed in a new-found con­fi­dence, the last year has seen her sit FROW at numer­ous fash­ion shows, work with the likes of Jean Paul Gaulti­er, and be named one of the top fash­ion influ­encers in the world. Her own brand, Shey­tan, which means ​‘dev­il’ (what else?) in Ara­bic, inspired by the body jew­ellery of bel­ly dancers from the 1930s and 40s, is set to launch imminently.

On her plat­forms, she advo­cates loud­ly for caus­es such as Black Lives Mat­ter, the atroc­i­ties tak­ing place in Pales­tine, as well as a cause close to her roots. When the explo­sion at the Port of Beirut hap­pened in August 2020, killing more than 200 peo­ple and injur­ing thou­sands, she per­son­al­ly donat­ed and raised over $100,000 and called out the Lebanese pres­i­dent for his response, or lack thereof.

“I was spam­ming his com­ments, cyber­bul­ly­ing him in the most annoy­ing Tik­Tok way,” she says. ​“Like: ​‘Oh, our geno­ci­dal dad­dy decid­ed to wake up?… What are you going to do after killing half the coun­try tomor­row, Papa?’” He pro­ceed­ed to prompt­ly block her – even before mak­ing a pub­lic state­ment about the blast. ​“There’s some­thing about geno­ci­dal dic­ta­tors, they do not like me,” she says, laugh­ing. ​“The Cuban pres­i­dent – the Cuban dic­ta­tor – went on nation­al tele­vi­sion and accused me of being paid and con­trolled by the CIA to spread pro­pa­gan­da against Cuba. It’s like, ​‘Homie, this is not a spon­sored post! I did not #ad to come and expose your dictatorship.’”

They are scared of you, I ven­ture. ​“Lit­tle do they know I don’t even answer the door for Uber Eats,” she replies. ​“I just say, ​‘Please leave it out­side, my [non-exis­tent] baby is sleep­ing,’ so that I don’t have to have human inter­ac­tion. I am so scared of every­thing, yet peo­ple are scared of me. I don’t see myself as a threat, I just see myself as a loud­mouth, annoy­ing lit­tle girl.” It’s why you’re so scary, I tell her. ​“It’s true, there’s noth­ing scari­er than walk­ing by a group of 12-year-olds. You nev­er know what’s gonna come out of their mouths.”

Did she feel a sense of respon­si­bil­i­ty to use her plat­form to raise aware­ness about what was hap­pen­ing in her coun­try? I ask. Her response was a famil­iar one, echoed often by the chil­dren of immi­grants: ​“I feel a crip­pling sense of survivor’s guilt. That’s the coun­try and the land that made us, how can we main­tain our cul­ture and our his­to­ry if we don’t take care of it and if we don’t take care of the peo­ple who are still there?”

This, despite the fact that she has spo­ken about being ver­bal­ly banned from the coun­try, and not feel­ing safe enough to go back. ​“Most of the voic­es of hate and shame come out of [Lebanon] and the Mid­dle East,” she says. But she has a good way of com­part­men­tal­is­ing: ​“Who doesn’t have an annoy­ing igno­rant uncle?” she explains. ​“Like, you’re all my annoy­ing uncles, fuck off! But I’m still going to love you and the country.”

It’s a ten­sion and a hypocrisy that Amer­i­can-Egypt­ian come­di­an Ramy Youssef helped high­light in sea­son two of his Emmy-award-win­ning show Ramy, in which he cast Mia to play her­self. ​“Sta­tis­ti­cal­ly, Mus­lim coun­tries con­sume more porn than any­one else,” she tells Youssef in the show. ​“The men who are yelling at me are the same men who are click­ing on me.” It was a dream come true to appear on the show, she says, not least because of how much she admires Youssef for his sense of humour, his rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the cul­ture, and his deter­mi­na­tion to stay true to himself. 

“All cred­it goes to him and his writ­ing team for doing the research and actu­al­ly under­stand­ing me,” she says when I ask if she had any involve­ment in the script. ​“I was like, ​‘You nailed it, this makes me want to cry…’ The words that they put into eter­ni­ty for me? I’m so grate­ful for them,” she con­tin­ues. ​“I loved that Bel­la Hadid was a part of it in a longer form [in sea­son three], that they’re bring­ing in more Arabs that are in the pub­lic eye and that deal with every­thing the show is talk­ing about in dif­fer­ent ways. I spent so long push­ing my cul­ture away and now that I can’t have it at the drop of a hat, I’m just grasp­ing for it.”

Khal­i­fa in her pro­tect­ing-her-peace era now, she says, lis­ten­ing to her­self and her body and ​“enforc­ing bound­aries, even if it hurts a lit­tle bit.” It recalls a trend that recent­ly went viral on Tik­Tok, of all places, and was summed up by a tweet that read: ​“Y’all be like ​‘I’m enter­ing my vil­lain era’ and it’s you just assert­ing boundaries.”

“There’s an inher­ent expec­ta­tion to be moth­er­ly and nur­tur­ing as a woman, in any way and any time, all the time,” she says, when I draw the com­par­i­son. ​“That’s why putting our foot down trans­lates to, ​‘I’m in my vil­lain era’… You’re not! This is the first time in your life you’re actu­al­ly heal­ing, baby girl. You’re in your self-love era, actu­al­ly.” And with that, she reminds us, once again, how we are all Mia Khal­i­fa, how­ev­er far along our jour­neys we may be.

Top: 1993 Gian­ni Ver­sace South Beach Col­lec­tion 
Track Pants: John Geiger
Shoes: De’accori
Bag: Mowalo­la
Jew­ellery: Mia’s own and SHEY­TAN
Fleece: JW Anderson

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