Sex work and the porn industry has been under fire ever since dial-up internet came into existence. But, it has come a long way since then. A booming industry with over a 10 billion dollar income per year, flourishes at a cost.

Former adult film star Mia Khalifa, in an interview with Megan Abbott, opened up about her experience with the porn industry and how it changed her life.

The interview came into existence due to her unfortunate lash out during a radio show she was called in for.

"I'm gonna welcome to the show now a young lady who is an avid sports fan. Now it's not every day you get to have someone on who is an avid sports fan who was also at one point in time the number one ranked adult film star on Pornhub. Now, fast forward a couple of years and you have Mia Khalifa and the NHL. She has spoken and she has a passion and a lot of knowledge. She's supporting her team, the Washington Capitals against our team, the Tampa Bay Lightning. Then, out of nowhere, one of these damn pucks makes a beeline for her boob and ruptures her implant." the host of the show said at the beginning of the interview.

This introduction is what set off Mia into storming off, but not before replying very crudely - ''Um, first of all, I was in the adult industry for three months. So you need to f**king fact check before you ask me to call into your sh*tty radio station, goodbye.''

Clarifying in the interview with Abbott that she was hopped up on drugs after surgery, the response was unadulterated and that the situation could've been handled better.

She took this opportunity to clarify the headspace she came from in that radio interview.

Mia started off with her life story, about her childhood and family life. She spoke about college, self esteem issues, and her social life. She then ventured into her experience with the porn industry, talking about how she got into it and how it changed her life.

“It wasn’t just ‘hey, do you want to come and do porn?’ It was more so ‘Oh, you’re beautiful. Would you like to do some modeling? Oh, you have a great body, I think you should do nude modeling’, things like that. And after I came and toured the studio, it was very respectful. It was clean. Everyone who worked there was nice like it was nothing dodgy or that made me uncomfortable.” she said.

Talking about her short period in the industry, she pointed out how young girls with low self-esteem are targeted point-blank to welcome into the industry. These women are easy targets and accept the opportunity to exhaust their need for male attention and validation.

“I don’t think low self-esteem discriminates against anyone. It doesn’t matter if you come from a great family or if you come from a not-so-great background, I struggled my entire childhood with weight and I never felt attractive or worthy of male attention, and suddenly in my first year of college, I start losing all this weight from making small changes and by the time I graduated, I was ready to make a bigger difference. I felt extremely self-conscious about my breasts because that was the first thing to go when I lost weight. I lost about 50 pounds and once I did that, I started garnering all this attention from men and I was never used to it, and I felt like unless I held on to it, and did what was asked of me to do or what was expected of me, it would go away and after feeling and what was like that validation, and you know, the compliments for the first time, I did not want that to go away.” she said.

When Abbott asked Khalifa about her first-hand experience with shooting the films, Khalifa said all of it seems like a blackout.

"The “blackout” wasn’t from drinking, using drugs or anything, it was more like, wow, this is so surreal that I can’t even comprehend what was happening. And even now when I look back on it, it’s sort of just a blur in my memory. I can’t even describe in detail what happened each time; I sort of just have a gist of what did in my head. Afterward, I would say there was a little bit of regret, a little bit of shame—though the shame didn’t fully set in until a couple of months after that. But I think what made me go back and do it again was that the attention I was receiving, I was afraid it would go away if I didn’t do what I was asked to do. "

The entire interview focused on the hardships Khalifa had to face as a pornstar, though she had a very short-lived career in the industry, her experiences resonated with many.

She was asked how and why did she agree to do the infamous hijab scene. She said - “I verbatim told them ‘You guys are going to get me killed’. They just laughed.” On the question as to why didn’t she then say that she wouldn’t do it. “Intimidation, I was scared. I was intimidated, I was nervous,” she replied.

She also mentioned that going out in public as terrifying, “I think post-traumatic stress kicks in mostly when I go on public. Because of the stares I get, I feel like people can see through my clothes. And it brings me deep shame. It makes me feel like I lost all rights to my privacy, which I did because I am just one Google search away.”

The interview was a brilliant insight into the porn industry and the life it comes with, the experiences Khalifa shared were resounding and honest, making us want to look into the practices of the porn industry.