In a recent interview with the BBC, former adult actress Mia Khalifa describes her experiences working in the porn industry and how it affected her. She told how she got into it due to inexperience, and how when she finally resigned, the tag refused to leave her. She stated that no matter how difficult the period was for her, she is only a “Google search away.”

She said that as a 21-year-old, she made “terrible decisions.”

“I don’t think low self esteem discriminates against anyone. It doesn’t matter if you come from a great family or a not so great background.” Khalifa admitted to struggling with her weight for many years and never feeling worthy of male attention. Khalifa claims that after graduation, she dropped all of her weight and began to receive a lot of attention and praises from guys, and she “did not want that to go away.”

“It wasn’t just ‘hey, do you want to come and do porn?'” she said when asked how she got into the porn industry. “It was more so ‘Oh, you’re beautiful. Would you like to do some modelling? Oh, you have a great body, I think you should do nude modelling’, 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.”

Sackur inquires as to whether her 21-year-old self felt like a victim. “I feel like she didn’t have the tools to identify that she was being taken advantage of. Or that what she was being told were all lies. Maybe not so much as lies but you know, trying to manipulate me into doing what they wanted to do. I don’t really see myself as a victim, I don’t like that word. I did make my own decisions, even though they were terrible decisions,” she says.

“I think post-traumatic stress kicks in mostly when I go on public,” she replied, when asked how distressing the experience had been, especially now that she had moved on. “Because 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.”

Mia, in fact, indicated on the episode that her family was initially unaware of her involvement in the adult film industry.

“And they disowned me when they found out. I felt completely alienated by not just the world, but my family and the people around me. Especially after I quit, when I was still alone, even though I left. And I just realised some mistakes aren’t forgivable. But time heals all wounds, and things are getting better now,” Mia added.

Khalifa was brought to the United States by her parents from Lebanon, where she was educated and went on to study history at the University of Texas.

She also discloses that adult stars have virtually little say over the subject of the films. “Very little. Other than saying yes or no to one outfit or the other. Very little say in what was filmed. The theme of it, the content, where it’s filmed.” When Sackur asked whether she was forced to do a sex act she didn’t want to do, she said, “No, they can’t force you.”

Her story is not unique, and many actors and actresses will go through similar ordeals. Agreeing to this, she said: “I honestly started seeing that recently after the interview came out and people started reaching out and all of the emails go, my manager checks them, and when he gets stuff like that, he filters them and sends them to me and reading the words of some of these girls who have been sex trafficked and forced into porn and all of these stories of girls whose lives have been ruined by it, and by men who have taken advantage of them and by contracts that they didn’t even understand the jargon of, it makes me feel like maybe it was a good that I started talking and that I posted this interview and that I’m speaking out now because other people feel the same way and even if they don’t relate on as deep a level as doing porn, they can relate on the level of bring insecure and being pressured into doing something they didn’t want to do.”

In addition to discussing her contentious hijab scene, for which she told producers, ‘You guys are going to get me killed,’ Khalifa also described how she believes the porn industry not only brought her post-traumatic stress disorder, but is also damaging relationships for normal people.

“Of course is affects relationships,” she explained.

“The things that men see in videos, they expect from the women in their lives, and that’s just not reality.

“No one is doing to be that perfect, no one is going to do those acts on a Wednesday night with the person they love.”