news

The homegrown porn star who is dividing Lebanon.

Meet Mia Khalifa.

She is a Beirut born 21-year-old history graduate living in Florida, who also happens to be one of the internet’s most popular porn stars.

Mia Khalifa. Via Instagram.

In fact, she is so popular that adult video streaming site Pornhub just named her their most searched for performer. But not everyone on the internet is happy about it.

[raw]

ADVERTISEMENT

[/raw]The Lebanese-American actress moved to the US when she was ten-years-old and is now based in Miami where she makes a living in the adult film industry. A vocation she is very talented at, if her latest accolade is anything to go by.

Mia’s ranking has drawn strong criticism online however, particularly from social media users in her home country of Lebanon. Twitter users reactions to the news ranged from from calling her a “disgrace” to actually issuing death threats.

One user even went as far as photoshopping an image of the actress wearing an orange jumpsuit and being held by an Isis militant, captioned “coming soon”.

It is not the first time the actress has been criticised online. Many took to social media to express their outrage when she appeared in video performing a sex act while wearing a hijab.

She has also come under fire for her nationalistic tattoos, one of which includes the opening lines of the Lebanon national anthem.

“They’re embarrassed I’m ‘claiming’ them — as if I had a choice. I was born there,” Mia said in a recent interview with Newsweek.

She also told Newsweek that her parents had stopped speaking to her because of her career choice.

“I’ve dragged their name through the mud,” she said. “I feel guilty for dragging them into this and having all their friends know now that it’s on Lebanese media. But that was never my intention.”

ADVERTISEMENT

But while there are many who don’t approve of Mia’s work, hundreds of thousands of others do. On Twitter she has nearly 85,000 followers and nearly 94,000 followers on Instagram.

And she took to social media to mock her critics, retweet their abuse and ask “doesn’t the Middle East have more important things to worry about besides me?”.

[raw]

ADVERTISEMENT

[/raw]

[raw]

[/raw]

Here she is eating a piece of pizza. #foodporn