Former porn star Mia Khalifa was trending on Twitter the other day, and of course, I had to check it out. The story is about how Mia Khalifa wants to put porn behind her and be taken as a female influencer; that is that she wants her new fan base to be mostly female instead of all men.

A lot of things about Mia Khalifa always bothered me.

Mia Khalifa has repeatedly claimed that she only made $12,000 in the adult industry. In reality, she made more than $178k from BangBros alone.

In addition to the lie about how much money she made, Mia Khalifa also claimed she was only in the adult industry for three whole months and that her entire future shouldn’t be ruined over those three months. But that too was a lie.

Mia performed in the adult Film and Cam industry from mid-late 2014 through July 2017, which is two years and nine months.

It’s okay to want to move on, but why lie about your past, especially when those lies are so easily provable.

Plus, if she really wanted to put her porn past behind her, she would have stopped using her porn name.  But she didn’t. In fact, she trademarked it and continues to use it to this day. She trades off the fame her time in porn brought her.

But yesterday’s trending Twitter story caught my attention – “Please respect Mia Khalifa’s rebrand.”

Now that’s a concept I get. Had she just owned up to a rebrand a couple of years ago instead of lying about her porn past, I would have been the first one singing her praises.

Former porn star Randi Wright rebranded herself and now is a world-famous YouTuber, Channon Rose. Heck, she even tells funny stories about her porn life. She doesn’t hide or porn past. She doesn’t lie about doing porn. It’s just part of her past.

So what does all this mean to Mia Khalifa? Well, she’s now become TikTok famous and boasts more than 32 million followers.

Interestingly, her target audience on TikTok are women – yes, you heard me right, her new massive fan base aren’t men lusting after her but women that can relate to her struggles.

I like her TikTok channel because she finally seems to embrace her sexuality and even pokes fun at herself.

This video is a classic!

I love seeing Mia Khalifa joke about her past. It’s okay to regret things you did when you were younger. Just don’t lie about it. That was my only problem with her.

This video of her singing Taylor Swift got her an impressive 35.4 million views.

Mia Khalifa posts now about everything from disordered eating to dissociative trauma, and she’s found millions who empathize when she does.

Her personality is better showcased on TikTok, where she combines humor and sincerity in self-deprecating posts that poke fun at her cosmetic surgery, depression, and even the origins of her fame. “My Instagram is maybe 25% women,” she says, “but TikTok is in the mid-40s. That’s why it’s such a safe and fun platform for me.” Users ask about her hair, makeup, eyelashes, and clothing, and she often answers. “There are videos where my entire comments section is just women, and I can sit in there and go back and forth with them.“

A few may be wondering about Mia Khalifa joining OnlyFans. Well, she addresses that as well.

What Khalifa posts on OnlyFans is titillating without being explicit, lewd but not nude, and she says she’ll “block someone if they even say one thing that’s annoying” or “tell them to shut up if they complain.” She’s the only one who reads and replies to her DMs because the third party companies she’s tried out have been unable to replicate her take-no-shit style, lapsing instead into flirtatious pandering. Her attitude is that she doesn’t have to make nice with the customer: “You should have read the fine print. It says no nudity. Respect the rebrand.”

The ability to enforce these boundaries is still new for Khalifa, who’s faced enough harassment to last multiple lifetimes. “Over the years, I’ve seen a shift from very unpleasant encounters — sometimes violent, sometimes terrifying to the point where I stopped leaving the house for a really long time,” she says. “Now, it’s girls who come up to me to tell me they love my TikToks. Or just girls in general.” The repercussions of this change have been transformative. “My anxiety was very bad. My depression and anxiety together were…,” her eyes drop down as she remembers, “a very bad combination. That’s why I’m thankful for TikTok. It gave me a bridge to that female audience I never had a connection to.”

So while it’s true, she did do porn in the past, and she now posts saucy pics on OnlyFans, she has left porn behind her to rebrand herself as a female-friendly influencer.

I respect that.

Kudos to you, Mia Khalifa.