Nairobi, Feb. 17 -- Mia Khalifa was born in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1993 and raised in a strictly conservative Catholic family, before she relocated to the United States in 2001, during the South Lebanon conflict.

She joined her family that was already living in Montgomery, Maryland, and endured severe bullying in school at the hands of children who targeted her plump appearance.

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The mistreatment worsened after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, when she was slighted and racially discriminated against for her Middle-Eastern Arabic heritage.

She joined the University of Texas in El Paso to study history, as she nursed the wounds to her self-esteem, which had been heavily fra...