Mikaela Spielberg, the adoptive daughter of the famous movie director, has had a difficult life. After overcoming childhood sexual abuse, alcoholism, and an eating disorder, Steven Spielberg’s middle daughter says she’s ready to move on and make empowering choices. The main one, according to her, involves becoming a porn star and a stripper.
In an interview with the Sun published Wednesday, Mikaela Spielberg said she’s making the career change because it’s simply what she wants.
“I got really tired of not being able to capitalize on my body, and frankly, I got really tired of being told to hate my body,” she said. “And I also just got tired of working day to day in a way that wasn’t satisfying my soul. I feel like doing this kind of work, I’m able to ‘satisfy’ other people, but that feels good because it’s not in a way that makes me feel violated.”
To keep this choice from feeling too invasive, Mikaela Spielberg says she will not participate in videos with anyone else, but she will still upload naked videos of herself online, and she has done so already — to PornHub, a website brimming with distinctly unempowering videos that promote rape, violence, and incest.
Mikaela Spielberg added that her parents were “intrigued” but “not upset” by her choice to pursue a career in the porn industry, and it’s hard to say what’s more disturbing: that she believes creating pornographic videos will be “satisfying” to her soul or that her parents didn’t have the nerve to steer her in another direction.
Mikaela Spielberg is confused about what self-empowerment means, but she’s in her early 20s. What’s her parents’ excuse?
Her new career choice is clearly the worst option for someone who already struggles with body image and self-worth. Commodifying her own body will condition her to view herself as an object to be monetized, not a person to be respected. This career path is the exact opposite of what she needs for growth, and yet apparently, her parents are committed to letting her live her truth rather than helping her find a better solution.
Sadly, porn as empowerment is a natural consequence of the media (Teen Vogue, etc.) celebrating “sex work,” and even perpetuating the term “sex work” to normalize prostitution and pornography with a more career-oriented name. Now, it’s an empowering decision for a woman. Passe is the characterization in Les Miserables, in which Fantine finds prostitution to be a degrading act of desperation. Now, it’s just another money move.
Speaking of which, former stripper Cardi B proudly proclaims that she “don’t gotta dance” anymore on “Bodak Yellow,” signaling that she’s moved on and that’s a good thing. If only other young women, including Mikaela Spielberg, believed her.
Despite Jennifer Lopez, who brought her 11-year-old daughter on stage with her at the Super Bowl halftime show after dancing on a stripper pole, this kind of entertainment is not empowering to women. Unfortunately, that’s not a message they’ll hear from the mainstream. If the media won’t tell them, and their parents won’t either, they’ll have to learn it themselves.
