The anonymous source that contacted Owens stated, in part, "With all this publicity about Tyga and Trans hooker Mia Isabella, what's been hiding below the radar is a real relationship between Mia and SF 49er's QB Colin Kaepernick. This is a long and serious relationship."Shortly after the text messages were leaked, Tyga's lawyer released a statement detailing their belief that either Tyga, or someone he sent the images to, had been hacked, and that they'd involved the FBI. Kaepernick has not addressed the claims. (Representatives for Tyga and Kaepernick did not respond to Broadly's request for comment.)Watch More: Dressing the Part: Meet the Consultant Teaching Trans Women How to Be 'Feminine'
When this story broke last year, my first memory of Mia resurfaced. It was an image of her nude body that I'd stumbled upon many years ago. I remember Mia's breasts were swollen in the photo above an upwardly angled phallus. Black sheets of straight hair fell over tan and ageless skin. She looked like she'd been pulled from Greek mythology. I was on the cusp of my own transition from male to female, and her image had a profound effect on me. It was this photo of Mia that made me realize that it's possible to change your sex.The next day, Mia emerged from a car outside her publicist's hotel. She was dressed in black. The Hard Rock was across the street behind her, and her recent lover, the muscular boy from the previous night, followed on her heels as she approached the lobby's tinted doors. She was forty minutes late, which she blamed on the boy, and she felt that the makeup artist she hired that morning had failed to make her look her best. "You call this a cat eye?" she asked no one in particular. But she looked beautiful.I didn't want to see them be shamed and publicly humiliated just because I'm different.
Mia told me that from ages eight to eighteen she played the violin at least two hours a day. When the orchestra program was first introduced in her school, she says she was the first to sign up. "I told my mom, 'They're having an orchestra, and I'm going to play the violin!' She paid me no attention." According to Mia, her mother didn't take her seriously, so she signed the form herself and brought it to school the next day. That choice proved to be characteristic of her personality."It was so great to get lost in the music," she said. There was a pause as Mia looked longingly into the space between us. Then her talons flicked gray cigarette ash into the plastic cup. Eventually, she told me, she gave up the violin. "I got involved with being a grown up. I had to let it go."Mia says that she graduated high school at 16 years old. "I finished school early because I was going to be a doctor," she said. "I wanted to go to nursing school first, because I knew that career could give me good financial backing so that I could afford to go to medical school." But that ambition soon shifted, and she attended the Art Institute of Chicago, where she pursued a career in fashion. "I wanted to do so many things," she said, "I wanted to be a doctor, I wanted to be an archeologist, I wanted to do fashion."Though she'd been living as her true gender since childhood, Mia says that it wasn't until her late teens that she passed through the veil into womanhood. "I didn't really dress the part all the way until high school. I got bolder, and I was in the North. It was different than in the South, with the Bible Belt." She says she's never felt the need to undergo hormone replacement therapy (HRT). That isn't uncommon for trans porn stars—the male consumers of trans porn tend to highly value a girl who is "fully functional," meaning that she can get erect and cum, both of which can be hindered by hormones. "I didn't do any hormone therapy until I was 18, just to have enough breast tissue to have my first breast implants."
Despite rampant transphobia in the United States, Mia says she's never been ashamed of who she is—though there was a period of time in her youth when she was upset by her body. "Initially, I had shame about having a penis," she said. But that feeling didn't last. The porn industry was a catalyst to self-acceptance."I was so praised for that aspect of me. Before, I would have had the surgery immediately," she said, snapping her fingers as if breaking an invisible dick in two between them.Because the porn world celebrated the fact Mia is a woman with a penis, she was able to accept that part of herself. But she doesn't view life in absolutes or waste her time wondering how things might have turned out if she'd made another choice. If she'd had gender reassignment surgery, it would have been okay. "I wouldn't have regretted having it. It just would have been a different journey."Performing in porn excited Mia because it felt rebellious. "I had the idea that I would do porn just to shock my family," she said, certainly not the first to have acted out on that impulse as a teenager. The day she turned 19 years old, she shot her first filmed sex scene, but it wasn't something she had seriously planned. "I thought I was doing a photo shoot, and I got all the way to LA and they asked me to star in the movie," she said.My father was really, really protective of me. He wanted to ensure that I wouldn't live a life that I wasn't supposed to live.
The massive scrutiny that Mia experienced last year felt strange, in part because she's had several happy, or at least conventional, relationships with men throughout her life. She says she was married for the first time at 20 years old to a man three decades older than her. According to Mia, her family supported the relationship and encouraged the marriage, and her husband, who was very wealthy, ensured she was well cared for. Mia had her own luxury designer boutique in Chicago and attended the Paris Fashion Institute in France. Even though that was nearly a decade ago, her teacher there still remembers her, telling Broadly that she remembers Mia as a "wonderful person" and a phenomenal "straight-A student" that she'll never forget.Whatever I needed to do to submit and show that I was willing to give power, I did. I did to the detriment of myself.
"When you read a thousand [hateful] comments a day, every day, for six months, it starts to make you believe it a little bit," she said. "No matter how strong you are as a person. Not even the most experienced, high profile people are trained to deal with that kind of public scrutiny."Mia retired from porn in January of 2014. She hasn't made any new films since then, but she still makes money off of her website. "Porn was my business. It was my brand," she said. "I got so many amazing opportunities. I had the world's first transsexual toy line sold globally. I ended up doing Grand Theft Auto. I did a television show, Sons of Anarchy. I kept getting these amazing opportunities and I dated some famous people here and there throughout my life. I got to have some really cool experiences."It's not a bad thing for a man to be afraid of being judged. All human beings are afraid of being judged.
"It's not a bad thing for a man to be afraid of being judged," she said. "All human beings are afraid of being judged. I have a lot of empathy for what is expected of men by the world. It's a lot of pressure for men." However, Mia told me that her tendency to empathize with male suffering has sometimes put her in difficult situations—such as with her last fiancé, who she fruitlessly sacrificed her own success for. "I always end up with guys like that," she said. "I want to love them back to life for some reason. It's a bad habit."The night before my interview with Mia, Tyga, who had previously only commented of the "allegations" regarding their relationship via his lawyer, publicly denied it on the radio. "I'm like, 'Damn, who's making this shit up?'" he said on Atlanta's Streetz 94.5 when asked about a relationship with Mia. "Somebody really got something against me up top somewhere."When I asked Mia about Tyga, she told me she didn't want to talk about him. "I shouldn't, only because something's happening right now," she explained. Without giving details, she said she'd been working with her lawyer for months and that she was getting ready to make a move. Two weeks later—on Monday, February 8—she posted screenshots of text messages between herself and an individual she claims is Tyga. Her accompanying statement says that Tyga and his team have been targeting her for months and she's reached her limit."Very simple, I didn't release anything and I NEVER threatened to release a sex-tape but you decided to let the world make me a villain and you the victim and you weren't." Mia's latest statement also made reference to that immense pressure she told me men are under. "Truth is I didn't accept offers of money for silence or career opportunities I did it because you made reference of suicide and I cared too much about you to have that weight on my hands."The pressure involved in high-profile affairs is heightened by the persistent threat of media frenzy. As Mia Isabella tells it, her story is about the concessions you make when you care deeply for someone whose success depends on your suppression and yet, contradictorily, you're too smart to stay silent when you've been cheated."I love bold men that don't give a fuck," she said. "When you live in your truth, people cannot use your truth to hurt you. Maybe it's not shame, maybe you just haven't come into your own sense of power." She looked at me and smiled, reminding me that it took time for her, and for me, to find our inner sources of strength. "It takes time," she said. "Men are not generally equipped for that. They're not generally equipped for being judged based on their sexuality."Though straight men who desire trans women are often labeled as gay by the mainstream, Mia sees it differently. "We're built specifically to appeal to a man's sexual senses," she said, looking down toward her body with sparkling blue eyes. "If you are not attracted to a trans woman, who is built specifically to arouse your sexual interest in women, then you're gay." Obviously, transgender identity is far more complex than that: Trans people typically identify as a gender other than that they were assigned at birth, and transgender women are not simply products for male consumption, but there's an intelligence to Mia's read on this situation, even if her phrasing is oddly heteronormative.The stigmas that exist around being trans or loving trans women make no sense to Mia. She hopes that one day a bold man will finally stop giving a fuck, and break the silence about loving transgender women. Today, as always, self-preservation is the key to her survival. "You have to ultimately choose you," she said. "My job is to take care of this girl. Me. And only I am going to be able to take care of her the way she needs."When you live in your truth, people cannot use your truth to hurt you.