Early Christian ascetics counted seven deadly sins—pride, greed, envy, sloth, gluttony, wrath, and lust—that threaten our ascension to goodness (and, by extension, to heaven). But in an era ruled by an all-knowing Internet, a surreal beauty standard, and an insatiable appetite for material wealth, these vices are more of a playbook for success than a warning. What is a sin in 2026? For the Indulgence issue, we asked seven figures—Jamieson Webster, Dries Van Noten, Christine Sun Kim, Griffin Dunne, Mia Khalifa, Brontez Purnell, and Helen Molesworth—to examine how one sin threads its way through their life and work. Here, Khalifa reflects on lust.
Lust, to me, is just carnal desire. It’s an impulse. You don’t care whether the outcome is good or bad; you don’t care about the consequences. In my teenage years and early 20s, I never thought that far ahead. I made a lot of decisions based on lust when it came to my sex life. All of that accidentally became very public… another impulse.
Doing porn was definitely part of that. I mean, I was in it so briefly. And as soon as I began to realize the gravity of what I had done, I left and never went back. Part of it was that my lust wasn’t necessarily for sex. It was for validation and acceptance—these things made me betray myself and my values before I was old enough to even know what they were.
Finally, after a relationship with someone who didn’t control their lust, I took almost two years of celibacy. I felt like I’d lost control over who I shared my body with, because he was sharing his with… everyone. At that point, I had been through enough in my life; I needed to fully step away. Two years is a long time, girl. I could hear colors. My friends joked and called me a nun. There were a lot of times that I wanted to act on my lust, but—is this person worth it? Are they going to add to my life, or are they just going to deregulate my nervous system?
I learned to look at lust the same way I look at jealousy or envy. It’s no longer an emotion that I want to put much energy toward—or even come close to acting on. The celibacy taught me that, in a big way, I’m healed. It’s not like I went two years acting like a nun. I still very much took care of myself—needing validation is one thing, the human need for orgasm is another—but it taught me how many interactions are rooted in a need for acceptance rather than connection. I learned how to discern the difference.
Maybe, as I’ve gotten older and experienced the dark side of lust in my life, I’ve overcorrected. Listen, I still have moments where people are like, Were you thinking when you did that? But I have reined that in, to the point of over-analyzing and over-assessing risk versus reward when it comes to love, business. There’s something beautiful about the adrenaline, the—what’s the word when you do things on a whim? Spontaneity. You can’t replicate that with a slow burn or by inching toward a goal. Acting on lust is like taking a risk, and risk is such a big part of being alive.
More Deep Dives on the State of the Seven Deadly Sins
Artist Christine Sun Kim on How Her Deaf Rage Grew Into Deaf Wrath
The Laziness Canon: Helen Molesworth on Artists Who Made Great Work by Doing Nothing
In an Ozempic-Suffused Scene, Brontez Purnell on Being a ‘Fake Skinny Bitch’
Dries Van Noten Unpacks the Greed That Made Him Step Back From Fashion
According to Psychoanalyst Jamieson Webster, Pride Gets a Bad Rap
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