It all happened on a busy street in Dhaka, Bangladesh, where influencer and model Monika Kabir was recording promotional content. According to her account, an elderly man approached her, brushed against her with his bag, and made a comment that she considered offensive. What he probably did not expect was that Monika would not let him keep walking as if nothing had happened.
The model went after him and began repeatedly hitting him with her own bag as dozens of passersby looked on. Then came perhaps the most baffling part of the video: Monika returned to her spot, adjusted her dress, and resumed posing in front of the camera with a smile as if the previous seconds had never happened.
It was precisely this ease with which she returned in front of the lens that sparked the controversy. Thousands of users questioned whether it was really a spontaneous reaction and accused the influencer of exaggerating—or even staging—the confrontation to generate content.
“I didn’t even touch you”, “You can’t hit an old man”, “He was minding his own business, you literally abuse him to get views”. These were some of the comments she received. However, others came to her defense and maintained that she, like anyone else, has the right to react when someone invades her personal space or harasses her.
Kabir insists that the images do not tell the whole story: she claims that the man made inappropriate comments that cannot be heard because of the video’s music. She has also publicly defended her reaction, saying that these kinds of situations are common for women in Bangladesh and that she intends to continue defending herself when necessary.