Jonita Gandhi recalls being cyberflashed, receiving ‘d**k pic with my photo in the background' on Instagram: ‘It's disgusting'

Indian Express

15-06-2025

There's no exaggeration in saying that almost every woman has faced online sexual abuse or harassment in one form or another. While commoners themselves endure such traumatic experiences frequently, the situation is far grimmer for celebrities, who live in the public eye and are constantly subjected to hypersexualisation. Recently, singer Jonita Gandhi shared a disturbing experience she faced online, which served as a stark reminder that just when you think perpetrators can no longer shock you with their actions, they find new, even more unsettling ways to do so.
In a recent interview, Jonita recalled being a victim of cyberflashing, where a person posted a picture of his genitals with her photo in the background. 'Some things are kind of traumatic. On Instagram, you can check your mentions, and I'd see that I'd been added to someone's Close Friends stories. Then I'm seeing it's a d**k pic. It has a watermark with their thing and my photo in the background. It's disgusting. It's harassment. But I keep ignoring such things,' she told Hauterrfly.
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She also opened up about facing racism and body image issues as an Indian growing up in Canada. 'I used to get a lot of racist comments about my facial hair while growing up. They used to call me Godzilla, and even the Punjabi boys in my class would make fun of me. Growing up, I was convinced that I was never going to have sex because of the same issues. I couldn't accept my own body; how can someone else accept it? I still have some of those issues; I still avoid swimming sometimes, but music made it better. I feel like I am the ugly duckling who became the swan.'
Renowned for lending her voice to superhit songs such as 'Chennai Express', 'Mental Manadhil', 'The Breakup Song', 'Gilehriyaan', 'Sacchi Mohabbat', 'Main Tumhara', 'Deva Deva' and 'What Jhumka?', she has also sung in Urdu, Telugu, Punjabi, Marathi, Gujarati and Bengali languages.