Visual and Performing Arts
“New Womanhood and #LipstickRebellion: Feminist Consciousness in Lipstick Under My Burkha”
Document Type
Book Chapter
Abstract
The film Lipstick under My Burkha came under fire by the Indian Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) for being “too lady oriented.” The film deals explicitly with female desire and agency, and its trailer’s emphasis on the women, their sex lives, and their oppression immediately provided a context for the interpretation of the board’s prudish discomfort in using the euphemistic phrase. As a response to the censor board’s refusal to certify the film for release, pictures of cast members appeared on Instagram’s #LipstickRebellion, where they used a lipstick held by their middle finger and exhorted men and women to do the same. Their response made the CBFC synonymous with the patriarchal system that, as Monika Mehta has argued, certifies ideologically conservative films but bans ones that question the status quo. The poster for the film developed out of this campaign and uses the image of the lipstick/middle finger to protest against the CBFC and patriarchy. This chapter analyzes these conflicted messages of the film’s paratexts along with its feminist consciousness to explore possibilities and limits of female agency within the context of neoliberal new womanhood in India.
Publication Title
Bollywood’s New Woman: Liberalization, Liberation, and Contested Bodies
Publication Date
6-2021
First Page
79
Last Page
91
ISBN
9781978814486
DOI
9781978814486
Keywords
Bollywood, female filmmakers, Alankrita Shrivastava, auteurism, film studies, feminism
Repository Citation
Siddiqui, Gohar, "“New Womanhood and #LipstickRebellion: Feminist Consciousness in Lipstick Under My Burkha”" (2021). Visual and Performing Arts. 24.
https://commons.clarku.edu/faculty_visual_performing_arts/24
