But the story didn't end in theaters. When the film was submitted to the Oscars in 2018, it was disqualified for having "too much English dialogue" (a rule later changed). And the censor board’s original language—"lady-oriented"—entered the lexicon as a slur, a badge of honor. It revealed what the board truly feared: not sex, but female agency.
The board refused to certify it. Their reason? The film was "lady-oriented," with "sexual fantasies" and "audio pornography." They called it "dark," "vulgar," and "uncomfortable for women." They demanded 123 cuts—nearly half the film. One of the board members famously said, "The story is about their desire… which is not good for society."
, the middle-class housewife, lived a different kind of nightmare. Married to a traveling salesman, she was a textbook to a ghost. Her escape was a stolen romance with a swami who sold spirituality over the phone. She called his erotic hotline not for cheap thrills, but to feel a human voice ask her, "What are you wearing?" Her lipstick was the lie she told herself—that a fantasy could fill a real-life void. movie lipstick under burkha
In the bustling bylanes of Old Delhi, where the call to prayer mingled with the honking of rickshaws, a young woman named Alankrita Shrivastava was wrestling with a question that rarely made it past the chai stalls: What do women really want? Not in a political manifesto, but in the quiet, cluttered corners of their own minds. Her answer, when it came, was a film. She called it Lipstick Under My Burkha .
The irony was electric. A film about women's hidden lives had been censored because it revealed them. The board hadn't rejected bad filmmaking; they had rejected the very idea that women could own their erotic selves. The burkha of Indian censorship had been thrown over the film. But the story didn't end in theaters
Then came , a fiery, ambitious girl from a lower-caste family. She dreamed of running away to become a famous singer. But her mother, worn down by poverty, saw marriage as the only escape. Leela’s rebellion was raw and sexual—she seduced her photographer boyfriend, exploring her body as a territory she alone owned. It wasn't just about love; it was about seizing pleasure before life seized her.
But when Shrivastava submitted Lipstick Under My Burkha to India’s Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) in 2016, the response was a thunderclap. It revealed what the board truly feared: not
The film was audacious, funny, and painfully intimate. It showed women masturbating, lying, stealing, and scheming for tiny pockets of joy. It didn't offer heroes or villains. It offered humanity.