Lipstick Under My Burkha: 10 things about women and sex that will shock Indian men

Why don't we think of our girls and women as sexual beings with their own needs and not as objects of men's desire?

Lipstick Under My Burkha is not the story of four Indian women. The characters may be fictional but each one of them represents thousands, lakhs or perhaps millions of women in India. The movie continues to shock audiences as some of us are just beginning to realise that a large part of a woman s identity is suppressed and repressed in this day and age. After all how many of us think of our mothers or older female relatives as sexual beings or having desires or needs which are not met? So here s an eye opener for men (and some women) who MUST watch this movie to find out what women hide and lie and sneak around to do because their society does not permit these things.

1. Women read erotic novels (porn) too. Just as boys and men do.
2. Girls who wear burkhas don t stop feeling the need to wear makeup or dress pretty or listen to pop music and be a part of today s pop culture.
3. Sex is, for the first night, may be a policy for some, but women who do not wait to get engaged or married to have sex are not sluts. They are sexually active, just as men their age are.
4. Women of all ages masturbate. It is not a male prerogative! Read about Female masturbation -- 10 steps to have an orgasm
5. Teen pregnancies are common even among urban youth because teenage girls also have sexual urges just like teenage boys. So they need sex education to prevent unwanted pregnancies and STDs. Read more about Children's books that explain the birds and the bees
6. Women should not use emergency contraceptive pills all the time, it is better to use a condom in many cases.
7. Older women have sexual needs too. Just because a woman is a widow, her urges don t diminish.
8. If it is ok for a 50-year-old man to marry an 18-year-old girl, what is wrong with a 50-year-old woman fantasising about a 25-year-old man?
9. Women do not participate in sex when their consent is neither sought nor expressed or denied. They just lie down and wait for the act to get over if they are not aroused.
10. Marriage is not a license to F###! Marital rape is very real and many women do not expressly say NO for fear of being divorced or abused or worse, which makes the consent issue irrelevant.

Why is it that a woman in India is first someone's baby, then didi, then bhabhi and then aunty? No matter what their age, men will address even their contemporaries in this manner. Watch the movie to know more about the lives of women around you when they are not being someone's mom or aunt or grandma. The bits that you won t know about by checking their Facebook statuses.

Image source: Twitter.com/LipstickMovie