What does this research mean for the field?

Contemporary Bollywood films are beginning to challenge traditional patriarchal archetypes of aging women by offering emergent representations of their desire, reproductive agency, and social visibility. Novelty: ClaimNovelty.INCREMENTAL. Consensus alignment: ConsensusAlignment.NEUTRAL.

What question did this study set out to answer?

To examine how contemporary Bollywood cinema negotiates and challenges conventional archetypes of gendered ageism regarding older women's sexuality, reproduction, and social visibility.

August 29, 2026Journal of Women & Aging

Between Lipstick and Widow’s White: Female desire and gendered ageism in contemporary Bollywood

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To examine how contemporary Bollywood cinema negotiates and challenges conventional archetypes of gendered ageism regarding older women's sexuality, reproduction, and social visibility.
Conducted close textual analysis of three contemporary Bollywood feature films: Lipstick Under My Burkha (2017), Badhaai Ho (2018), and The Last Color (2019).
Interrogated representational tropes using conceptual frameworks from feminist gerontology, specifically the double standard of aging and sexageism.
Demonstrated that the selected films actively contest three distinct facets of gendered ageism: the suppression of erotic subjectivity, the pathologisation of late-life reproduction, and the social erasure of widows.
Showed that while still fragile, these narratives offer an emergent reimagining of South Asian aging femininity that replaces deficit-oriented tropes with new vocabularies of agency and desire.

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Implication

Textual analysis reveals shifting depictions of older women's desire and agency in contemporary Bollywood, highlighting an emergent challenge to gendered ageism on screen.

Cite This Study

Sushree Routray (2026) studied this question.

synapsesocial.com/papers/6a92991a8e5d7d1fc0c10e32 https://doi.org/10.1080/08952841.2026.2716047

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Implication

Textual analysis reveals shifting depictions of older women's desire and agency in contemporary Bollywood, highlighting an emergent challenge to gendered ageism on screen.

Between Lipstick and Widow’s White: Female desire and gendered ageism in contemporary Bollywood

Key Points

Discussion

Implication

Cite This Study

Between Lipstick and Widow’s White: Female desire and gendered ageism in contemporary Bollywood

Key Points

Discussion

Implication

Cite This Study

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