REWRITING THE TRANS SELF: GENDER, REPRESSION AND IDENTITY IN RED LIPSTICK: THE MEN IN MY LIFE

The article critically evaluates Laxmi Narayan Tripathi’s memoir Red Lipstick: The Men in My Life through the lens of Sigmund Freud’s Theory of Repression. It evaluates the interconnectedness of personal identity, gender performance, and relational trauma, the paper arguing that Tripathi’s is simultaneously confrontation of repressed desires and a therapeutic articulation of identity. Recalling Freud's definition of repression, as unconscious denial of unacceptable impulses, brings to the forefront how Laxmi's journey is a testimony to psychic tension between personal authenticity and societal norms. The memoir becomes thus a potent site of catharsis, in which lived lives questions normative gender constructions while reappropriating agency, situating Red Lipstick as both individual and critique of repression.