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Why is it that every time Alia Bhatt talks about her husband, it leaves us feeling uneasy? Bhatt recently entered the world of Vogue GRWM videos but it wasn’t her lipstick application that caught our attention — though that was pretty interesting.

In a short clip of her video posted on Vogue’s Instagram, the actor spoke about how she applied her lipstick.

She moves her lips instead of the lipstick because she finds it “tedious” and then wipes it off, because her husband, Ranbir Kapoor, doesn’t like it.

“I rub it off because one thing my husband always says, even when he wasn’t my husband, when he was my boyfriend as well, when we used to go out at night, he’d say ‘wipe that off, wipe that off’ because he loves the natural colour of my lips,” she said.

If you ignore his history of making rather strange comments about her, this is strange but not an immediate red flag. But if there’s one thing we’ve learned, it’s that you can’t ignore history and this is one of many things we’ve learned about their relationship that make for a troubling picture.

We’re not going to talk in depth about the comments on the video  — all of which are about Kapoor’s seemingly toxic and controlling behaviour — and are instead going to talk about why this is about more than lipstick.

Kapoor, like any other person, can certainly have preferences when it comes to their partner and relationships. He may like the look of natural lips and that is fine. But for a person — let alone an A-list Bollywood star — to incorporate that preference so deeply into her makeup routine that she literally wipes off her lipstick is weird.

It’s not just about the lipstick. It’s about control and being able to do what you want. She could have easily said that she doesn’t like the look of lipstick and that would have been fine. But she didn’t — she said he doesn’t like it.

If this was a one-off, we could perhaps write it off as a quirk, but Ranbir Kapoor is a repeat offender and, quite frankly, a red flag. He’s made fun of his wife’s weight while she was pregnant and even made ‘jokes’ about wanting their daughter to get Bhatt’s looks but not her personality.

He might be ‘joking’ but there’s something so decidedly gross about men who make jokes at the expense of their wives. This isn’t limited to Kapoor — there are scores of desi uncles who think the epitome of humour is publicly ridiculing their wives.

People are allowed to have preferences but then again, women are allowed to also feel creeped out by a man who has made many remarks about his wife — jokingly or otherwise — and who truly has all the markers of a red flag.

If you’re still confused about why he’s a red flag, let us simplify it for you — no one should be telling their partner what to do. You may be asking what’s the big deal about some lipstick and we’ll rebut that by throwing the question right back at you — what’s the big deal about some lipstick? Why does she have to take it off because he “likes the natural shade” of her lips?

It may seem trivial, but it’s a way of exerting control and it’s toxic. Everyone should be free to wear and do what they want.