Picture this; I'm thirty with an insatiable thirst for sex. It couldn't quite be considered an addiction, but there is a constant quench for something more than the lacklustre connections experienced throughout those adolescent years. The entirety of my twenties had been spent in a long-term relationship with someone who never could and never wanted to, satisfy my sexual desires. The consequence of that came in the form of a year-long affair with someone from my work, and neverending fantasies about engaging in high-risk, high-reward sexual acts with men anywhere and everywhere. But admitting that to myself felt like something hideous and shameful, an aspect of myself to be embarrassed by. This is why watching Halina Reijn's Babygirl (2025) felt like one of the most exhilarating and liberating cinematic experiences; finally feeling seen and represented on-screen from the perspective of a woman who indulges in sexual kink.
The week that Babygirl was released, I immediately rushed to the cinema, as from the trailer alone there was a sense that this film was going to give me clarity on something that deep down I knew; there is no shame in female sexuality. The film centres on Romy, the CEO of one of the most successful automation companies in the US – she's going through the motions of being a mother, a career woman and a wife. Her idyllic life is throw into disarray when she's paired with an intern for a mentoring programme at work, Samuel, and the two begin a salacious affair of sex and dominance. As Nicole Kidman playing Romy became a riveting picture of everything that women are expected to be in this modern age, it became clear that this film wasn't merely about an older woman having an affair with a younger man, it was about the repression women have faced for the history of their beings. Romy feels isolated and unable to communicate her darkest sexual desires, her daughter wants to freely explore her queer identity and polyamory, whilst Romy's assistant paves the way to storm up the career ladder – all demonstrations of this.
Although Harris Dickinson could be considered a sex symbol in his own right, the focus wasn't on his looks or his youth, but merely the freedom that his character Samuel gives to Romy, allowing her to fully and without filter express her true desires. But it wasn't the titular film that shocked me with its open-minded approach to eroticism, it was the responses the film received not only from cinemagoers generally, but for me, from people I had close contact with. Men were outraged that a story could portray and somewhat condone a woman cheating, and women seemed to be sickened and in disbelief that a female could find pleasure from what they perceived as a depraved sexual relationship. This coincides with the cultural shift we've seen in society lately; we've seen a rise in conservatism and less sex in cinema, with conversations even spanning to a reform against the need for sex scenes on screen.
Before discovering the BDSM and kink community, my understanding of that world was prohibited and limited. From an early age, sexual education taught me that there was a right and wrong way to find pleasure – that everything was black and white when it came to sex. Romy clearly has had the same lived experience; when she and Samuel meet in a hotel room she immediately flings herself on him trying to seem ‘desirable' and act how she's been taught as a woman, but Samuel educates her that it doesn't have to be like that. Even growing up it was a hard and fast rule that heterosexual relationships were normal and anything that spanned outside of that was taboo or needed to be kept a secret. As a teenager I knew I was bisexual or pansexual, but it wasn't until my late twenties that allowed myself to accept this and fully embrace being attracted to people rather than genders. As society has become more accepting of the queer community, it's become easier to remove any embarrassment of describing who I'm attracted to but unfortunately when it comes to sexual desires there is still more education and acceptance to do, which is why the world needed a film like Babygirl to start challenging the stigma that comes with so-called ‘taboo' preferences.
As the film opens with a sexually dissatisfied Romy making love to her husband and masturbating to pornography afterwards, I was quickly thrown into a world of resonation with her. I had been in a long-term relationship since the age of 21 with an older man, someone who in some respects felt like a father figure and an authoritative dominating presence in my life. But after being together for close to 7 years I began to find myself realising that something was missing from my life, that there was a miserable undertone to my apparently ‘picture perfect' life that I was leading. Just like Romy and her character's position, i had it all – a successful career, my own side business, an owned house in London, and a ‘secure' relationship. Romy is a leading businesswoman, she owns multiple property, she has two good daughters and a husband who loves her. Women have always been made to believe that our values should be tied to certain aspirations such as a marriage, children, a home and more recently, a career. The reality is that female desire has never been ‘allowed' to be a value that women can hold high, because being a woman who openly enjoys sex has always been deemed as controversial. The term nymphomaniac was a derogatory one, labelling women who have a high libido as having a mental disorder, insinuating that they needed a cure for this affliction. That is why the shame around female sexuality still exists, and why I battled these erotic wants for many years.
Having never experienced a true orgasm in my life, the longing to feel fully desirable, and have full pleasure was something that seemed like an unrealistic fantasy. For Romy, it only takes two small words to unlock her feral side and allow her to begin falling into a sexual encounter which she understands is wrong but allows her to finally explore her true sexual desires. “Good girl.” is muttered to a dog in the street by Samuel; an act of dominance, power and submission. I'd never thought of myself as someone who would cheat, let alone have an affair, but similarly to Romy, an act of sheer dominance was displayed by someone at my workplace in a moment of normality and within the same night we were having passionate sex in the work toilets whilst he reinforced the words “Good girl“ over and over again. The fetishisation of this phrase comes into play as we see how the power dynamics between Romy and Samuel allow her to finally give up control and accept that her sexual desires are to be dominated and told what to do. But this acceptance doesn't come without shame and Romy battles against her true feelings. In moments with Samuel, she feels frustrated that she is getting off on his demands of her to engage in acts such as acting like a dog, drinking milk from a saucer and going behind her husband's back to have nights fuelled with fornicating.
Embarking on an affair was a form of escapism for me, finding a way to finally communicate my sexual wants in a way that felt safe. As demonstrated in Babygirl, women have never been given the environment to openly declare their sexual needs were being put at the bottom of the priority list. In a moment of sheer resentment, Romy declares to her husband that she's never had an orgasm with him, only to rescind this comment when he pressures her to explain. As a sexually repressed female, having a sordid affair in some ways is an easier option than communicating to a long-term partner that either your sexual fantasies have changed or that you never truly expressed what you wanted. For many of us, the excitement of having a sexual encounter comes from novelty and thrill – there needs to be an element of danger to truly feel the ecstasy of it all. The affair satisfied that side of me, but the problem came when I realised that I needed something more and needed to face my own morals as to the outlet I used to try and reach my final climatic destination.
Babygirl explores various kink themes that seem to have either highly resonated with audiences, or made viewers uncomfortable and up in arms about the type of sexual relationship that was depicted. Ownership, degradation and humiliation all feature heavily in this film, and in one of the most realistic ways too. After leaving my long-term relationship, I found myself in desperate need to understand why I wanted to be dominated and treated like a piece of meat. Society had taught me that this was wrong, that there was something psychologically wrong with me. However, when I finally fell into the right friendship groups, a new world opened into understanding that this interest in dom/sub relationships wasn't anything out of the norm when you find the right people. Romy feels embarrassed about her wants, and in interactions with Samuel becomes awkward at his mentions of their agreement and how the power dynamics will play out. She combats him, but she is challenging and fighting against her sexual desires because she's always been taught that it's not okay to have these fetishes.
After 30 years of feeling oppressed and direly confused, I met my very own Samuel; someone who created a safe space for me to open up and securely dive into the kinks I'd never felt comfortable satiating. Whilst it was fascinating to see the discourse online from friends and strangers, it led me to grasp why exactly we needed a film like Babygirl and how more films that transparently discuss female sexuality are in dire demand. One friend described the ‘Daddy's Little Girl' aspect as “completely sickening” and that it promoted paedophilia. An exceptionally tough pill to swallow, but even more so to try and disclose what it represents. There were other comments surrounding the perplexity as to why a woman would allow a man to degrade her by forcing her to drink milk and act like a dog, and a subservient object that would do anything she is told to do. In a similar fashion to Romy, I discovered that my ultimate sexual fantasy was to completely let go of myself, and allow someone else to have full power over my entire self – because the ultimate goal of sex is to be fully present in the moment and utterly succumb to your primal instincts in the moment. This is exactly what a dom/sub relationship comes down to; letting go of control of one's life and self, and giving all power over to someone.
Samuel describes Romy as his ‘babygirl' – an intimate term which has nothing to do with age play or being attracted to younger ages whatsoever. The intricacy of DDLM aka Daddy Dom Little Girl spans much further and deeper than those can see on the surface; as we see in Baygirl this is a relationship built on communication, consent and trust. Entering into an entanglement that exposes each person in a potentially exploitative way requires an intense level of trust within each other, and setting a foundation made of full consent with clear boundaries on what is and what isn't within the realms of the agreement. The first time I embarked on this darker side of sensuality, I was disgusted, shocked and somewhat intrinsically disturbed by the fact I found an extreme sense of pleasure from being bitten, spanked, choked, told I was a worthless little slut, treated like all I was good for was sexual consumption. Coming to grips with your sexuality despite living in a world that wants you to feel shame for your own desires isn't an easy feat, and Romy goes through the same motions of this, constantly fighting against the supposed ‘depravities' that led to her ultimate orgasm.
Babygirl isn't a titillating, erotic film about having an affair to satisfy your depraved needs. It's a film that focuses on creating a place to discuss the true nature of female sexuality, and allowing women to be open that they like to be dominated and fucked like the dirty little whores they want to be. As someone who has found myself on a journey of sexual self-discovery, this film allowed me to openly demonstrate the type of relationship that took me thirty years to accept I was looking for and to be able to actively fight for a world where BDSM and the kink community are openly accepted without judgement from those who lack the understanding of sex that is anything other than vanilla. Female pleasure shouldn't be a debate; traditional perceptions of women have typically cornered them into feeling like sex has to be meaningful, for reproduction or emotionally connecting. But the truth is that women are animalistic by nature, much the same as men, and can have equal, if not more, desires to be seen as a solely sexual object with nothing more than the desire to be dominated, controlled and drink milk until they climax so hard they forget they even had a disappointing husband at home.
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