Spoilers for Babygirl (2024) ahead:
A big part of the scandalous appeal of Babygirl (2024) is the main character, Romy (Nicole Kidman), a powerful CEO with surprisingly submissive tendencies. However, as the sexually submissive CEO of Saturday Box, a kink and roleplay company, I’m here to tell you that you shouldn’t be so surprised.
While the American Psychiatric Association classified BDSM as a mental illness until 2010, research from the Kinsey Institute suggests that it’s more unusual not to be interested in BDSM. In a study of over 4,000 American adults, only 4 percent of women and 7 percent of men reported never having BDSM fantasies. Instances of kink have been documented as far back as Ancient Mesopotamia. As evidenced by the tidal wave of support for Fifty Shades of Grey and now, Babygirl, which is breaking box office records for A24, it’s fair to say that kink is practically mainstream.
I’m always excited to see another kinky heroine enter the zeitgeist - especially one who isn’t in a traditionally submissive role like an intern or a secretary. But there’s something regressive about Babygirl, and the problem is not, as many angry internet commenters suggest, its bold decision to highlight female submission. In fact, research shows that women are significantly more likely than men to be interested in all types of BDSM, disproportionately tilting toward submissive roles. It would be antithetical to feminism to dismiss these stories just because they don’t fit the traditional narrative of women’s empowerment.
I can tell you from personal experience and the experience of my customers: It’s normal for a powerful woman to crave submission in the bedroom, to want someone to take care of her after a long day of being in charge. It’s normal for bondage and impact play to get you out of your head and help you to stop worrying about how a good girl is supposed to behave. What’s abnormal is how much Romy, an otherwise modern and untraumatized woman, hates herself for having these desires.
Is Romy engaging in toxic and extreme sexual behavior throughout the film? Absolutely. But Romy’s powder keg lifestyle has more to do with self-loathing than her latent interest in kink. Her mortal sin is cheating on her husband with an intern, not wanting to be told what to do.
When her work rival declares that he has leverage on Romy now that he knows her dirty little secret, she proudly retorts, “If I want someone to humiliate me, I’ll pay them myself.” But the line doesn’t quite land because her HR violation has less to do with kink and more to do with having an extramarital affair with a subordinate.
The specific kinks that Romy explores with her intern, Samuel (Harris Dickinson), are purely focused on power dynamics (crawling on the floor, standing in the corner, cleaning up shattered plates, etc.) They don’t engage in anything physically intense, nothing that would even leave a mark. Far from a disappointment, it’s wonderful to expand the range of kink available on the silver screen. And yet, the relative tameness of their play seems to refute the idea that Romy needs to be in literal danger to be aroused (as she insists time and time again). Her erotic tastes, like most people who enjoy BDSM, seem to adhere more closely to what Samuel says when he compares their encounters to “children playing”.
Romy endangers herself because of the deep mortification she feels toward her kinks rather than the kinks themselves. She might be turned on by the concept that Samuel could “make one call and she would lose everything” but realistically, Romy would be in a similar amount of trouble for having a vanilla affair with her intern.
Once her guilt about cheating becomes unbearable, she confesses to her husband and admits to a lifelong struggle with these desires, citing the failure of multiple therapists to help her overcome her perversion. Yet, I find it hard to believe that she never stumbled upon a single kink-positive therapist who could reassure her that her desires were normal. Romy’s artistic, passionate husband (Antonio Banderas) appears to share the same narrow view of the subject and is unable to satisfy her, but to be fair, the first time they openly discuss her kinks is after she has already cheated on him.
I’m certainly not suggesting that everyone is cool with BDSM. Having been raised in a strict, religious environment, I am no stranger to struggling to express what you really want in the bedroom, but Romy and her husband have backgrounds that would supply them with much more exposure to this sort of thing. She is a tech CEO who was raised in a free-spirited commune, and he is a stage director who writes such erotically charged material that Romy becomes transfixed while watching some of the scenes.
Is there truly nothing in these people’s broader sphere of influence normalizing kink for them? We know that cultural acceptance of BDSM is on the rise. I recently found out that my neighbors have known what I do for a living for months, but it was of so little consequence to them that I didn’t hear about it until much later. Even my conservative Christian mother bought me a chain necklace for Christmas because she thought it “might match with my handcuffs.”
This film is not set in such a different universe. Presumably, they have similarly popular kinky media like Fifty Shades of Grey. The rough sex porn that Romy sneakily masturbates to in the opening scene is not more extreme than what you might find in a bestselling dark romance novel. And as the CEO of a parody Amazon megacorporation, she should be privy to reports about her company’s stake in the $35.2 billion sex toy market.
For viewers already comfortable with kink, there’s a lot to like about this movie. It’s always nice to see a take on BDSM that doesn’t center on leather or dungeons. I enjoyed watching an explicitly kinky story with a more playful, character-driven undercurrent. The film does an excellent job capturing the awkwardness and absurdity of playing with a partner - before artfully pivoting to show how those imperfect interactions can still be incredibly hot.
At the same time, the film continues to perpetuate negative stereotypes about kinksters. Many people seeing it in a theater for other reasons, such as an interest in seeing an older woman with a younger man, will walk away with a bad taste in their mouth. Babygirl continues the unfortunate tradition of treating kinky characters as damaged, even when a 2013 study found that those who practice BDSM tended to be psychologically healthier than the control group.
The idea that Romy consensually wants to be dominated is undermined by the fact that she’s so entranced by a toxic, abusive relationship. Romy is first attracted to Samuel when he heroically takes control of the rabid dog. But beyond protectively inquiring after her coffee drinking habits, the man sabotages her sense of security for the entire rest of the film, showing up uninvited at her family home and repeatedly threatening to report her to management.
As Samuel notes, it’s almost as if she wants to ruin herself and see everything she’s built come crashing down. You do you, Babygirl, but don’t speak for the rest of us.
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