when "good girls" are "bad girls" or why I will always root for a woman's pleasure over her fidelity to the men who can't give it to her

On Babygirl, desire, eroticism and pursuing middle age as both "Madonna" and "Whore"

The following post contains Babygirl spoilers so enter at your own risk. Annnnd if you’ve been putting off upgrading your subscription to paid, this would be a great time to do so because I’m paywalling all longform posts in 2025. (Getting paid for my work is my only resolution! As well as thanking you all for your continued support!)

Romy’s husband of nineteen years has never made her come. A tale as old as time and one that was inspired by filmmaker Halina Reijn’s friend’s experience as a wife whose husband never got her off.

We find out about Romy’s lack of marital orgasms halfway through Babygirl but get the sense that she’s sexually unsatisfied within the first few moments of the movie. After what sounds like an orgasm (womp womp) during the sex she’s just had with her husband (played by Antonio Banderas), we watch as Romy (Nicole Kidman) makes off down the hallway toward what appears to be an office, where she pulls her laptop off her desk, and brings it down to the floor with her. There, she lies flat on her stomach, hands between her legs and gets herself off while watching porn. It’s a vulnerable scene. Refreshingly human. Her position is awkward and childlike, insinuating that this is how she has ALWAYS gotten herself off. She grunts instead of moans when she comes — her sounds very different than the ones we heard moments earlier with her husband. This moment begs the question, how does a woman come when she has no audience? How different does she look? Does she sound?

Romy’s porn-of-choice exhibits the kind of sex her husband is incapable of giving her because it makes him feel like “a villian,” a phrase he whimpers at her after she asks him to cover her face with a pillow while he fucks her — a relatively tame ask but alas — still too much for a man who prides himself on being a good man and loving husband.

The irony here, is that his “goodness” or refusal to be “bad” devalues his wife’s turn-ons. He would rather perceive himself as a good man than know Romy as she ACTUALLY is: a woman who is more than just his wife and the mother of his children but a FULL PERSON who feels ashamed of her desire and therefor acquiesces to his.

Because of this, and regardless of how much control she has over every other aspect of her work/home/life, she navigates all-of-the-above with a primal weakness that exists as a ticking time bomb waiting to be set off by the first man who recognizes her hunger.

And not just any man. A man with the kind of sixth sense few men have — a kind of “BDE RIZ” that exists as a sort of cocktail of confidence, attentiveness and an awareness both of the self and the person he’s pursuing. A man who recognizes that a woman needs to be in her power in order to relinquish it. A man who presses his ear to the belly of the beast in order to hear the rumbling. A man who holds his focus long enough to see.

A man who… pays attention.

*A man who, mainly exists in the fairytales written and directed by women. Enter ‘Samuel.’

A few months ago, I wrote about this on Sex and the Single Mom. How a man’s reluctance to give a woman what she REALLY wants because he doesn’t want to “hurt”, “degrade” or “disrespect” her is a version of kink-shaming that we don’t have a word for. Madonna-whore shit.

It is also why so many women are sexually unsatisfied. Because men typically prioritize what they think women want over what a woman SAYS SHE WANTS. And women have mastered the art of “faking it until we make it.”

This, of course has been clouded by conversations of consent in a post #MeToo world, a conversation that no one seems to be willing to have because it’s paradoxical. Because men are afraid to be villainized and with good reason. Many men do not know/ trust themselves enough to understand the difference between CONSENSUAL power play and non-consensual power play. (CONSENT is just code for COMMUNICATION. And men (and women) absolutely SUCK at communication when it comes to sex. Beyond that, many women are ashamed of their desire to be degraded —especially women who pride themselves on being empowered, respected and revered in their work, households and relationships.

Romy’s husband isn’t a bad husband because his freak doesn’t match hers. And while plenty of women (and men) are willing to give up their freak in order to maintain a monogamous marriage with someone more… vanilla, there are also plenty of people who aren’t. And that reluctance to shelve one’s desire — specifically as a woman — is culturally scolded without question. (See how we try to therapize, diagnose, even PITY sexual women for being the wrong kind.)

I have never not been torn between two very different versions of myself. And much like Romy does in Babygirl, I have been in therapy on and off my entire life trying to get to the root of my sexual voraciousness/thirst for danger/defiance only to come to the conclusion that this is just how I’m wired. The darkness I desire is one of the reasons I separate my dating life from my domestic one. Because I often feel like my body belongs to two VERY different people. Because I am my own version of Madonna/Whore. Safe/Danger.

Women are expected to be the recipients of desire until we age out. Our desire is to be either deprioritized or dismantled by the weight of our own maternal exhaustion. (The amount of people who have made comments to me like, “how do you make time to date with four kids?” as if my sex life is expected to be a distant priority at best, a distraction at worst.)

After Romy confesses to her husband that he’s never made her come (only to take it back in a later scene) her husband tells her in passing that “she’s not normal.”

And in that moment — as soon as Romy’s desire is discredited, every woman who has EVER been mansplained her own longing, FEELS. IT.

It’s no wonder that moments later, when Samuel calls her “normal” the affair levels wayyyyyy up. He has, with two words, validated Romy’s desire in a way that her husband hasn’t for nineteen years. .

Suddenly, we are all Romy and we are as HUNGRY as she is for the affair that will soon follow.