Good girls loved Babygirl

Feminism did one thing right

Terry McMillan published How Stella Got Her Groove Back two years after I was born. The book follows Stella, a successful 42-year-old woman who flies to Jamaica to escape burnout and fall in love with a 21-year-old.

Power-hungry millennial libfems were still toddlers in diapers then, being raised by mothers who came of age when a Newsweek cover declared that single women over 40 had a better chance of being blown up by a terrorist than getting married. Women who love sex as much as they love power have been trying to make older women hot for a very long time now. It is entirely within my interest that they succeed.

Alas, it hasn't always worked. I read a lot of truly lukewarm blogs and articles from the 90s trying to find older women expressing a desire for younger men in the deprived, intense way my Bukowsi-brained teenage self craved. They all desperately try to convince of the appeal of older women, rather than the topic I am most interested in exploring: the appeal of young men. I have never read Bukowski trying to convince his reader he is worthy of a fuck, he knew he was entirely unworthy of the creatures he took to bed. He immortalised them for us nonetheless.

Lust cannot be taught or compelled. This is why I am so thankful that at least one major publication, the Economist, has written critically about the morality of Babygirl. The wise author said women’s liberation does not mean having the right to be as bad as men. Someone had to say it, or else the overwhelming embrace of this film would make it lose its kick.

Some reminded us that looksmaxing is vain and bad. One NYT commenter noted:

I have a hard time with a 57-year-old who looks 25. Talking about vulnerability and honesty seems ridiculous. This is true with Demi Moore also. They do these movies about sexuality to prove to the world they are still young and beautiful. Maybe they don't say so, but that has to be a part of it. It takes lots and lots of money to look as perfect as she does at her age. Even if she is genetically predisposed to look younger than her biological age, no one has zero aging at 57 without a lot of help from many kinds of specialists. Being vulnerable on screen might mean something different to her and to the audience if she looked like someone who is nearing 60.

These are all valid points, which I am very happy to ignore in my enjoyment of this film. Babygirl is not about a woman in her 50s being vulnerable; despite Kidman gifting us a supremely exposing performance. It is about her assuming complete power. Indulging your sexuality demands extreme power.

Halina Reijn did not want to punish Romy for her sexuality. This is why Romy is not destroyed by her affair. She gets to have an affair with her intern and get away with it because important blocks are in place: 1) her husband is devoted to her, 2) the intern is attracted to her, 3) she is rich and important, 4) she is attractive. If we replaced these with ‘vulnerability’, i.e. a Romy that is uglier, poorer, less desired and supported, as the commenter demanded to elevate the performance, then what’s left is not a Hollywood film but R-rated reality tv.

Babygirl is a fantasy. Even in reality, the rare women at the level of the CEO Romy embodies are not vulnerable. They are hyper-competitive, and that expands to intra-sexual competition. If you think I am ever going to stop chugging protein shakes and paying a bag of cash to a lycra-clad homosexual to scream at me to squeeze my glutes, in the name of FEMINISM, you have misunderstood the nature of the type of women who are the most driven to advance it.

How can we explore women’s sexuality if women are not allowed to be immature and mean? Romy is not a male fantasy. She is a female fantasy. Men don’t dream of women climbing the corporate ladder while maintaining a stomach like a tic tac toe board till their late 50s. What would you have her do, go to a Shibari workshop in Bushwick and an ayahuasca trip in Peru to then tell her tame dad-bod man she consents to a slap on her bony backside?

The sisterhood wants to watch a botoxed 50-something-year-old ice queen with an eating disorder being bossed around by her ripped, chavvy intern while still being adored by her salt-of-the-earth husband and forgiven by her woke daughters because that’s who the sisterhood always aspired to be.

The acting and casting is impeccable. All the characters are beautifully written. The teddy bear husband, the power-hungry zillennial libfem assistant who blackmails Romy for a promotion, and the gender non-binary daughter who forgives her for cheating on her dad because she too cheated on her girlfriend and understands the asshole gene that runs through their veins.

Samuel’s is my preferred expression of masculinity. He responds to what Romy means, not what she says. When Romy comes to the dodgy hotel room he booked for their first encounter dressed like, well, a CEO going on a date, he shows up in a hoodie, white vest and a chain around his neck holding a plastic bag with tinies. Romy claims she only came to tell him they need to end this, but he picks up on the desperation in her voice. She wants him to do what he said he knows she wants: to be told what to do. He tells her to go down on her knees. She makes a half attempt to refuse. He repeats himself. He tells her to stand in the corner. She does it and looks silly like all powerful women do when we give in to our boy toys.

The masculinity in this behaviour is not in the ‘command’ but in the act of trying to figure out how to push her buttons. It is an act of service. He is not loving every second of this. Trying to turn a woman on is a hard graft. Most men are lazy when they try to pick girls; this is why they fail. This scene is the sexual equivalent of him bringing his tools to her house to fix the plumbing.

In my favourite scene, we see them at a company party. She is sitting at the ‘adults table’ with other executives, and he is mingling with the other interns near the dancing floor. She sees him flirt with a girl his age and burns inside. The waiter brings her a glass of milk that he ordered for her. The other execs are shocked, but our pet knows better than to send it back. She downs the pint like a fresher auditioning for rugby captain. On his way out, he says the two most harrowing words in the English vocabulary.

Good girl.

In the wrong mouth, these words make women wretch.

From the right person; it’s a complete Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs pyramid.

Pop culture loves May-December relationships at the moment, not least because more older women are making movies. They have fantasies and life experiences that map onto these stories. You all complain that feminism ruined art, but this is a great example of how it has enhanced it by letting grasping, ageing Alpha girls get their hands on the resources to please an audience of their equals. Older male directors never entertained characters like Romy or wanted to accept that men like Samuel exist.

I don’t care about the data showing that women only want older men and men only want younger women. These are outdated. Run the surveys again.

We will be getting more of this kind of story- not least because I am getting older.