In an enormous win for Large Dairy, Nicole Kidman has simply declared that she “actually like[s] milk.” The remark was made throughout a current press interview for Babygirl, the upcoming erotic thriller from writer-director Halina Reijn (who additionally directed Our bodies, Our bodies, Our bodies) by which Kidman’s character, a high-powered CEO named Romy, submissively chugs a glass of cow milk from her intern-turned-dom, Samuel (Harris Dickinson). It’s one in every of two outstandingly milky moments within the movie, each of which stand a tier above the remainder of its erotic moments — above the grunting, the ground humping, and even the moonlit pool makeouts — as a result of it does one thing for milk that I really feel has been lengthy overdue. In gentle of what appears like an ongoing, polarizing dairy discourse in American tradition, Babygirl shifts the highlight away from, say, the alarming rhetoric of RFK Jr. and conservative milk guzzlers. As a substitute, Babygirl pours its milk on the ground, licks it up on all fours, and reclaims it for a kinky nook that feels sizzling, playful, and free.
As Eater senior reporter Bettina Malinkintal writes, heated conversations round milk have been effervescent for just a few years now. Dairy consumption within the U.S. has elevated in tandem with a repackaged, pastoral-pining model of conservatism round which soy boys, sigmas, and tradwives orbit — and it appears like the reply to “acquired milk?” has turn into a barometer for the place one stands amongst the controversy.
Babygirl, nonetheless, invitations us into a special component of milk discourse. The movie attracts on the lengthy historical past of the Madonna-Whore Complicated, by which milk can turn into an agent of holiness or sexual fantasy; there’s a milk-dedicated Catholic chapel within the West Financial institution, in spite of everything, because it was supposedly there that Mary’s breast milk spilled whereas nursing Jesus, turning the chapel from a muddy purple to a pure white. Contrastingly, some prime Google search outcomes for “milk fetish” yield a crop of not simply blushing, however involved Reddit questions equivalent to, “Do I dump my BF over his milk fetish?” and “Is it bizarre my BF has a breastmilk fetish?”
There isn’t any nursing in Babygirl, however every character is looking for their very own model of nurturing. Romy seeks an understanding, and feeding of her personal erotic needs. Samuel, as steely as he will be, does ask Romy to twist up and maintain him in one in every of their much less guarded scenes. She is his babygirl. However, generally, even he must be babyboy. And don’t all of us?
Milk turns into the pair’s first sexual chess piece. It’s clear that Romy — like so many high-powered CEOs — goals of being dommed, however struggles to initially quit the reins. One evening, Samuel anonymously sends her a glass of milk throughout an organization cocktail hour. She debates ingesting it (“What is that?” her coworkers ask with disgust). Then, she does so voraciously (which wins her a “good woman” from Samuel). It’s the form of habits that breaks from her in any other case socially palatable, actually robotic world (her firm builds Amazon warehouse-esque robots). As soon as the affair is in full bloom, there’s a way more tender scene by which Romy laps up milk from a dish on the ground of a lodge room like an animal, mid-foreplay, whereas Samuel proceeds to lick it off her face. It’s one in every of her most intimate erotic highs of the movie, and likewise one in every of her most susceptible.
Water performs an inverse position within the movie. It’s not used to prod Romy’s arousal, however carry her — and everybody within the wake of her dalliances — away from play and vulnerability, and again to a state of order and self-perceived goodness. Glasses of sobering water are distinctly current throughout a confrontational scene with Romy’s intern, Esme (Sophie Wilde), in addition to together with her amiable, sizzling, however erotically boring husband, who we’re additionally informed has picked up a Bible for respite throughout all of this.
To observe Babygirl is to partake in an endless, clandestine parade of sexy tropes that one way or the other discover new life within the arms of the movie’s wonderful solid and script — and particularly throughout the heat, looming presence of milk. It feels truthful to say that, right here, dairy shouldn’t be a one-note emblem for the far proper, and even some nuclear household perfect. It turns into sizzling and free; candy and deviant. It leans into its multitudes with a wink. And in 2025, I hope we will, too.
Extra picture illustration credit: All images through Getty Photographs
