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 looks 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 a number of 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 looks like the reply to “bought milk?” has turn out to be a barometer for the place one stands amongst the controversy.
Babygirl, nonetheless, invitations us into a distinct aspect of milk discourse. The movie attracts on the lengthy historical past of the Madonna-Whore Advanced, by which milk can turn out to be 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 crimson to a pure white. Contrastingly, some high Google search outcomes for “milk fetish” yield a crop of not simply blushing, however involved Reddit questions similar to, “Do I dump my BF over his milk fetish?” and “Is it bizarre my BF has a breastmilk fetish?”
There isn’t a nursing in Babygirl, however every character is searching for their very own model of nurturing. Romy seeks an understanding, and feeding of her personal erotic wishes. Samuel, as steely as he might 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 — desires of being dommed, however struggles to initially surrender 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 lady” from Samuel). It’s the kind 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 much more tender scene by which Romy laps up milk from a dish on the ground of a resort 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 weak.
Water performs an inverse position within the movie. It isn’t used to prod Romy’s arousal, however deliver 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 uninteresting husband, who we’re additionally advised has picked up a Bible for respite throughout all of this.
To look at Babygirl is to partake in an endless, clandestine parade of attractive tropes that by some means discover new life within the fingers of the movie’s glorious forged and script — and particularly inside the heat, looming presence of milk. It feels honest to say that, right here, dairy just isn’t a one-note emblem for the far proper, and even some nuclear household ideally suited. It turns into sizzling and unfastened; candy and deviant. It leans into its multitudes with a wink. And in 2025, I hope we are able to, too.
Extra photograph illustration credit: All images by way of Getty Pictures