A wise woman named Madonna once said, “A lot of people are afraid to say what they want. That’s why they don’t get what they want.” Advice that Romy Mathis (Nicole Kidman) in Babygirl could have used long ago. And indeed, in many ways, Madonna is all over Babygirl, like splooge decorating a stomach. Particularly late 80s/early 90s-era Madonna.
The most glaring example of this is, of course, the now infamous scene of Romy crawling on her knees as she laps up a bowl of milk like a cat. This scene further playing out the “milk kink” from earlier in the movie, wherein Samuel (Harris Dickinson) orders Romy a glass of the semen-reminiscent beverage and she defiantly chugs the whole thing to prove she’s game (indeed, writer-director Halina Reijn based this “hot” setup on something that actually happened to her with a younger man at a bar). And she becomes even more game to do what Samuel tells her as the narrative progresses, hence the willingness to get on all fours and drink milk like an obedient feline (something of an oxymoron). Obviously, this moment recalls what Madonna does in her 1989 video for “Express Yourself,” among her most iconic videos—and one that happens to be directed by none other than David Fincher.
In fact, it was Fincher, in all of his “cishet” male wisdom, who urged Madonna to play out the scene. Though, initially, Madonna really didn’t want to, finding it to be a trite cliché as she remarked, “It’s great but believe me I fought him on that. I didn’t want to do it. I thought it’s just so over the top and silly and kind of cliched, an art student or a film student’s kind of trick. I’m glad that I gave in to him.” Because, yes, the overall effect adds to the erotic nature of the video, with Madonna first licking from the bowl and then picking it up, emptying the milk onto her shoulder, letting it cascade down her back and then Fincher cutting to the liquid falling on Cameron Alborzian’s face—he being the “leading man” in this Metropolis-inspired fantasy. To be sure, the imagery is highly effective in getting across its blatant sexual innuendo. The same kind of tension, always brewing just to the surface throughout “Express Yourself,” is present in Babygirl. And many of the themes that Madonna has addressed throughout her career, particularly in this 1989 single from Like A Prayer, are present in Reijn’s film.
Most patently, the idea that if a person—more to the point, a woman—doesn’t speak her mind about her desires, about what she wants (sexually or otherwise), she’s not going to fulfill them. As Madonna put it in a 1989 article for Interview, “The ultimate thing behind the song is that if you don’t express yourself, if you don’t say what you want, then you’re not going to get it. And in effect you are chained down by your inability to say what you feel or go after what you want.” This referring to the chain she wears around her neck in the video. And it’s a metaphorical chain that Romy wears too…by constantly trying to “be normal” vis-à-vis her sexual proclivities. Especially as a woman in power who is “supposed to” want to dominate in bed rather than be dominated.
Of a moment in the film when Romy laments to her husband, Jacob (Antonio Banderas), “I just want to be normal… I want to be what you like,” Reijn comments, “The idea of, ‘I want to be what you like,’ is something everybody can relate to, because we all feel like aliens at times and want to do what is expected of us.” Madonna has always urged and encouraged women to defy these expectations, knowing full well that trying to repress yourself instead of express yourself never results in anything favorable. Hence, releasing another single in the spirit of “Express Yourself” from 1994’s Bedtime Stories called “Human Nature.” Among other lyrical gems besides, “I’m not your bitch/Don’t hang your shit on me,” Madonna also whisper-chants, “Express yourself, don’t repress yourself” for much of the song. It’s as though Romy hears Madonna’s rallying call as she finds herself uncontrollably drawn to this hot, confident intern who seems to have no fear of her the way others that work at her company do. In fact, it is his unbridled insolence that arouses her from the start.
And while things might be “nice”—saccharine even—in bed with Jacob, they don’t get her off. Instead, she’s given no choice but to supply her own orgasms via the kind of porn that appeals to her, the kind of porn where a woman is being told what to do. With the appearance of Samuel, she finally gets to fulfill her formerly wildest fantasies. But while she might be the one enjoying “subjugation” in the boudoir (a.k.a. the various hotel rooms and office nooks they find themselves in), Romy still has plenty of power over Samuel. For, as Madonna elaborated in the abovementioned Interview article, “No matter how in control you think are about sexuality in a relationship there is always the power struggle…always a certain amount of compromise. Of being beholden, if you love them [or even if not]. You do it because you choose to.” And both parties are consenting in their sub-dom dynamic, even if it takes a bit of time to get Romy fully on board because of how repressed she’s been for so long, therefore how “wrong” she thinks her desires must still be. By finally “giving herself permission” to be a “freak,” she achieves the first orgasm (with another person) she’s had in nineteen years—though it remains unclear if it’s the first proper orgasm she’s ever had with another man, or if her dry spell began solely after getting married to Jacob.
As for Jacob’s own narrow-minded assumptions about what could have possibly been arousing to Romy in the bedroom, he’s quickly corrected by Samuel himself, who illuminates the fact that Romy is the one who plays the sub. This in lieu of Jacob’s presumption that she’s getting off on dominating a younger man. In terms of his cliché (and false) beliefs about what a powerful woman like Romy would want, it bears repeating what Madonna said about the “Express Yourself” visuals: “No one put the chain around this neck but me. I wrote ‘Express Yourself’ to tell women around the world [to] pick and choose the best for yourself, before that chain around your neck kills you instead. It’s my take on how [if a] man can express what they want, the same prerogative should be there for a woman too.”
The public’s focus on Madonna chaining herself up in the video was, once again, a by-product of the misogynistic masses being hyper-literal. This much became apparent when Forrest Sawyer of ABC’s Nightline called her out for that particular scene. To which Madonna reminded, “There wasn’t a man that put that chain on me, I did it myself… I crawled under my own table, you know, there wasn’t a man standing there making me do it. I do everything by my own volition. I’m in charge, okay?” And that is a very important distinction to make. For while Romy might not seem in charge, both parties know she has the power to call the whole thing off whenever she feels like it. Indeed, there is a certain point in the movie when she does want that. Or at least pretends to—for, ultimately, her pullback feels like it’s all part of the game of cat and mouse they’ve been playing. Or, in this case, the game of man and “bitch” (read: dog). As for talk of cats, it’s worth mentioning that there’s a black one throughout the “Express Yourself” video, which is part of why Madonna chooses to emulate said cat during her milk-lapping moment. When asked what the meaning of the cat was, Madonna once again had to break down the obvious by quipping, “Pussy rules the world.”
Reijn wants to get that point across as well. In addition to highlighting how enduringly difficult it is for women to fathom the full extent of their power thanks to the ongoing repression in our society. At one point, it’s mentioned by Romy herself that she grew up in a cult/commune, and this little revelation about her upbringing is also key to her “horde mentality” when it comes to having the “right” ideas about things, sexual expression included. In certain respects, Madonna also grew up in a cult. The cult of a big Catholic family, and Catholicism itself. And it is this type of person who is conditioned believe that they must always go with the flow, never question anything—least of all patriarchy.
Needless to say, Madonna didn’t buy into that shit for very long. And eventually, this is the woman who would come up with the aphorism, “Poor is the man whose pleasures depend on the permission of another.” This from her 1990 single, “Justify My Love.” One of two new songs that would appear on her first greatest hits collection, The Immaculate Collection. “Rescue Me” was the other one—and it, too, has plenty of “Romy vibes.” For one can easily envision her silently communing with Samuel as she compliments, “I believe that you can rescue me/With you I’m not a little girl/With you I’m not a man/When all the hurt inside of me/Comes out, you understand/You see that I’m ferocious/You see that I am weak/You see that I am silly/And pretentious and a freak/But I don’t feel too strange for you/Don’t know exactly what you do.” In other words, she doesn’t know how this man has such a hold over her to make her feel so comfortable with herself. And it all starts with seeing him hypnotize, for all intents and purposes, a dog on the street. Which, resultantly, hypnotizes Romy, making her have fantasies of being subdued and told she’s a “good girl” in the same way.
While Sky Ferreira’s (appropriately, a woman who spent plenty of time in Madonna’s “skin” lately while auditioning to play her in her self-directed biopic) original composition for the film, “Leash” (underscoring the symbolism of the dog yet again), is a perfect cap to sum up the movie during the ending credits, one can’t help but think a Madonna track like “Express Yourself,” “Rescue Me,” “Erotica” or “Human Nature” would have worked quite effectively as well. For each song exudes the message that Reijn wants to get across about a woman’s sexual liberation—and the necessary letting go of fear in order to experience it. For Romy, that means embracing the inverse of certain lyrics from “Human Nature”: “I am your bitch/Please hang your shit on me.”
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