The ‘Insatiable Cunt’: Female Orgasms in “Babygirl” and a Lack Thereof Everywhere Else by Alicia Steinmann

Spoilers ahead for Halina Reijn’s “Babygirl” and Alfonso Cuarón’s “Y Tu Mamá También”

I had my first orgasm induced by a partner, for the very first time, just a few months ago. When I saw “Babygirl”, directed by Halina Reijn in theatres, I had not yet had that experience. Sex before had been a pleasurable, albeit fixed, event. Now, to clarify, I don’t believe orgasm is an indicator for “good sex”- in fact, I have no interest in telling you what I think “good sex” is, for there is no such thing as a universally sexually satisfying experience. However, I do want to explain how watching “Babygirl” made me feel in relation to my own sexuality. 

Nicole Kidman stars as Romy, a successful CEO and sexually stifled woman. Married to her husband Jacob (Antonio Banderas) for 19 years, the film follows Romy’s torrid affair with a young intern at her company, Samuel (Harris Dickinson). The film opens with Romy and Jacob having sex, where she feigns orgasms with understated moans and gasps, then immediately watches pornography and masturbates to satisfy herself once Jacob falls asleep. Reijn highlights the differences between Romy’s fake and legitimate orgasms- one copied from pornography or other forms of media, where a woman finishes delicately and seductively, the other instinctual and almost animalistic. Romy shakes, grunts, and bites her own knuckle to keep from screaming. 

Reijn decides to spotlight the all too mysterious female orgasm. Why is the media so afraid of displaying a realistic female orgasm? Why is it considered taboo, and why did some audiences deem “Babygirl” gross because of it? To answer these questions, I turn to Naomi Wolfe’s “The Beauty Myth, and her definition of the ‘insatiable cunt’. 

Capable of multiple orgasm, continual orgasm, a sharp and breathtaking clitoral orgasm, an orgasm seemingly centered in the vagina that is emotionally overwhelming, orgasm from having the breasts stroked, and of endless variations of all those responses combined, women’s capacity for genital pleasure is theoretically inexhaustible. (Wolfe, 132)

So, if the female anatomy is as insatiable as we know it is, why are we still only exposing one kind of “sex” for women in the media? I think in many ways, the media is afraid of the ‘insatiable cunt’ and what acknowledging it would do for sex in relation to art. Reijn, however, is unafraid and shows a different side to female sexuality in “Babygirl”- a side that the male gaze is wholly unprepared for and unaware of. I remember talking to my male friend about the film after he saw it, and he said he didn’t ‘get’ it. His not getting it came as no surprise to me because I don’t know if “Babygirl” is really for him. Just like I don’t think “Taxi Driver” or “Fight Club” is really for me, but rather for those who enjoy seeing the brutal imaginings of male loneliness. 

I came out of “Babygirl” with a different sense of my sexual capabilities. It made me wonder if I was capable of having an orgasm, and maybe I just didn’t know what I wanted. Or, (and this thought scared me more), perhaps I knew exactly what I needed and had always been afraid to ask for it. 

Romy goes through this process too —she knows what she wants from her husband, but when she tells him, it makes him feel uncomfortable; it makes him “feel like a villain”. So, she finds Samuel, who fulfills her needs. Though their relationship is complicated, Samuel forces Romy to confront her own shame intertwined with her sexuality. When she tries to explain to her husband what she wants, her shame overtakes her, and she says, “I wanna be normal. I wanna be what you like.” 

Romy’s pursuit of normality makes her inauthentic with her husband and the world. Through Samuel, she builds the courage to admit to Jacob that, “I told you that I was someone else, and I got angry because you didn’t know who I really was.” Romy’s fear and shame of her desires inhibit her from expressing her needs until Samuel makes her feel like she can ask for what she wants. In a somewhat fantastical ending, Romy and Jacob repair their relationship, and the film closes with Jacob pleasuring Romy the way she had done to herself when masturbating, and how Samuel had pleasured her before, resulting in her first genuine orgasm with her husband. She grunts and huffs just as she did when she pleasured herself, and when Samuel pleasured her. 

This ending made me wonder how many women have lived unfulfilled sexual lives in the spirit of trying to be “normal”. Seeing a woman on screen get what she wants and ultimately move away from shame and towards pleasure was a gratifying experience for me as a viewer.  I, too, had been frustrated in the past when I felt like I wasn’t getting what I needed out of sex, but had also been too embarrassed to correct. Instead, fulfilling the norm of expressing pleasure through male-perscribed sexual behavior (soft moaning, light breathing, saying “I’m coming” when in reality I was definitely not) was easier. Seeing “Babygirl” made me feel empowered in some way. Maybe what I want isn’t as terrible and shameful as I think it is. And perhaps if I’d have seen something like “Babygirl” in the past when I was in a deep place of sexual shame, I might’ve gotten closer to discovering my own sexual worth and power. 

Alfonso Cuarón’s “Y Tu Mamá También” is also a film centered around sex, and highlights the discrepancies between male and female sexuality as displayed in the media. “También” follows two post-high-school, pre-college, ultra sexually voracious boys and their beach road trip with an elusive older Spanish woman, Luisa (Mirabel Verdú). Diego Luna and Gael García Bernal star as Tenoch and Julio, respectively, who together create their “Charolastra Manifesto”. The term “charolastra” is Mexican slang for “space cowboy,” and in the film's world, it encapsulates the boys’ bond. Some of the manifesto’s rules include “Truth is cool, but unattainable”, “Do whatever you feel like,” and “You shall not screw another Charolastra’s girl.” The boys, in fact, do whatever they like, whenever they want. Both have sex with Luisa, then get angry at each other for it. They both admit to having slept with each other’s girlfriends in a particularly heated argument, and Julio adds that he even slept with Tenoch’s mother. These boys explore their sexuality in every way possible. Yet, shame never seems to be an aspect that they need to explore. Their male sexual needs, ultimately, aren’t tainted with shame and mystery the way women are. And in comparison to Romy, the world encourages these boys to explore, to ‘be boys’, while Romy runs the risk of losing every aspect of success in her life (her marriage, children, career) in the pursuit of complete sexual satisfaction. 

Cuarón even highlights this idea in the film’s cinematography. A particular shot includes the two boys masturbating on pool diving boards next to each other, with a cutaway to their semen entering the water below. This specific shot stuck with me after seeing the film for the first time a few years ago. How is it that a movie from 2001 can showcase something like this, but women haven’t seen many different variations of orgasms on film until 2024? “También” and countless other pieces of media display the male orgasm as quotidian, easy, and rewarding. However, films so rarely display the female, and if it is, she’s magically coming at the same time as her partner in a highly vocal, simultaneous, mutual orgasm. That's why “Babygirl” to me felt so fresh. If I can watch a film and see a man fully nude and his ejaculation, then it doesn’t seem unbelievable to me that I should see a comparable level of sexuality from female characters. The more the media and society shroud female sexuality, the more shame we attribute to it, and ultimately, the more women won’t feel empowered by their sexuality to get what they want and feel complete pleasure. 

“Babygirl,” in some ways, is ‘cringey’ as some audience members say —some of the scenes and dialogue are awkward and unrealistic. Furthermore, it also implies that for a woman to feel complete sexual gratification and satisfaction, she must commit adultery to do so. It’s thanks to Samuel that Romy feels sexually free enough to open up to Jacob about her sexuality eventually. However, does this imply that women need to be immoral to be satisfied? Doesn’t that just further perpetuate the stereotype that female sexuality is inherently sinful and shameful? Or, does it point to male fragility as the instigator for female immorality? These questions also make me wonder what male audiences take away after seeing “Babygirl”. In my friend’s case, there was confusion about why a woman would want a man to treat her the way Romy wants Samuel to treat her. It was almost as if he couldn’t comprehend that women, like all people on earth, have different tastes (and maybe some of them want to experience sex the way they fantasize about it, instead of subscribing to patriarchal stereotypes about sex that ultimately leave many women unsatisfied). He remembers “Babygirl” for showing him something he didn't understand, and that lack of understanding could be an indicator as to why he didn’t enjoy the movie. Perhaps it pointed too strongly to an aspect of female sexuality that made him feel like pleasuring women is even further away than men already think. If men, too, see a woman’s adultery as a contributor to her sexual fulfillment, then how can men feel like they’d be capable of giving a woman everything she needs before she feels the need to turn to other sources? “Babygirl” points out the ego-fragility of male sexuality versus the secret shame of female sexuality, ultimately making both partners unhappy without complete communication about an often ‘taboo’ topic. But with more films like this that display female pleasure in a way that I’d never seen before- raw, hungry, instinctual, animal, all-consuming, maybe conversations between people about their desires and fantasies don’t have to feel so far away. I hope to see more films that display female sexuality the way Cuarón does in “También” too: as a natural urge worth exploring as much as we want. And I hope to see more female directors and writers take on this topic, so I can see an orgasm on film that actually seems like one I’d be capable of having.