Who are you forcing yourself to be?

Babygirl (2024) is about the desire for honest, unapologetic, babylike wanting. + recommendations

When we’re tired, we want to be a baby again—not literally, but we want to feel that unapologetic joy of wanting without permission, like a baby selfishly putting her hunger first, seeking a nipple, unbothered by who’s watching.

But desires get tempered by expectations and standards, and rightly so, or chaos would reign. But where do those forbidden desires go, the ones that don’t fit who we tell ourselves we’re supposed to be?

Babygirl isn’t about temptation, betrayal, or rebellion. It’s about desire in the purest sense—that infantile state of wanting, unburdened by duty.

Romy’s lifestyle is created through self-flagellating optimization, and what she really wants is to be free from that muzzle of image-obsession. It’s one thing to desire something forbidden and accept that you can’t act on it; it’s another to bullshit yourself about not having those desires at all, to waterboard yourself until you feel purified, to slap some duct tape on the crying, hungry mouth of your desperate appe…