Ladies First isn’t a good film. That’s not the point.

So I made myself a cup of tea, put my feet up, and watched the new Sacha Baron Cohen film on Netflix. Ladies First. I’d already seen the reviews:

And look. They’re not entirely wrong. It’s clumsy. Half the jokes don’t land. The premise is older than I am: arrogant man bonks his head, wakes up in a world run by women, learns his lesson, gets the girl. We’ve seen it a hundred times. What Women Want. Scrooge and his three ghosts. Mel Gibson in a bath being psychic about pantyhose. Hollywood loves teaching one man a lesson while the rest of us take notes we’ve been taking our whole lives.

So yes. As a film, it’s a bit of a dud. Yet, I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

In this flipped world, our man Damien gets talked over in meetings. He gets touched without asking. He gets told to smile. He’s the one being looked at, summed up, dismissed, propositioned by his boss, and quietly passed over while a less capable woman gets his promotion. He gets sexualised. He gets told his only move was pretty looks and a hairless body. 

And he is outraged. How dare they. Does nobody see how exhausting this is. Does nobody see him.

Sir, we’ve been seeing it for centuries. 

And the thing that annoyed me the most was the reviews. Men calling it exaggerated. Overblown. A bit much. The exact same word, every time. Exaggerated.

So let me say this.

Take every “small” thing. The interrupting. The explaining of your own knowledge back to you. The hand on the lower back you didn’t ask for. The “you’d be prettier if you smiled.” The deciding what you’ll have for dinner, where the holiday is, when you’re being “emotional.” On its own, each one is nothing. A nothing. You’d sound mad complaining about any single one. Calm down, it was just a comment.

Now stack them. Put all of it on one body, in one day, the way the film does. And watch it stop being comedy and start looking like a documentary. That’s the whole trick of the movie, and it’s the whole trick of being a woman. Separate the moments and we’re “too sensitive.” Pile them up and even Netflix can sell it as absurdist horror.

Funny, that.

The men say we exaggerate. But do we? When you finally see it grouped together, all in one frame, it isn’t shrill. It’s just accurate. It’s a Tuesday. Ours.

And before someone slides into my comments to tell me “not all men” and “those are stereotypes,” let me save you the typing. Yes. There are stereotypes in it. Broad ones. But here’s what people conveniently forget about stereotypes. They don’t appear out of nowhere. A behaviour has to be common enough, repeated enough, recognisable enough across millions of women’s lives to earn itself a name. That’s a pattern. You don’t get a stereotype out of a one-off.

So no, gentlemen, I’m not exaggerating. I’ve just had the receipts the whole time, and someone finally put them on screen.

Here’s the part the film doesn’t have time for, but I do.

What it actually costs us isn’t the big dramatic moments. It’s the management. The constant, low-grade, unpaid work of handling everyone else’s feelings. Reading the room so he doesn’t have to. Softening yourself so you’re palatable. Performing ease when you’re knackered. Being grateful for the bare minimum and calling it a good marriage. Most women I speak to aren’t angry about one terrible man. They’re tired from a lifetime of being the one who manages. Who anticipates. Who makes it nice for everybody else and gets the cold side of the bed for her trouble.

A lot of these women are accomplished. Wealthy. Run companies, run households, run rings around the men who underestimate them. And they still walk into a room and instinctively start doing the emotional labour. Old habit. Hard to break.

Which, since you asked, is exactly why I built what I built.

Her Confidant is Australia’s female-led companionship agency for women. I founded it because I got sick of watching brilliant women give and give and give, and never once get to be the one who receives. We offer discreet, intentional, emotionally intelligent companionship with men who are screened to within an inch of their lives. Men who show up calm, present, attentive, and entirely focused on her. No managing. No performing. No reading the room. No doing the work.

Imagine that for a second. A man whose only job is your pleasure and your comfort. Who’s regulated, so you don’t have to be. Who doesn’t need you to make it nice. Who lets you put your feet up and receive, possibly for the first time in years.

That’s not a fantasy from a Netflix script. That’s your next Saturday evening, if you let it be.

The film flips the table for a cheap laugh and then, like every one of these stories, tidies it all back up by the credits so everyone can relax. Order restored. Lesson learned. Off we go.

I’m less interested in tidying it back up.

Watch the movie if you want. Laugh at the bad bits, there are plenty. But notice what it’s actually showing you under the slapstick. And then ask yourself the only question that matters.

If it looks that ridiculous when it’s happening to him, what does it say that it’s just been normal life for you?

Flip the table. Then leave it flipped.

There, I said it.

x Anna

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Anna Grosman is the founder of Her Confidant, Australia’s only female-led companionship agency specialising in elite male escorts for women. Her Confidant offers intentional intimate experiences across Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, and the Gold Coast.