{"id":616935,"date":"2023-03-11T07:30:00","date_gmt":"2023-03-11T13:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.sellorbuyhomefast.com\/index.php\/2023\/03\/11\/netflixs-sex-life-is-a-steamy-celebration-of-the-post-baby-body\/"},"modified":"2023-03-11T07:30:00","modified_gmt":"2023-03-11T13:30:00","slug":"netflixs-sex-life-is-a-steamy-celebration-of-the-post-baby-body","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2023\/03\/11\/netflixs-sex-life-is-a-steamy-celebration-of-the-post-baby-body\/","title":{"rendered":"Netflix\u2019s \u2018Sex\/Life\u2019 Is a Steamy Celebration of the Post-Baby Body"},"content":{"rendered":"
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There\u2019s a scene in the current season of Sex\/Life<\/em> that set my group chat alight. Actually there are lots of scenes in Sex\/Life<\/em> setting my group chat alight, but\u2014as my friends and I made our way through the second season of the ridiculously steamy Netflix show which spotlights female desire\u2014one of us posted, with euphoria of a different kind, about a kitchen moment in Episode 2.<\/p>\n

Billie, the show\u2019s protagonist and a mum of two who is having and instigating great sex, stands naked but for her underwear on a second date. The actress who plays her, 43-year-old Sarah Shahi, a mum of three, looks hot as hell as her new love interest traces his finger down her stomach, touching her crinkled skin and passing the stretch marks that she picked up from having twins in real life.<\/p>\n

My friend messaged on WhatsApp: \u201cThis woman is \u2018of an age\u2019 and her body is obviously one that has had children and she is not perfect but still full on naked and stunning with these amazing flaws.\u201d We\u2019re all in our 30s or 40s and we\u2019ve all had kids.<\/p>\n

\u201cHonestly made me look at my own rapidly descending boobs and I\u2019m ok with it,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

\u201cTotes agree,\u201d said another. \u201cI loved this too,\u201d chimed a third.<\/p>\n

To show the telltale signs of motherhood through the lens of what is sexy is still so rare, on screen, as to be a talking point. Like model and mother Ashley Graham, who has celebrated her stretch marks in photo shoots, or Kourtney Kardashian, another mother of three, who bats away Instagram followers asking if she\u2019s pregnant every time the shape of her perfectly normal and healthy stomach is on display, Shahi is pushing the envelope in a Hollywood that still, typically, asks its actresses to erase or hide the physical transformations that stem from pregnancy. In doing so, studios send a message, with the rest of society, that these are flaws, undesirable, especially where sex is concerned. That is not the case here.<\/p>\n

Shahi tells me over the phone, from LA: \u201cWith aging comes embracing who you are and what you look like, particularly those reminders of motherhood. For years after I had my twins I didn\u2019t appreciate those parts of myself and tried to hide them. It\u2019s been a long journey to loving my body.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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She credits the part of Billie, a mother who does not curb her desire yet bears her vulnerabilities, with helping that acceptance, including the \u201cno-brainer\u201d decision to allow the camera to close in on her own so-called imperfections: \u201cWhen I played younger Billie, in Season 1, we had to cover some of those mom parts; in the present it\u2019s really been a conscious decision not to. The beauty of this show is that it shows us you can be the Madonna and<\/em> the whore. If the \u2018price\u2019 of creating my children is a bit of excess skin or a few stretch marks, I\u2019d feel very superficial saying I felt uncomfortable in my body because of that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her natural post-baby boobs were the talk of the group chat too. Shahi knows that baring them in sex scenes marks another departure from Hollywood\u2019s idea of sexy (read: not boobs that have nursed babies): \u201cI don\u2019t want to just see perfect, perky tits,\u201d she says. \u201cIt was important to show natural, relatable boobs.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Shahi\u2019s frame is tiny and, to many, enviable. But as my friend said when we picked up again on WhatsApp: \u201cI wasn\u2019t looking at how thin or not she was and I\u2019m not saying her body type is how we should all look after a baby but I loved seeing a woman on screen, naked, and having sex who clearly had [given birth].\u201d<\/p>\n

Those markers of carrying children are the same irreversible changes that are etched on to the bodies of women of every single size\u2014slim, curvy, plus\u2014once we become mothers. They fuel the same insecurities in all of us who have been fed societal, male-held messages that our sex appeal diminishes as a result of them, so, to see them decisively on display, on a top-streamed show about desire, reminds us that, actually, yes, women\u2019s bodies are still sexy AF after we become mothers.<\/p>\n

Sex\/Life<\/em> creator, Stacy Rukeyser, remembers writing the kitchen scene: \u201cI knew we wanted to make a story point of Billie feeling insecure to show her body, in all its allegedly \u2018imperfect\u2019 glory, to a new man after having kids, but I didn\u2019t know if Sarah would go for it and let herself be vulnerable in that way\u2014especially in today\u2019s Hollywood. When I described what we wanted to do, she gave an enthusiastic yes, immediately understanding the important statement we would be making.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Rukeyser adds: \u201cIt\u2019s been a rallying cry for us, that it is possible to be a wife and mom\u2014and a ravenous sex goddess\u2014all at the same time.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the BBC iPlayer documentary Sex on Screen,<\/em> which traces the evolution of women baring all on screen, Rukeyser explains how radical it remains to see a mother want and enjoy sex, let alone be appreciated for her body and bearing children.<\/p>\n

The film\u2019s director, Kristy Guevara-Flanagan, associate professor at UCLA\u2019s School of Theater, Film and Television, puts it in context. She says: \u201cIt is refreshing to see women who have clearly borne children on display and seen as sexy and desirable. I love that, seeing the landscape of scars that are imprinted on [Shahi\u2019s] body and that she\u2019s still hot and sexy and also has desire, the way she looks at the man as he unzips her. Both of those things are still, simultaneously, fairly radical for mainstream film and television to this day.\u201d<\/p>\n

As we know, what we see on screen replicates and shapes what we experience off it. \u201cThe more we limit who gets to be sexy and by what standards, the worse women feel about themselves when they don\u2019t meet those metrics and the more straight men think that\u2019s the only way women can be sexy. If we don\u2019t see ourselves with our flaws, with the realism that comes with a lived life, it\u2019s hard to see ourselves as beautiful and desirable,\u201d says Guevara-Flanagan, of mothers. And on portrayals like Sex\/Life<\/em>? \u201cI wish we had more of it.\u201d The group chat agrees.<\/p>\n

<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Read More<\/a>
\n Deborah Linton<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s a scene in the current season of Sex\/Life that set my group chat alight. Actually there are lots of scenes in Sex\/Life setting my group chat alight, but\u2014as my friends and I made our way through the second season of the ridiculously steamy Netflix show which spotlights female desire\u2014one of us posted, with euphoria […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":616936,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[94491,534,398],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-616935","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sex","8":"category-financial","9":"category-netflixs"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616935","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=616935"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616935\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/616936"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=616935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=616935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=616935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}