‘Sex/Life’ Is a Steamy Celebration of the Post-Baby Body

There’s 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—as my friends and I made our way through the second season of the ridiculously steamy Netflix show which spotlights female desire—one of us posted, with euphoria of a different kind, about a kitchen moment in Episode 2.

Billie, the show’s 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.

My friend messaged on WhatsApp: “This woman is ‘of an age’ 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.” We’re all in our 30s or 40s and we’ve all had kids.

“Honestly made me look at my own rapidly descending boobs and I’m ok with it,” she added.

“Totes agree,” said another. “I loved this too,” chimed a third.

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’s 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.

Shahi tells me over the phone, from LA: “With 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’t appreciate those parts of myself and tried to hide them. It’s been a long journey to loving my body.”