Everything Netflix’s Sex/Life show gets wrong about female sexuality
Sex/Life is a show on Netflix that is said to centre women’s sexuality and female desire.
The first season was shown in 2021 and now the second season has just landed.
On Sunday night I braced myself for another cringe-inducing cheese fest and settled in to watch the first few episodes.
I want so badly to be able to offer a balanced review on this but I can’t.
So let’s cut to it - here’s everything the Sex/Life Netflix show gets WRONG about female sexuality.
*Spoiler Alert*
Let’s start with the entire premise of the show. Our main gal is happily married to the most amazing man with two small children, yet they are having mediocre sex because your gal is obsessing over her bad boy ex with whom she had amazing, steamy sex AND a toxic relationship.
Sex/Life romantices toxicity and harmful narratives. Main gal and bad boy ex’s relationship highly romanticised. They are pitted as long lost lovers, the ‘ones that got away’, the best sex ever… but it’s fucking harmful and abusive! The “bad boy” narrative is old and immature and for a show that is supposed to be revolutionary in female sexuality, this is disappointing - sloppy at best, dangerous at worst. Women deserve great sex with great people - show us that!
There’s very little representation of foreplay. Now, I know that shows don’t tend to be long enough to display the amount of foreplay that is needed for a woman’s body to open up and become fully aroused BUT, Sex/Life doesn’t really do anything differently in terms of portraying sex than any other show. There’s some fingering, oral sex and, of course, penetration. Desire, in this instance, is largely genital focussed and goal orientated. This is not how most female bodies work.
The women are seen orgasming, fantastically, through penetration alone. The stats show that around 80% of women don’t orgasm from penetration alone. So, for a show that is supposed to represent female desire, but consistently puts penetration at the forefront of female orgasm, is actually doing women a disservice and just continues to cement the notion that this is how it should be, and those who don’t experience orgasm in this way are the anomaly - which couldn’t be further from the truth.
All the characters in the show look like models and conform to high level and unrealistic euro-centric beauty standards. Now, I love a typically beautiful queen and can appreciate a handsome man but these guys are literally perfect, chiselled from stone, with not a wrinkle or a crease or hair out of place. They all look like they stepped out of love island and it’s unrealistic and unrelatable. A huge issue we have in women’s sexuality is around body and image issues and sexy being sold to us as perfection. I don’t know about you, but I’m so done with everything that plays into this idea that sex is for “hot” people. It’s a massive let down on the part of the producers.
And finally, on a personal note - I didn’t actually find any of the sex scenes arousing. They were obvious, cliche, hard to connect with and cheesy AF. It’s a difficult watch at times because it is so cringe worthy… (I’m still gonna finish the season though)
In 2023 with shows like Sex/Life being pitched as the representation of women’s sexuality, you know we still have far to go.
And this is why we need to keep learning about sex, understanding our own pleasure and empowering ourselves through self exploration and realistic expression of female sexuality.
And this is why we need women to support, teach and guide us there.
If you’re feeling called to make a change and be part of the evolution and revolution then I’m running the FEMALE SEXUALITY PRACTITIONER TRAINING - a 6 month deep dive to equip you with the knowledge, wisdom, tools and confidence to guide women into their sexual empowerment.
