by Reena Daruwalla, guest writer for Nancy Hayssen.com

Do you know who the sexiest woman alive is? A 42 year old new mom! That’s right Halle Berry is all those things and then some! And she has been voted the Sexiest Woman Alive by the influential men’s magazine Esquire.

Well that’s quite a switch from what is generally perceived as ‘sexy’, and certainly a lot of us 30 somethings, 40 somethings and indeed 50, 60 and 70 somethings can take heart from this fact which I feel seems to display a new maturity of perception. No longer do you have to be blond, skinny and seventeen to be considered sexy, you can be (as we have been shouting from the rooftops for so long) be sexy at any size, age, color!

I have always thought that Halle Berry is spectacularly beautiful and a very international way; she has the kind of look that could make her Indian, African, Latina, anything really, and now it would seem that a lot more people think like me!

The woman herself is somewhat surprised that it is now and not earlier, say during her James Bond year or her Monster Ball year, that she was bestowed this distinction, and that it is now at 42 and just having had a baby that she is being considered the sexiest woman alive. She says, “Well, I don’t know exactly what it means, but being forty-two and having just had a baby, I think I’ll take it.”

And what is it that defines sexiness according to her? “I’m not sure, but here’s what I do know: I know damned well I’m sexier now than I used to be…..Sexy is not about wearing sexy clothes or shaking your booty until you damn near get hip dysplasia; it’s about knowing that sexiness is a state of mind — a comfortable state of being. It’s about loving yourself even in your most unlovable moments. I know a little bit about that.”

When I read her full acceptance speech here, I was amazed (and delighted) to find that I could really identify with what the sexiest woman alive said when she said, “I like my body better since I became a mother. I feel sexier as a result of becoming a mother.”

Methinks any of us can be that sexiest woman alive; if only we are able to believe that we can be!