Valerie Monroe’s newsletter, How Not to F*ck Up Your Face, is available on Substack.
Here’s the thing about Martha Stewart, the subject of a new documentary from R.J. Cutler: She’s fun to watch. She’s got great style, great hair, seemingly great skin, and enormous confidence.
Stewart built her empire on an image of perfection, from intricate, home-cooked meals to ornately done holiday decorations. It’s a fiction she’s crafted over the years — and one she continues to sell. At 83 years old, she appears to have the youthful countenance, focus, and energy of a much younger woman — which she has publicly attributed to facials, Pilates, and a magic green-juice concoction she brews up in one of her magnificent kitchens. Does she think we’re idiots? That’s another thing about Martha: She’s a confusing combination of admirable and deeply unlikable.
The admirable piece is easy to understand. Having grown up in Nutley, New Jersey, with an adored but sadistic, perfectionist father who couldn’t support the family, Martha began modeling as a teen; entered Barnard on a scholarship; met and married Andy Stewart, a wealthy Yale Law School grad (they enjoyed a five-month honeymoon in Europe); and quickly settled into married life with a child. But motherhood didn’t do it for her; a friend describes her as “always a little bit chilly, not good at expressing emotions,” which Martha attributes to the fact that growing up, “there wasn’t a lot of affection in our house.”
So she turned to Wall Street, where the object of affection is money, and, as the only woman in her brokerage firm, she made tons of it for herself and her clients. When she burned out of that career, she and Andy moved from the Upper West Side of Manhattan to Westfield, Connecticut, where they bought a broken-down farmhouse that they renovated themselves. That was where Martha started her next business venture as a caterer, ultimately to the stars. The company made millions; Andy began cheating on her. (She cheated back.)
Because of unfortunate timing, she had to promote her Weddings book while her marriage was falling apart; she suffered from migraines, sleeplessness, even pulled out her hair. She was 40 years old, presenting herself as the perfect wife and mother, while behind the scenes she was failing at exactly what she was promoting. A clue as to why the marriage died: “Have you had any relationship where you talk about your feelings?” she’s asked.
“No,” she says. “And that’s probably why I haven’t had many personal relationships with men … because I couldn’t care less [what they’re feeling] …”
I appreciate her honesty. It’s Stewart’s persistent perfectionism that feels irritating. After she was indicted for lying to the FBI about insider trading, she went from “Queen of Perfection” to “Queen of Mean” as the press used her for one of their most amusing pursuits, tearing down an idol (in this case, the All-American Queen of Domesticity) and turning her into the Wicked Witch. She did her time in a minimum-security prison and emerged a changed woman. Or was she?
As the writer Caitlin Flanagan has described Stewart, she is a hustler, and shrewd as hell. At a Comedy Central roast of Justin Bieber, she endured a shower of age and prison jokes only to cap her humiliation with a wildly uncharacteristic raunchy firehose of insults at her fellow roasters while, importantly, making fun of herself. That was new. So was her friendship with an admiring Snoop Dogg, also on the panel. And it was the beginning of a more “relatable” Martha Stewart brand.
This year, Stewart was the oldest Sports Illustrated swimsuit-issue cover model. In an obviously retouched photo, she claimed little retouching and asserted that her unlined, un-crepey, taut skin was the result of … I don’t even know what. Pilates? That green juice? A full-body facial?
You’ve probably already noticed that the rich and famous seem to (or claim to) have access to skin-care products, treatments, and secret sauce — or magical green juices — largely unavailable to us because of price or accessibility; this is one way beauty and wellness marketers tickle our yearning, keeping us hooked on the search for something better. When I looked at that photo of Martha, I wondered: Does the woman want us to think she’s figured out a way to cheat death? That we’re approaching an era when only poor people, or the un-rich, actually die? (As opposed to just dying sooner, an era in which we unfortunately already live.) To me, that photo is a very red, juicy, poison apple.
In public, Stewart’s age manifests only in how she carries herself: There’s a slight tremor in her head when she’s being interviewed and she looks not quite steady and a little stiff walking in her platform heels. She says she believes imperfection is something you can deal with “as one gets older,” but judging from her current output, I doubt lowering her standards will ever be acceptable to the still fiercely ambitious creator of Martha Stewart Living.
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