Forever Martha

I have to admit, I never thought much of Martha Stewart until she went to jail. What could a WASPy baby boomer from the posh area of Connecticut have to offer besides a backhanded compliment about the lack of designer fabrics in my living room and the fact that the paint lines on my walls weren’t perfect? Martha was someone who existed outside of my world until she became the poster child for white collar crime.

When I picked up my first copy of Martha Stewart Living, I wanted to see how this spoiled, devious woman who obstructed justice made her fortune. I was curious to know what kind of uppity schwag she was hocking, and what scoundrel-like messages she was giving to women. I wanted to see, first hand, what made Martha evil.

Two hours later, after reading the magazine from cover to cover, I was ready to send her commissary money and cigarettes. Who knew there were so many uses for pinecones! If you had a question about the proper temperature for cooling pies, Martha could tell you. If you were curious about the real ingredients behind those fantastic Thai dishes, Martha had the inside scoop. If you had a barren wall, Martha had an inexpensive way to create a work of art using a glue gun, leaves from the yard, and shellac. There was nothing in the homemaking universe that Martha didn’t know.

In a way, you want to hate Martha, because everything she does seems to come out so damned perfect, but you can’t hate her, because she celebrates homemaking, and homemaking is something that our society has basically shit on for the past 40 years. When a woman ends up residing in a dwelling she has an urge to make it a comfortable place that people like to visit. She may not be the best cook, or even know she has a kitchen, and maybe her ability to keep up with the laundry and dishes is lacking, but every woman has the desire to make her living space a nice place to be. Martha recognized this, and built an empire on getting back to basics and celebrating the art of creating a livable home.

Of course she was rewarded with a stint in prison, which most women, including my conservative grandmother, will acknowledge is bullshit. Not that Grandma Alice would ever utter the word “bullshit” although she did seem like she was biting her tongue when she saw the verdict on CNN.

Martha made an illegal stock trade and lied about it, that was bad, and not in compliance with the law. However, what pissed most American women off is that we know that most of those male bastards on Wall Street do what Martha was convicted of on a daily basis and nothing happens to them. Martha was a powerful, successful woman who celebrated a woman’s ability to make a beautiful home, and that upset the status quo. If women were obsessed with creating lampshades out of leftover pieces of wallpaper, then they wouldn’t be stressing about their age or weight. If women were spending money on scrapbook materials, then they wouldn’t have any dollars left to fuel the plastic surgery industry. If women felt a renewed confidence that their lives and work had meaning, then they would have the inner power to look at their world and demand a better standard, which in turn presented a challenge to the second class citizen status quo that women have been relegated to in this country. The male power structure recognized this, so it was simple: Martha had to be hung out to dry.

Fortunately, her stay in Slammerland was short, and she was still able to dispense valuable advice from her jail cell, such as the easiest way to remove jam stains from white shirts without compromising the integrity of the fabric. Martha emerged from the big house more popular than ever and ready to continue her role as America’s favorite, white bread hostess.

I now subscribe to Martha Stewart Living, not because I actually do the projects in the magazine or seriously believe I will ever take the time to make all of my friends an attractive set of refrigerator magnets, I simply like the security of knowing it’s there. Having copies of Martha Stewart Living in the kitchen is like having that filled prescription of Plan B in your medicine chest; you might look at it once in awhile, and may never need to use it, but it’s nice knowing it’s sitting in the cabinet in case something goes wrong.

Martha is an icon, and years from now, when her biography appears on The Learning Channel, the whole felony/time in prison thing will be spun as a way she "renewed her faith in her homemaking mission." Martha may have lost five months of productive time, but she won the hearts of all of the “less than perfect” women out there who hated her for being, well, too perfect. We may never use spray adhesive and glitter to decorate seasonal melons for an attractive summer centerpiece, but we will respectfully acknowledge the process, and to Martha, that’s all that matters.