I think that most of us look at her beautiful house and garden, her crafts/centerpieces/gifts, her food, and so on, and then look at our own cookie crumbed carpet, pile of dishes by the sink, and the 6 bags of garbage by the back door and think “Oh yeah, that’s me. I love creating my own Japanese garden while making Baked Alaska”.
Her reality and my reality are not even on the same planet.
I do think that the people who like her actually want to have the perfect home and garden. I would rather be dragged through tacks and then dipped in rubbing alcohol than spend my evening making crafts or cooking.
I have a general dislike of autocratic powermongers and can’t believe I defend ol’Martha but she has some great ideas. I have no illusions about a perfect house, having a landscaping crew or two full homes worth of TV studios, a workaholic schedule with computer docking stations in every vehicle, etc. But her magazine is great. And on last nights show she took on a couple of the more blatent assaults: Ana Gasteyer (SNL Topless martha) was her first guest, Santa sang a song about her cramming crafts down his throat, she had helpers do less than perfect work without firing them on the spot. Granted, she probably focus grouped the whole thing for months and is tracking her bottom line today. But the reverence with which she encourages her readers to frame treasured photos is unfeigned, imho, and I like her mag. BTW my house and yard are realistically funky too. She’s earned my respect, and I generally shy away from emasculating Waspy bottle blond yankees.
Fasten your seatbelts, folks…I loathe Martha Stewart, and no, she doesn’t intimidate me one bit. I despise her because:
she’s a pretentious fake. Even if she doesn’t directly claim to produce all of her “good things”, she certainly never refrains from crass bragging. Example: her goodie baskets she prefers to give as “incidental gifts”. Of course they’re filled with her homemade jams, chutney, cheese, a few bottles of wine, etc. and the baskets are handwoven wild-vine. Minimum cost would be $100 each–for “little incidental gifts”. She’s pointedly self-referential where there’s no need.
her business ethics are shaky at best. Examples:
her little problem with publishing other people’s recipes as hers. Sure, a lot of recipes are variations–but a former caterer and business person knows the rules. She’s pulled back from this lately, but it doesn’t speak well of her character. Example: she frankly stiffed K-Mart. Hey, she took their money, but put her nose in the air and booked when her mud-colored line of household goods tanked.
her ruthless self-promotion that sometimes borders on dishonesty: Example: her vaunted perfect country house she rehabbed. Nope. She set up a deal w/ a lot of designers to donate work and materials, got a lot of good programs, got a designer house–and very litle went to the charity the project supposedly supported.
she turns hospitality and graciousness into an obscene mockery, warping it into a relentless, show-offy, “lookit me” charade. Am I the only oddball who believes it’s tacky to confuse hospitality with conspicuous display?
Sure, it’s basic to offer one’s best to guests–and family, for that matter. But the ideal is for “stuff” to be mere background; if it’s obtrusive, it’s rude and pretentious because it switches emphasis from the people to the display. I’m sorry, that’s plain bad taste.
And I’m not exempting or coming down harder on Martha for a skinny minute because she’s female. Doesn’t matter one or t’other. Fair’s fair.
Veb
(P.S. the above opinions and incidents are based on a biography of her life, interviews, profiles, etc.)
Guy’s aren’t insecure and impressionable? (Well, probably the only people impressed by Hugh Hefner any more are plastic surgeons.–>assume winking smiley here<–)
Not to bust your chops, Marc, but maybe just different focus and goals? Not deriding your point, just re-casting the example. Guys aren’t impressed by the Michael Jordans, Steve Jobs, Tiger Woods, rock icon du jour, etc. etc.?
I guess there isn’t an exact analogy for men, because the spheres of attainment are more diffused. The domesticity thing is almost exclusively female–in traditional thinking, m’kay?
The uberwoman thing is very real, y’know. The bar got raised; women are judged and judge themselves by achievement in careers as well as how well they nurture their families.
Your post stirred my thinking some. Maybe that’s part of what offends me so much about La Martha. She’s a ruthless corporate whiz (and her tactics are still dismal by all standards) putting on a facade solely to exploit a specific vulnerablity.
Interesting; I can’t think of an apt male analogy. But even so, I don’t respect exploiters. Rush Limbaugh is an infamous example; so are “mediums”, psychic hotline owners, etc.
Now ya got me thinking. (And thanks for that!) Hmmmm.
Veb
I could have sworn I remember hearing something on the radio a couple of years ago about Martha trying to run over her boyfriend. Am I crazy or does someone else remember this?
Close–her high-achievement husband divorced her. Martha did not take it well; she has “anger control issues”. He ended up having to take out a restraining order against her.
BTW, he remarried–to one of her former production assistants. They both claim the relationship did not start until after the divorce. Don’t know and don’t care; it’s gossip. What does pertain–solely because it relates to Martha’s extravagent marketing of “home”–their daughter has been totally estranged from her father since the divorce.
Read the biography and profiles. This is one sick, sad home situation. No family/home/marriage is perfect–but few people ruthlessly market the facade, either.
: Interesting; I can’t think of an apt male analogy. But
: even so, I don’t respect exploiters. Rush Limbaugh is an
: infamous example; so are “mediums”, psychic hotline
: owners, etc.
I’ve got the near-perfect amle analogy to Martha Steward.
Norm Abrams. For those outside of the United States, Norm is the host of The New Yankee Workshop, a popular show on public television where he builds some rather astonishing pieces of furniture, making it all look quite easy. Of course, he has about $50,000 in tools to assist in making a reproduction Rennie Macintosh-inspired chest of drawers from three old railroad ties.
Unlike the way women speak of Martha, though, we guys think Norm’s hang just a bit lower than the rest of us – he’s a man’s man, someone with lots of power tools who likes to build stuff. So, why don’t we men get jealous and bitter because we don’t have the equipment and talent to construct a Shaker style dinette set, while women get furious because they can’t reproduce Martha’s blackberry vinaigrette?
Now this is a tasty little tidbit. It kinda reminds me of the last scene of “Serial Mom”:
“You’re wearing white shoes after Memorial day!”
----------------------- “But- -fasion has changed!”
“No, no it hasn’t.”
~
~
~
~
~ MC (hee-hee)
ALL marketing is exploitative by nature. Every company wants one thing: money to go from your pocket to theirs.It is up to the educated consumer to wade through the crapola and figure out what works for them. All the personal shenanigans may remain in Spy, ET, Enquirer, tell-all-books, and the other shitpiles of mass market culture.
What the MS megacorporation brings to the table is homecraft R&D. Her group has done it a thousand times in order to present an orderly easy to follow set of instructions for accomplishing a particular task. They are not a religion or a cult, they don’t grade you on your ability, and I find the instructions and suggestions remarkably adaptable and non-judgemental. imho.
I find the Martha-bashing off base in general because it feeds the rabid ‘women can’t do it the way it ought to be done’ sentiment that is pushed by a male-based power structure. Don’t like her cause she’s a bitch? Don’t buy her magazine. Complain about her demeaning women? Find another scapegoat. I lump the vehement Hillary-haters and Martha haters together: just what the fat rich white man wants, because it means more money to ‘him’ and not ‘her’.
I have to agree DustMagnate…and to label her an “exploiter” is going a little far. Who really even gives a shit?!! If you don’t like her don’t watch her, don’t buy her mag or products. She isn’t the anti-Christ for goodness sake! She’s a television personality and a business woman. And you’re absolutely right you rarely see hatred for male personalities perpetrated with such a vengence. Hillary, Rosie, Oprah, Kathy Lee, Martha, Judge Judy why do these women inspire such ire? It isn’t just their politics or their personalities, it’s also their success!
I say “you go girl”!!! Make that money. Get your face plastered all over the media. Write your own ticket. Say what you want. Do your own thing. And all the jealous white guys can kiss your billion dollar ass! Other women shouldn’t buy into that crap. Whether or not we like their style, presentation or their message, we can learn something from them. How to be sucessful and write our own ticket in a male dominated society.
Let’s face it who would have thought that some broad could come along and build a multi-million dollar empire out of cooking French Onion Soup, tying the perfect bow, and planting escarole? Way to go Martha!
Actually, out of that list of women, I admire several of them, and only dislike Martha and Kathy Lee. Something about them completely rubs me the wrong way. It’s not because MS is successful, rather, I find that she perpetuates the feeling that women should be doing it all. A woman should be able to leave to home to run a successful business, keep a perfect home, make perfect food, and never take a wrong step along the way. I rarely see such pressures put on men.
I find that societal expectations don’t generally assume that men take as much care of the home or the cooking and the kids. Their job is to work, and support at home. It seems as though even if a woman is working, she is also expected to take perfect care of her home also, thus doubling her workload. MS seems to show that not only should we be able to do that, we can never do it as well as she does. I think that it irks me because with the few remaining spare minutes I have a day, I shouldn’t feel pressured to plant 100 tulip bulbs, because Martha does it. Women do tend to be judged on her housekeeping abilities. I have yet to see Feynn apologize for the state of our house. People don’t come over and think “Gee, poor Feynn hasn’t been keeping it very clean, has he?”. It’s assumed that the responsibility for that falls on my shoulders, regardless of my other responsibilities. Same thing with the child rearing and the cooking. Even if something doesn’t get packed in my kids backpack for school, the teacher assumes (and I get this from my talks with them) that it’s MY fault it didn’t get packed, even though I’m usually long gone before the kids get up in the morning.
In my opinion, Hillary, Rosie, Oprah, Judge Judy don’t perpetuate the image of an ideal woman being one that can do it all with ease. Hillary and Judge Judy come across as people who focus more on their careers (and probably have help with the house), Rosie and Oprah come across as people who struggle to keep all of the balls in the air. Thus, I can identify with them.
Being sick at home one day this week, I was flipping channels and came across Martha making cute little jingle bell wreath ornaments, stringing little jingle bells onto lengths of wire. “Hm,” I thought, “those look kinda cute,” so I put down the remote and watched for a minute or two, until I heard her say something along the lines of:
“Now, put this end of the wire through the loop in the other end that we made earlier, and form your wreath into a perfect circle . . .”
That unnecessary, snide, gratuitous “perfect” reminded me of why I avoid her. Her attitude that unless a thing is done perfectly it has no meaning or value or worth is the biggest turnoff as far as I am concerned.
I think Norm’s got way more than fifty grand in there. And it’s all eerily immaculate, too.
His show is cut so tight he gives the impression you can make your own 18th-century chest of drawers in a half-hour, with the difficulty of assembling a Snap-Tite model plane.
Sure, he SAYS he’s coming back the next day to put a new coat on or get more wood, but he magically appears in the next shot. It’s terribly intimidating.
“Yes, I’ll show YOU how to do this with your hands tied behind your back, for I am the Demigod of Tables and Chests. Tremble before me and offer thanks until our next show, where…”
