Kate's Big Ideas

As a person who rides horses in New York, I feel somewhat of a connection to Martha Stewart. She keeps her horses at the place where I ride upstate (what some might call a seal of approval), and the nearby Bedford Riding Lanes Association’s annual “biggest prize” at its gala is the chance to go riding with her. I have yet to even attempt to win, but there’s plenty of Martha to go ‘round for the casually interested observer.

This month, the domestic goddess - turned - known-insider-trader - turned - weed mogul has dropped another frame into her multifaceted image: swimsuit model. Sports Illustrated swimsuit model, specifically, and the oldest such model to grace the cover at age 81.

The goal of a hire like this tends to be crowd reaction, and indeed the crowd is reacting.

There is an entire story in Cinemablend about how surprisingly cool Martha’s daughter was about the shoot: “Most likely wouldn’t have that same cucumber-cool energy if the tables were turned and it was their own mothers posing that same question,” it reads. Bon Appétit wrote, “Martha Stewart’s Sports Illustrated Cover Shouldn’t Surprise Real Martha-Heads,” a headline that implies the move is in fact surprising.

The New York Times (which, in their article, took the time to call Stewart’s phone voice “warmly husky,”) seemed to find the gig so surprising that they asked some incredibly forward questions in a Q&A: “What gave you the gumption to pose?” “Did it take a lot of prep work?” “And your body?”

Did we really just say those things out loud?

Martha Stewart is a star of her own making. Why should she need to find gumption to pose for a photo as she has done one million times? If she wants to display her body, she can. And when she makes the decision to do so, why should it take prep work? Isn’t the whole point that she can display a body that is different from what’s typically depicted in this magazine feature? Why, as a consciously different candidate, is she still having to conform to the established standard?

Martha herself reports resisting convention. Even so, she shared, “If I’d thought my waist was too big, or that I was too wobbly, I wouldn’t have done it.”

And thus: A portion of the internet is up in arms that Martha looks so, well, conventional. One letter in The Guardian laments Martha appearing at 81 without any wrinkles — it’s bad enough that older women are routinely overlooked by society; ”now we’re even being told how to age.”

Regardless of how Martha appears in print, argues Guardian columnist Zoe Williams, her stint as cover girl is not the triumph for diversity that the magazine argues it is. “Real change would look different from this,” she wrote. “It would look like a different body shape every issue – it’s not as though there’s an exhaustible supply.” We wouldn’t have to be celebrating a diverse pick because the baseline would be diversity.

It’s time to tip the scales, friends—and perhaps throw them out altogether.