From Tradwife to Girlboss: Martha Stewart Continuously Redefines What It Means To Be A Woman
all photos courtesy marthastewart.com
As I'm having dinner with Martha Stewart, I'm overcome with déjà vu.
To be clear, this was my first time dining with the icon. I was attending Kohler Food and Wine, an intimate culinary festival in Kohler, Wisconsin, that gives guests the rare opportunity to dine with celebrity chefs. But this particular evening felt familiar because 'Martha' was everywhere—from the "Dinner With Martha" menu placed in front of me to the guests calling her name. I realized this was the first time I'd heard my mom's name with such frequency since she died eight years ago.
Growing up with a mom named Martha and a surrogate father named Stuart, I've always had an affinity towards Martha Stewart. But meeting and dining with her in person revealed even more about my mom and my own conceptions of womanhood than I could've ever imagined.
With 'Martha' still ringing in my ears after dinner, I was curious to learn more about the name I so rarely encounter. A quick Google search revealed that Martha was a biblical figure, considered an attentive housekeeper to Jesus and the patron saint of housewives, waiters, and cooks. The name's association with domestic labour and hospitality couldn't be more fitting for Martha Stewart, our collective deity of domesticity. The result of this research made me realize part of my lifelong attraction to Martha Stewart is that she represents the traditional mother ideal that my single mom failed to meet—the image of the mom who greets you with a home-baked meal and a smile.
It's the ideal mom I'd always longed for. When my mom had an unexpected brain injury at the age of 40, when I was eight, she became paralyzed on her dominant side. The image of my mom in the kitchen is a far cry from Martha Stewart in the kitchen, as I remember her struggling to open containers and cut ingredients with her one able hand. While Martha Stewart was a domestic goddess, my mom was "domestic" not by choice—her disability forced her to give up her career as a lawyer and spend more time than she wanted to at home. Her isolated domestic life could not look more different than the images of domesticity on the pages of Martha Stewart Living. In our home, lavish dinner parties and homecooked recipes looked more like eating microwavable meals in front of the television.
At the time, I could only see what our small family of two lacked. But now, looking back, I see that my single mom's struggle taught me perseverance in the face of obstacles. Without trying, Martha planted the seeds for me to learn how to become a strong, independent woman. Coincidentally, around the same time in the late 90s and early aughts, this was the very image Martha Stewart was coming to embody as she moved away from the traditional housewife toward a self-made girl boss. The term #girlboss would later be popularized by Sophia Amoruso in 2014 to describe female moguls who overcome glass ceilings to possess corporate power, but Martha Stewart was arguably the genuine original, becoming the country's first self-made female billionaire in 1999. Then, her new image was cemented, as evidenced by Joan Didion's profile in The New Yorker, published a year later. "This entire notion of 'the perfect mom/wife/homemaker' is a considerable misunderstanding of what Martha Stewart actually transmits," Didion wrote. "The dreams and the fears into which Martha Stewart taps are not of 'feminine' domesticity but of female power."
Eventually, the ideals of both Martha Stewart and the Girlboss came under fire. In 2004, Stewart was convicted of obstructing justice in the investigation of a pharmaceutical stock she sold and went to jail. A decade later, cracks in Girlboss's shiny façade were revealed as female-led workplaces were criticized for being toxic. Under accusations of racism, transphobia and ableism, top female executives like Emily Weiss of Glossier, Audrey Gelman of The Wing, and Christine Barberich of Refinery29 resigned in the late 2010s. Amoruso, # girlboss's very inventor, stepped down as CEO of Nasty Gal in 2015 and encouraged people to stop using the slogan on Twitter in 2022. Around the same time, the meme "gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss" went viral on TikTok, signalling the end of an era. The fall of Martha Stewart and the Girlboss ideal she had come to embody suggested to me—then a young woman at the very beginning of my own career—that maybe women couldn't have it all.
This disappointment was reinforced by the unexpected death of my mom in 2015, shortly after I graduated from University. Witnessing the toll that being a disabled single mom took on her body, I saw her death as further proof that women really can't "have it all." But while my own Martha couldn't overcome her own obstacles, Martha Stewart did. Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, Stewart has made an impressive comeback. Despite losing $1 billion US while in prison and selling Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia in 2015, she rebuilt her empire with several retail brands spanning everything from CBD to wine to home goods. By 2021, Stewart's combined retail sales annually totalled $900 million, and you could find her products in over 70 million households. Most recently, her appeal has been boosted by her friendship with Snoop Dogg and her Sports Illustrated Swimsuit cover last year.
Suppose the ideals of both the traditional domestic goddess and ambitious Girlboss are dead. What, then, is the ideal vision of womanhood in 2024? While my own mom failed to achieve both ideals, she succeeded at teaching me that it's okay to be flawed; a mother and a woman don't need to be perfect to be successful. Demonstrating resiliency and determination in the face of incredible challenges, I learned that success is not measured by what you have or achieve but by what you overcome, something Martha Stewart has proven throughout her 50-year career. As Didion wrote of Martha Stewart (even before she was imprisoned), "The 'cultural meaning' of Martha Stewart's success lies deep in the success itself, which is why even her troubles and strivings are part of the message, not detrimental but integral to the brand. She has branded herself not as Superwoman but as Everywoman."
Sitting at the dinner table spooning pumpkin soup out of the small pumpkin presented on my plate, I gazed past the flawless floral arrangements to Martha Stewart. While she was undeniably polished and put-together, I saw not a perfect woman but a woman who exudes intellect, power, and grace while being inherently flawed. I now see what I didn't see when I was growing up: women can have it all and be imperfect, too; it doesn't have to be one or the other. Seated next to her publicist, a relationship of over 30 years, and other members of her team, I'm reminded too that Stewart's successful career—just like raising a kid—has taken a whole village.
For the final course, Stewart served an upside-down cake, a dessert I hadn't tasted since my grandma's homemade rendition when I was a kid. I was disappointed when what was presented before me was nothing like the nostalgic upside-down cakes of my childhood but a modern interpretation made with lemon meringues. Just like my newfound conception of womanhood, the dessert was not what I envisioned as a kid, but after a couple hesitant bites, I was pleasantly surprised.
Anna Haines is a lifestyle, culture, and travel writer. You can read more of her work on her substack, Best.