Martha Stewart is an icon; a maven. She's the high school mean girl you want to be like and fiercely loathe.
You love her Halloween craft ideas (radishes and olives as an eyeball salad?!), and you loathe the inferiority complex she has slathered on you as you look around your own home.
Her brand is built upon our latent domestic diva desires; the illusion of perfection.
This year, I am resolving to flip Martha the bird.
It started when she said this in a recent interview:
Everything about this oozed the self-important pompousness her brand represents. In an instant, she exposed light through the crack of what I always had suspected: Martha Stewart is selling a lie, and we should all flip her the (proverbial) bird.
She lacks any insight into a real, practical, obligation-filled life. Her elitist attitude toward domestic pursuits is without compassion or balance.
What would salvage Martha in my eyes? Just for once, I wish that she would set a cake aflame on national television. I wish she would have a Pinterest #nailedit fail. I want her to confess how she ate a family-sized bag of Doritos instead of cleaning her house yesterday.
And then I want her to own it. Laugh. Teach us how to fail with grace and try again. That is what being a domestic diva in 2014 looks like.
I loved Martha most this year, when this hysterically funny piece about her disgusting food tweets came out.
Did she playfully laugh at herself? No. She tweeted this:
Martha has overstayed her welcome as the queen domestic diva because she has failed to show us something we all want to see: ourselves. That’s who “these bloggers” are, Martha. They are the people who understand our lives. Our struggles to entertain fifteen family members around a six-person table. Our hopes for a pristine bathroom in a house full of bad aim. Our dreams of folding a fitted sheet instead of rolling it into a ball and cursing.
So, I'm breaking up with Martha and also flipping her the bird.
In 2014, I resolve to:
1) Remember that "shortcut" is not a dirty word. "Good things" come in reality packages!
2) Only pick projects that make my heart sing
3) Organize the things that really make me crazy
4) Make my Command Centre binder even more central to our busy lives
5) Quit worrying about milestones, and just enjoy the (sometimes bumpy) ride
Let's not throw the baby out with the bath water; let's love Martha for the amazing inspiration she can bring into life’s cooking, cleaning, organizing, and entertaining. It isn't her fault that our inferiority complex forces us to make wreaths we don't like or fold sheets in ways that make no sense at all.
But, she is a woman of a generation that has passed. Let us thank her for her service, take inspiration in her library of domestic wisdom, and then make it real. Make it ours.
And, if she resolves to show us some reality in 2014, we could be persuaded to come back for more of a “good thing.”
Printer-friendly version