RECONSIDERING MARTHA

Anew Netflix documentary assays how Martha Stewart has made us feel across a five-decade career

- STEPHANIE ZACHAREK

LONG BEFORE INSTAGRAM AND TIKTOK EXISTED as places for us to stoke our insecurities, there was Martha Stewart. Martha, circa 1995, smiling from the pages of her namesake magazine as she put the finishing touches on a Versailles- worthy pastel cake. Martha, again in the mid-1990s, ably demonstrating the only proper way to prune an unruly tree. Martha, in early 2004, the picture of quiet luxury in her downy, twigcolored woolens as she strode into the Manhattan federal courthouse during her trial on nine criminal counts associated with the ImClone insider- trading scandal. You could love her, you could hate her, you could love to hate her or vice versa. Her mission, it seemed, was twofold: to teach you how to do seemingly unachievable things around the home, and to make you feel inadequate.

But if Martha Stewart gave many of us our first taste of feeling terrifically ill-suited to any domestic task or even just to basic living, she also inadvertently reminded us that when it comes to nurturing self- confidence, we’re our own worst enemies. Her confidence and drive for perfection made us feel bad; we decided our hurt feelings were her fault. But now—when our social media feeds are filled with beautiful people doing remarkable things that most of us will never be able to pull off, or afford—it’s time to reconsider the rise, fall, and rise of Martha Stewart. The degree to which she both inspired and angered so many of us is still something to reckon with. As Eleanor Roosevelt said, “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”

If you still need convincing that Martha Stewart is a human being much like the rest of us—albeit one who can cook a turkey inside a puff pastry without once bursting into tears—R.J. Cutler’s documentary