martha, martha, martha
extra, extra—have you heard the news?
Last week I celebrated my fifty-seventh birthday, and Martha Stewart became the oldest woman to ever appear on the cover of Sports Illustrated's swimsuit issue. It got me thinking about Martha and what she has meant to me through the years in a myriad of unexpected ways, so allow me to explain.
This is not another essay about how she or I comparatively "look" for our respective ages. In honesty, Nancy Jo Sales and
have already said it all. Which doesn't mean when I watched Martha being teased and primped for her photo shoot, I couldn't help but chuckle, thinking how much it mirrored Julia Louis Dreyfus' Last F**kable Day and the absurdity of both.In their own disparate ways, both videos are reminders of how to be a woman is to be measured and all the ways we are expected to turn ourselves into an object of vision: a sight. Sometimes we are too young, others too old, but the message is clear. We are always in service of being sold something, to be improved, to embark on our own Goldilocks quest in search of just right. Ways of Seeing, ways to be seen.
Still, there was a time when Martha did hold exactly such sway over me. A time when I coveted the life she curated between the pages of Living, her magazine offering her "expert" advice related to food, decorating, crafts, gardening, beauty, pets and style—that only the perfect homemaker, Martha Stewart, would approve of. There was a time I was willing to buy into it all.
Don't get me wrong. It's not that I ever wanted to cease being an artist or an author of feminist scholarship, but secretly I wanted to be the perfect homemaker too. If Martha made it seem effortless, why couldn't I?
And so, I became the kind of woman who could sew her kids' Halloween costumes or make blueberry muffins from scratch every morning before the school bus. I studied the 14 living room décor ideas every homeowner should try; I cooked the 12 recipes I had to master to become the "Martha of my friends." I learned how to dry hydrangeas and make homemade pudding. Okay, I still do that, and it’s delicious.
Living like Martha Stewart or trying to live up to anyone's standard but our own is exhausting. But for years, I bought into it all because I believed, or was taught to believe, that if my house was beautiful, so was I. It was a life mostly built upon a manufactured image of falsities. It was not about living at all.
In some ways, it's no different than being on the cover of Sports Illustrated and wanting the world to believe that your eighty-one-year-old appearance are the result of Mario Badescu facials and pilates. And if that makes you happy, I'm okay with that too. It's not about judging anyone for their choices, but more to understand what we are being sold in the first place, to learn instead how to invest in ourselves, and to believe in who we already are.
All I know is when my marriage finally ended, I left years and years worth of magazines at the curb, overflowing the recycling bin. It felt like an enormous burden had been lifted. Over time I've come to know how much of that weight was self-inflicted, but if I'm not careful, the pressure to be perfect can return. Which is kind of happening now.
John and I are in the midst of a home renovation project courtesy of the washing machine overflowing from the second floor into our kitchen. I find something soothing about living with someone who can take it all in stride and also puts up with my propensity for alphabetized spices and my "everything looks better in a mason jar" mantra. As I said, I’m working on it.
Nonetheless, the kitchen is still a project to be completed.
I've lived in this house since 2016: what began as a rental became the first house I ever bought on my own. It is the structure where Noah and I sheltered in place during the pandemic, the one that welcomed John (and all his belongings) in 2022.
Martha or no Martha, I find something soothing in creating a space reflective of myself and the multitude of ways we have found ourselves here—I always have.
It's also stressful, at least for me. Especially choosing paint colors, especially when your house is an open plan, and what you choose in one spaces carries from one room to the next, to the next.
It reminds me of how I sometimes feel when I get dressed—overthinking and second-guessing every detail of how I present myself. What color paint do I prefer: simply white or crisp linen, Swiss coffee or cappuccino froth? These are the moments when I want to defer: what would Martha do?
My contractor smiles because he’s seen it all before. “Tell you what,” he says. “Why don’t you live with it for a month and see how it feels. After all, it’s only paint.”
Living with it is how we learn to live; it’s how the crinkles around our eyes or the folds around our mouths are formed. My lines are my map of all I’ve learned along the way. Rather than be erased, they are evidence that we’ve had something to smile about.
I am my own cover story. We all are. Aging. Gratefully. And in the words of Martha, may her cover
inspire you to challenge yourself to try new things, no matter what stage of life you are in. Changing, evolving, and being fearless - those are all very good things, indeed.
thanks for reading ~
PS I’m continuing this conversation tomorrow with the amazing MJ Waddell where we will discuss the ways we can discuss the ways we can unite our passions in service of knowing ourselves. The webinar is free and (wink, wink) there just might special offer for those still interested in Monhegan.
Can't make it? Register anyway and watch the recorded replay—I hope you can join us
When Women Were Birds: murmuration, memoir, meditation
September 22 - 26, 2023
Monhegan, ME
word by word, the language of women so often begins with a whisper… . .
join me this fall!
If you have ever wished to experience Monhegan, this retreat is your invitation. It’s an embodied book group: to journey and journal through the words of Terry Tempest Williams's poetic memoir When Women Were Birds: Fifty-four Variations on Voice with the seasons of the sea. It is for anyone who longs to learn or return to the practices of writing and meditation, to discover our stories through silence and speech. all the details • 2022 retreat highlights here
I felt like the bright, salty sunshine and air of Monhegan scrubbed the corners of my soul, and I saw all the cracks and creases and also cleaned the gunk that needed to be moved. It was a deeply satisfying and nourishing experience. I feel like my personal bucket as a woman, mom, midwife, and human became filled to the brim with trust that we can have hard times and find meaningful ways to re-visit reintegrate into ourselves when the opportunity presents itself—Elsa, Philadelphia, PA, 2021 + 2022 retreater
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Those magazines on the curb--symbolic resonance! You’ve beautifully captured tightrope so many of us walk between feminism and “homemaker,” two semi-cringey yet mostly accurate worlds we live in.