Maybe I Just Wanted to Be Martha Stewart

Martha Stewart has built a storied career spanning decades and mediums. As I look back, I realize maybe I just wanted to be Martha Stewart.

When Netflix’s new documentary Martha was recently released, I binge watched it all in a weekend, soaking in every detail and devouring her story of growth, success, failure and overcoming.

Martha Stewart was must-watch weekend TV in my house growing up, often meaning I couldn’t watch cartoons. Like many 80s households, we had a single television that everyone shared. I resented her for that.

At Barnard College in the late 90s, Martha Stewart popped up again — the legendary alumni that everyone talked about. She’d put herself through our school with modeling and became a powerhouse of books, TV and magazines. Alone with the awe came the rumors about her. Was it jealousy?

Back then, Martha Stewart had a home goods line at KMart. She had magazines and books and television shows. She had built an empire. I wasn’t sure how I felt about her.

As I neared graduation, a woman I worked for insisted that I read the unauthorized biography of Martha Stewart. I did. It reinforced the rumors, but also made me wonder why everyone was so mired in the juicy, salacious stories.

In my late 20s, as I started my food writing career, The Martha Stewart Show was launched — her comeback after losing everything when she went to jail. I went to live tapings at least twice.

All through these years, I regarded Martha Stewart with fascination. Her work spanned print, television, products and eventually digital media. Her magazine Everyday Food is my all time favorite food magazine — I was so sad when it shuttered. Copies still sit near my desk. Over the years her popularity ballooned and waned again and again, but she never seemed to lose all relevance. Even lately, she’s become popularized again. A new Martha for a new time.

Martha Stewart built something amazing. It’s what I eventually aspire to for my own food career.

Of course, when I first launched my food blog, Sarah’s Cucina Bella, in Nov. 2005, I didn’t plan for more. It was intended to give me a platform to start writing about food and break into legacy publications. But then the blog itself grew, leading to recipe development work, writing gigs and book deals. It became an unexpected calling card and gateway to more. It’s why I’ve been on TV and how I’ve written nine books with one more on the way. More than 19 years later, I’m still at it. And I still dream about leveraging my blog into more — whatever that looks like in the 21st century.

When I step back a bit, I can see a bit more clearly that the modest career I have built has been similar to the wildly successful one that Martha Stewart built for herself. And my bigger dreams are not unlike her own successes.

When I watched the Netflix documentary, I realized that I held a thread of childhood resentment toward Martha Stewart for too long. But there is so much to learn from her — a powerful, high-achieving woman who made a career out of encouraging people to eat well and make their world more beautiful.

Along the way, she has drawn in fans but also so many people who want others to know she isn’t nice or friendly or whatever else they want her to be. She has a reputation for being a perfectionist — something that seemed so clear when I visited her offices for a career day in college and saw how pristine and white they were. She also has a reputation for having a temper.

But the criticism of her leadership feels akin to the double standards women face all over. We’re supposed to be kind but get definitive results. We’re supposed to be thoughtful but not be driven by emotions. When we succeed, we are resented. When we fail, we were the wrong choice. And so on.

Martha is an amazing businesswoman who created the media empire that I want. And though she’s in her 80s, she’s still creating product lines, launching books (her 100th — Martha: The Cookbook — was recently released), on television and out there doing things. What an amazing life and career. So maybe, she’s not just the businesswoman I want to be but the woman too.

One of the more recent criticisms I saw was about her blunt honesty about her marriage and its problems. Her ex-husband’s current wife released a statement that her husband could have never been like Martha said — difficult and inattentive, a cheater who was cheated on. Does it matter that his new wife has only known him for 12 years while Martha was married to him for more than three decades? Does it matter that people change for so many reasons?

Seems like more of the same.

Of course, my career path has zigged and zagged a few times along the way and my empire is tiny. I chose a full-time job a decade ago for benefits and financial security that I needed as a single mom. I stepped into a different industry last year to further ensure financial security as I launch my kids into the world. I haven’t yet had the capital to create what I dreamed of, but I’ve kept going anyway and wrote more books, settling into the flow of blog writing, book writing, and freelance writing. But I leveraged my work for teaching gigs — and even was approved to create a food writing class at one university last year so my career has spanned mediums too.

I often talk about Julia Child’s profound influence on food culture and food writing, as well as how she successfully leveraged her work to great success. The same can be said of other high-achieving women in food like Judith Jones, Ruth Reichl and Ree Drummond. But we shouldn’t discount the work of Martha Stewart. She has influenced, created, launched and expanded her reach, reinventing her work again and again as the world changed around her. There’s something to be said for her longevity — and her brilliant business mind.

So yes, indeed, maybe I just wanted to be Martha Stewart. Maybe I still do.