A Review of a Review?
I got a big kick out of Caitlin Flanagan’s review of Christopher Byron’s book on Martha Stewart (Martha, Inc.). A few pages in, I said to my husband “this reviewer thinks the author is an idiot!”. A few minutes later I exclaimed “Oh my goodness, she actually did call him an idiot! She used the actual word ‘idiot’!” And a few pages later, “ohhhh, she called him a jerk too!” Mind you, Flanagan finds Stewart to be “the most unpleasant person on television”, so she’s not defending her love for the domestic businesswoman. But what Flanagan does understand, which Byron misses, is what makes the output of Stewart’s multimedia empire appealing. She boils it down to this: “women like pretty things.” (I’d like to think that many men do too, if they are the type to notice their surroundings.) Byron seems to think Stewart has successfully pulled the wool over her fan’s eyes. But Flanagan points out that the Stewart empire is built on the longing for a reconnection to the tasks of keeping a home in order, elegantly. It’s something of a guilty pleasure to crave domestic elegance as women busy with work and/or children may only find time for the minimum upkeep. We look at the Martha Stewart Living magazines and television shows and we either avoid them because we know she’s selling an unrealistic dream, or we keep going back to them because we want to hold on to a vision. Either reaction is fine, in my book.