The Surprising Endurance of Martha Stewart's "Entertaining"

"In the first two decades of her media career, which began in the early eighties, Stewart's lavish, ruthlessly overachieving approach to the domestic arts-advanced in such austerely titled books as "Weddings" and "Great Parties," and also in syndicated newspaper columns, a cable show, and her eponymous magazine-made her a totalizing cultural figure, one whose suggestions tended to come across as commands. I was terrified that the conversation would somehow lay bare my own incompetence, my failure to comply."

"And though the insider-trading scandal that landed her in prison, in 2004, dinged her reputation, it ultimately proved that she was untouchable, paving the way for a winking, irreverent iteration of her persona. In the past decade, Stewart has cannily embraced her status as a kitsch object-the chilly, aging doyenne of "homekeeping" who hangs out with Snoop Dogg and poses for Sports Illustrated yet can seemingly do napkin origami in her sleep."

Home-cooking culture has moved toward loose, unfussy practices while Martha Stewart's 1982 classic, newly reissued, argues that hosting demands rigorous, endurance-like preparation. A scheduled brief phone interview with Stewart induced anxiety about confronting her fame and exacting domestic standards. Stewart built a media empire in the 1980s and 1990s through lavish domestic guides, newspaper columns, a cable show, and Martha Stewart Living magazine, becoming a totalizing cultural figure whose suggestions often read as commands. Her company achieved near two-billion-dollar market value in 1999. An insider-trading scandal and prison sentence in 2004 damaged her reputation but ultimately reinforced an untouchable public persona that she later leaned into with ironic, kitschy collaborations.

Read at The New Yorker