The Martha Stewart – Sports Illustrated Swim Suit Issue: What Is the Message?

The news cycle is past. Martha Stewart, an 81-year-old well-regarded public figure, successful business woman and author is on the cover of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue. The oldest woman to be on that cover.

How is one to read what such an event means? Is it a positive event, taking another step forward in fighting ageism?  Will it mean progress for women in society generally and in the workplace specifically, resulting in less of a sense of invisibility and exclusion?

Several commentators have opined about Martha Stewart’s latest venture. I offer my own here as a gerontologist, an anti-ageist activist and as one who continues to try to unlearn my internalized ageism.

I see lots of denial. The whole matter is premised on the accepted physical/sexual attractiveness of women in swimsuits. Beautiful women with beautiful bodies in swimsuits. What is the social construct of a beautiful body in our society.  In other words, what does society say is appropriate if one is to be considered beautiful, pleasing, suitable?  In all cases, the answer is youthful beauty.  Youthful beauty is the standard. Period.

What does an organization (Sports Illustrated) do, then, to sell the maximum number of copies of its magazine with an 81-year-old in a bathing suit on the cover?  Look at the poses and the swimsuit chosen for Martha Stewart. (Once at the website, keep scrolling down.)

Compare them with the poses of subjects in earlier Swimsuit issues. Younger models are posed with more body showing. It’s just that simple.  And it’s also logical if one accepts the belief that youthful beauty is the standard.  Take a look and judge for yourself at a randomly chosen  swimsuit issue, 2020:  One is reminded, looking at these swimsuit photos, that they are intended for the approving male gaze.

Martha Stewart cooperated in this venture, telling interviewers that in “accepting the challenge”, she succeeded. She engaged in Pilates exercises three times a week.  She increased the frequency of her four-decades long practice of weekly facials and serious skin care regimen. (She said she has “good skin doctors”.)  Responding to negative comments, she denies ever having plastic surgery, while admitting that she does use a little Botox and some fillers to address the ‘fine lines’. Martha reports that she got a spray tan and a total body wax in preparation for the swimsuit photo session. She abstained from alcohol during these months of preparing for the photo shoot and didn’t eat bread or pasta for a couple of months.

Why all this? Because in a swimsuit photoshoot, one does what one can to make an 81-year-old body appear young, to be acceptable in a society that values only a youthful body and youthful beauty, to submit to what is acceptable, particularly to the male gaze.

Another obvious reality in all this is that Martha Stewart and other women of means can afford weekly facials, expensive skin care, cosmetic surgery, etc. Joy Behar of “The View” made that very point saying, “If you have enough money, you can afford to ‘look good.’”

In the end, having an older woman take part in a public ritual that our society says belongs to those with a youthful body has inherent risks. In this case, the risks have been addressed by the older woman making every effort to look young and the organization choosing poses and clothing that do not match that of its usual models: women of a young age in which their youthful bodies are photographed to their greatest visual advantage.

Sheila Callaham says it well in a Forbes article: “Sorry, but aspirations to stay young or young at heart are based on age denial, which is the foundation of ageism."  

Being 81 and posing in a swimsuit is not the issue. The issue is that in the Sports Illustrated case it is an instance of ageism being sold as age inclusivity.