Sports Illustrated Used Martha Stewart for Their Swimsuit Inclusion Cred
Martha Stewart’s remarkable career as a hospitality guru, TV personality, and multi-channel media empress has taken a surprising turn: At age 81, she’s officially the oldest woman to ever be pictured on the cover of Sport’s Illustrated’s infamous swimsuit edition.
Stewart’s cover image is part of a brand overhaul for SI. In the post-#MeToo era, brands from Victoria’s Secret on down have realized that marketing women as consumable sex objects is less profitable than ever. Their solution? “Diversify” to include sex objects of different shapes, sizes, and colors. Bathing suit issues in recent years use scantily-clad models arranged in racy poses, but with more older women, plus-size women, and at least one model with a visible C-section scar.
Cue the howls of outrage from some of the men who have been trained for decades to crave soft-core content. Their sense of entitlement and ownership is breathtaking, yet predictable, given a culture that treats women’s bodies as products, and sexual desire as a service. Bellying up to the latest swimsuit issue like a tourist at a restaurant serving an unfamiliar cuisine, some guys feel justified in chewing on the merchandise, spitting it out, and leaving a one-star review.
Last May, for instance, controversial commentator Dr. Jordan Peterson notoriously quit Twitter in a huff after being ridiculed for his SI-induced temper tantrum. “Sorry. Not beautiful. And no amount of authoritarian tolerance is going to change that,” he’d tweeted, above the cover image of the objectively gorgeous, curvy model Yumi Nu. (Peterson returned to the platform shortly after, having overcome his sense of oppression.) Even self-identified Christian commenters have hurried to express disgust over the presentation of a different standard of beauty. One allegedly faith-based parody features a father punishing his teenage son by handing him the Martha Stewart issue, a “joke” that is sick on multiple levels.
No shade to Martha herself: Her cover photo is tasteful, and even her other images in the magazine are chic by SI standards. She’s justifiably proud of her youthful appearance, which she says comes from clean eating and good skin care habits, not surgery—although she admits to using fillers and “a little bit” of Botox. She’s confidently posted make-up-free, realistic selfies on Instagram. And although she sets a new age record for SI, she’s not the first senior citizen to be featured. Billionaire Elon Musk’s then-74-year-old mother, Maye, appeared last year.
But SI’s inclusive strategy isn’t a win for Martha or any other woman. And not because it provokes a gusher of poisonous, high-profile misogyny.
After all, one of the benefits of aging is gradually setting the beauty standard du jour aside. While young girls are subject to relentless cultural coercion to be sexy, as the years go by, the pressure becomes less and less meaningful; although some women experience this as a transition to invisibility, it’s also glorious to have escaped what feminist writers Emily and Amelia Nagoski call the Bikini Industrial Complex. The BIC, which includes media pillars like SI, provides an Eye-of-Sauron-level scrutiny of the female body that is exhausting. When women no longer have to spend so much energy contending with “hotness”—achieving it, maintaining it, resisting it, rejecting it—we can relax into being lovely, confident, and comfortable in our own skin. In that respect, getting older is like getting freer.
SI’s invasion of that formerly demilitarized beauty zone is unwelcome. Especially because, unlike your friends at Verily, SI is not above using Photoshop to change how women look. Actress Brooklyn Decker, a former SI swimsuit model herself, broke her own 2010 cover photo down during an appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. “See this ab? That’s like the magic of lighting right there,” she explained. “So thank you, Sports Illustrated.” Admitting she doesn’t miss that part of her career, Decker told Colbert, “You become a model after you go through hair, makeup, and Photoshop.”
Other SI models who have reportedly had their features digitally altered by the magazine include Kim Kardashian and even plus-size icon Ashley Graham, whose photo her body-positive fans loudly panned over obvious signs of editing. Although she made a cursory response to the SI scandal, about a year later, Graham debuted her own, un-retouched ad campaign for her “Swimsuits For All” line. On her podcast, Pretty Big Deal, Graham has said, “I’ve been on the other side of a [camera] where they take out all my cellulite, they retouch my waist, they narrow my face,” even against her will. “There have been so many times when I’ve been on set, and I say to the photographer, “You see that dimple? Do not take it out.’” Only when she saw the finished pictures later would Graham realize she’d been ignored.
As for Martha Stewart, she insists SI didn’t give her similar treatment. “I was really pleased that there was not much airbrushing,” she told Variety. Discussing her photoshoot on her own podcast, though, Martha advised listeners, “You start getting old the day you're born, but you don't have to show it,” a harmful line that reinforces SI’s anti-woman ethos. It’s not possible to beat objectifiers at their own game by participating in it, or even profiting from it. Solidarity is the most beautiful look of all, and we can’t wait for the day when every plus-size, regular-size, old, or young woman approached by Sports Illustrated’s editors sends them packing.
