The lifestyle guru continues make her mark.
It’s hard to put Martha Stewart in a box. Just when you thought you knew America’s beloved lifestyle guru, she does something unexpected, like team up with business partner and friend Snoop Dogg — or, much more recently, appear on the cover of Sports Illustrated.
At the age of 81, Stewart is now the oldest model ever to grace the magazine’s cover, which hit social media on Monday and will be available on May 18. Unsurprisingly, she looks just as radiant as ever, posing in a plunging white one-piece bathing suit.
“I thought, ‘If I’m feeling good enough physically and mentally to do such a thing, I’m up for it’,” she told The New York Times.
While Stewart’s appearance on Sports Illustrated is historic, she’s not the first woman over 60 to appear on the cover. In 2022, Maye Musk — the mother of Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk — claimed that title at the age of 74. This year, Stewart is one of four models who’ll appear on the cover, depending on which edition you pick up; she’s joined by Megan Fox, Kim Petras, and Brooks Nader.
But was the Sports Illustrated shoot as glamorous as it looked? Here’s the real dirt on Martha’s experience:
Behind Martha Stewart’s Sports Illustrated shoot
Stewart spent two months preparing for her big cover shoot in the Dominican Republic. She told The New York Times that she regularly worked out by doing pilates, “didn’t eat any bread or pasta for a couple months,” and started visiting a tanning booth for the first time in her life. But if you think anything about the cover is faked or heavily edited, you’d be wrong. “I’m still healthy, my hair is nice, and my skin is good,” she said. “As for filters, forget it.”
Despite her preparation, there were still some challenges. Stewart recalled having to change in and out of nine different bathing suits, with on-set SI staffers “prodding me and pinching me and pouring water over my head,” but said the result was worth it. “To be on the cover at my age was a challenge, and I think I met the challenge,” Stewart told the TODAY show on Monday.
But the idea of showing her sexier side probably didn’t phase Stewart: For a 2022 Instagram ad with Green Mountain Coffee, she stripped down to nothing but an apron. She also showed off for her four million Instagram followers by pouting suggestively at the edge of her pool for a now-famous 2020 selfie:
How Martha Stewart got her start
Stewart is a woman of many talents: At just 13 years old, she became a model in New York City, appearing in fashion shows as well as TV and print ads. After attending college, she became a stockbroker and worked on Wall Street; though the two fields may seem unrelated, she credited that experience for helping her build her empire in the 1980s and 1990s. After making a name for herself as the author of books on cooking and decorating, she expanded her brand to include a magazine and television program through the entity Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia.
But there were definitely some bumps along the way: Stewart fell from grace in 2004, when was she found guilty of several felony charges related to insider trading. In addition to stepping down as her company’s CEO, Stewart paid a $30,000 fine and served five months in prison, followed by two years of supervised release.
In the decades following the scandal, Stewart certainly bounced back: She resumed overseeing her brand, which now includes everything from the new digital platform Martha.com to her own line of CBD products. And thanks to her partnership with Snoop Dogg and other ventures, she’s as visible in the limelight as ever before.
Why Martha Stewart’s Sports Illustrated cover matters
As her latest Sports Illustrated cover proves, Stewart continues to make her mark by empowering women of any age. “Usually I’m motivated by pay. But this time I was motivated by showing people that a woman my age could still look good, feel good, be good,” Stewart said in a conversation with Sports Illustrated Swimsuit.
Some are already hailing Stewart’s inclusion in the magazine as a major milestone when it comes to showing how far society has come on the topic of shifting beauty standards, which have traditionally fixated on youth.
“Over the past 5, 10 years, people’s standards of beauty are becoming more expansive. Hopefully, on the tails of that, we’ll continue to see more age diversity in media and in portrayals of what we think of as beautiful women or women that should be admired,” University of Pittsburgh professor Holly Thomas told Yahoo Life.
