Melissa Click on Martha Stewart

After spending five months in a federal prison, Martha Stewart will be released on March 6. While she will still have five months of house arrest, Stewart will be facing a new reality television show in the works and a looming insider trading charge from the Securities and Exchange Commission. Melissa Click, a visiting instructor in the Department of Communication who has conducted extensive research on Stewart and is currently writing about her, believes that whether people love or hate Stewart, she will continue to be a pop culture icon.

"Many people feel shame in admitting they like her because she’s been so well mocked in her culture," Click said. "While they may not love her, people respect her expertise and love her products."

In her research, Click combined audience studies with textual analysis to determine how Stewart represented race, class and gender to her fans. She conducted a series of focus groups in New England, consisting of people who were black, white, gay, lesbian, old and young. She also read every Martha Stewart Living magazine from 1990 to 2004 and currently is analyzing hours of Stewart’s television shows.

In some of the focus groups, women who worked at home believed that Stewart’s media messages encouraged respect for often underappreciated work, Click said. Some of the younger women described Stewart as a "mother figure."

"In reality, some women feel she’s doing something feminist," Click said. "She’s a mother figure to many women because their mothers went to work and weren’t home to pass their domestic knowledge on to their children."

However, among the praises were the criticisms. Click said some believed Stewart pressured her audience to aspire to elite ideals because she focuses on only the finest ingredients and materials, many of which are out of the price range of her viewers. Many others perceived Stewart to be obsessive, aggressive and cold.

Even with Stewart’s incarceration, Click says the debate over Stewart’s worthiness as a popular icon is not over.

"Stewart’s treatment in the popular press draws attention to the roles women are allowed to play in U.S. culture," Click said. "In a way, Stewart is such an interesting icon because she confuses gender boundaries, and she’s definitely felt the ramifications for doing so. Her own life story is filled with resourcefulness in the face of adversity. It will be interesting to see if the public will accept Martha Stewart the convicted felon back into their lives now that her know-it-all image has been fractured."

Additional links:

Melissa Click
Department of Communication

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