Vinay Menon: Martha Stewart’s Sports Illustrated Swimsuit cover gives a middle finger to ageism

Martha Stewart was 23 when the first Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue arrived.

It was 1964. Coincidentally, Babette March, the magazine’s first cover model, was also 23. The inaugural issue, featuring Ms. March in a white two-piece, heralded a dawn of sandy beach bikinis, supermodels and, sadly, ageism.

For decades, you’d have a better chance of finding a barracuda in a treetop than a Swimsuit model older than 30. Now Ms. Stewart, 81, is frolicking in the waters outside a Dominican Republic resort as the oldest cover model in Swimsuit Issue history.

But the most remarkable part is not that she is older than Joe Biden — it’s her attitude toward getting older. As she said this week: “I think all of us should think about good living and not about aging. The whole aging thing is so boring.”

Ageism is the last acceptable form of discrimination. What Stewart is doing with her Instagram thirst traps and now the Swimsuit Issue cover is making fools of the ageists.

Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder. But confidence is universally sexy. And Martha keeps letting her poise hang out with or without an orange coverup. Her friendship with Snoop Dogg defies all conventional wisdom. That’s why it is so charming. We tend to get locked in our ways as the calendar marches forward. Stewart keeps evolving. I don’t even think of her as a lifestyle maven who hawks six-hour recipes for corn custard. Or tips on how to dust an antique candelabra. Or ways to turn your dinner napkins into origami kangaroos.

The lifestyle maven now seems more like a life coach — for women and men.

Some of her quotes from a Sports Illustrated promo video this week include: “When you’re through changing, you’re through,” “Learn something new every day” and “I love to travel — my favourite place to go is the place I haven’t been yet.”

I know. That sounds like derivative psychobabble, the stuff of commercial self-empowerment and New Age paperbacks of the ’80s. Fine. But the difference is these are not just empty words when tumbling from her flawless lips.

She’s been living and breathing these mottos for eight decades.

I never thought I’d feel this way. But I am so turned on by Martha Stewart right now. I would not kick her out of bed for eating crackers, mostly because I can’t afford the crackers she eats so this is a non-starter. Oh, calm down. I’m only objectifying my pantry. It’s her constant reinvention that is so attractive.

Stewart was born during the Second World War and she’s a pin-up in 2023?

That’s a remarkable accomplishment. And the best part? Nobody cares. The culture warriors on the left are not railing against unrealistic beauty standards. The culture warriors on the right not accusing Sports Illustrated of being “woke.” Nobody cares because Stewart’s photo shoot involving 10 swimsuits telegraphs singular confidence.

Forget her skin. It’s her attitude that is strutting around in a G-string.

She explained her Swimsuit cover to People magazine this week: “It was not a goal I set for myself, but once asked, I thought to myself, ‘Let’s do it!’”

She’d say the same thing and now be strapped inside a rocket ship if NASA asked her to figure out a way to grow oakleaf hydrangeas on the moon. You get the sense this woman does not rule out anything. And in a society prone to inertia and rigid expectations, “let’s do it” is as refreshing as one of her paloma or sidecar cocktails.

The Swimsuit Issue hits newsstands on Friday. Other cover models this year include Brooks Nader, Kim Petras and Megan Fox. If my math is right, they have a combined age of 93. And they are getting about 0.05 per cent of Stewart’s publicity this week.

Now, obviously, most of us will never appear in a swimsuit magazine at any age. And, yes, Stewart worked as a model in her teen years, is blessed with freaky genetics and probably sleeps in a hyperbaric chamber custom designed by a team of scientists in collaboration with Gucci. Her salon blowouts take longer than three stops on the Trans-Siberian Railway. She has the deep pockets for luxurious self-care.

But this story is more about her middle finger to chronology itself.

Martha Stewart’s Swimsuit cover is inspiring because she cares less about what anyone thinks than she would have at 23. The older she gets, the younger she becomes. She’s been there, done that and wants to keep trying something new. You don’t reach 100 million fans a month by living inside a demo.

I wouldn’t be surprised if, at 90, she leaks a sex tape.

As she told Sports Illustrated: “Age is not the determining factor in terms of friendship or in terms of success. But what people do, how people think, how people act, that’s what’s important and not your age.”

No wonder Snoop would take a bullet for his unlikely BFF.

They connect in a way that transcends all of the tedious identity barriers.

Martha Stewart’s getups for this year’s issue included “a plunging, red, halter swimsuit, a tan one-piece paired with an oversized beach hat, and a sporty metallic black-and-silver zip-up suit.” The magazine could have put her in a burlap sack.

It is her timeless confidence that jumps off the glossy pages.

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