Cynics might say it’s about courting controversy, but I think these fancy dress faux-pas hint at a bleaker truth
It’s not easy being an optimist these days. It requires practice, like exercising a muscle. It’s why I like to think of reading the news as a kind of challenge, batting away the miserable updates with optimistic mental rebuttals. Global heating on track to exceed the 2C threshold? “But we have the technology to turn this around!” I think. A well-funded global fascist network? “People have overcome worse!”
And so it is that this week I find my optimism being put through its paces by the news of US superstar homemaker Martha Stewart and her offensive Halloween costume of a homeless person, complete with a dirt-smeared face and a sign reading “I AM HUNGRY HELP ME!!”.
How’s this for a more upbeat interpretation: she is preparing for her next chapter as an edgy, anti-humour one-woman act known as Martha Stewart Lee. I can see it now: her Fringe show – which I am calling Laundered – receiving rave reviews. “After decades of perfect tablescapes, Martha Stewart serves up something truly unpalatable: herself.” Five stars!
Before influencers made “being a Pinterest board made flesh” a viable career, there was Stewart. Arguably the US’s national authority on doing domestic things properly, Stewart, now 85, built an empire of cookbooks, magazines, TV shows and homeware. In 1999, she took her company public and became a billionaire. Then, in 2004, she was convicted of conspiracy, obstruction of an agency proceeding and making false statements to federal investigators, and served five months in prison.
Back to the photo. The negative response was immediate – “what in the ‘let them eat cake’ is this costume?” asked one user – and even though the post was quickly deleted, screenshots had already secured the veteran lifestyle guru a place in the Famous People in Tone-Deaf Fancy Dress hall of fame. Stewart is in illustrious company: Bill Maher as the bloodied body of the beloved conservationist Steve Irwin, weeks after he was killed by a stingray; Chloë Sevigny as the corpse of Diana, Princess of Wales; and the depressingly long list of celebs in blackface, or apparently having a laugh referring to genocides (see: Prince Harry in a Nazi costume, or any celebrity wearing a Native American costume).
As celebrity apologies go, Stewart’s was a real doozy. It had all the hits, such as the “I’m so shocked everyone is upset by the objectively upsetting thing I did” classic – to quote Stewart, she was “distressed” that the costume had offended people. You see, dear readers, it turns out she was just raising “awareness to the very serious subject of homelessness”. A noble cause, which she pursued by using the post to promote her candle range, with the caption: “My QVC candles are perfect for Halloween!!!”
Let’s just take that at face value for a second. Maybe it was meant to be provocative. Maybe, just maybe, it’s a kind of Halloween jumpscare that leaps out at you precisely when you’re indulging in pointless candle shopping to remind you consumerism is not working for everyone. Yep, definitely that, and definitely not a mistaken upload providing a snapshot into the dehumanising ways the rich and powerful can come to see ordinary people when they think we’re not looking. As costume, as gimmick. As punchlines.
Say what you like about Martha Stewart Lee, but her work sure does make you think.
Jokes aside, how do these incidents keep happening? How do people whose entire brands depend on public approval – with teams of staff and social media to test the water – get it so wrong? Some, like Maher, court controversy and dine out on the notoriety. I doubt Stewart is one of them, though she has form in turning scandal into success post-prison. But if every costume-to-cancelled incident was just intentional marketing strategy, then surely there’d be less apologising after? Perhaps it’s the yes-man culture that surrounds the wealthy so that no one dares say: “Heidi, darling, Klummy-pops, love the Halloween party, but dressing as a Hindu goddess might read more ‘disrespect’ than ‘hot and wrecked’, you know?” And of course, there’s the algorithms that reward shock.
But I can’t help but feel that fundamentally it’s the result of being in the ivory tower: the strange, insulated life that comes with sustained wealth and only ever mixing with people at your level, and the inevitable disconnection from the levels of decency the rest of us possess. So potent is the effect that even five months in prison, among women who’d likely have experienced homelessness, didn’t give Stewart pause as she dirtied her face this Halloween.
But there is one reason for cheer. The whole episode did raise awareness of homelessness. Coverage of the row reminded readers that more than 700,000 Americans are homeless. And at a time when many Americans are being squeezed by the cost of living, a multimillionaire was told in no uncertain terms that poverty is not a punchline. For any atrophying optimism muscles, consider that one rep done.
Coco Khan is a freelance writer and co-host of the politics podcast Pod Save the UK
