Martha Stewart recently showed up on the world’s social media feeds wearing an apron and seemingly nothing else.
In the sponsored Instagram post, Stewart promoted Green Mountain Coffee Roasters’ pumpkin spice coffee pod. It quickly made its way around several platforms. She compares herself to the coffee in the video ad, exclaiming over their shared “natural beauty.”
Martha Stewart is a household name best known for her lifestyle business empire including cookbooks, cooking shows and the “Martha Stewart Living” magazine. More recently, she’s hosted “Martha & Snoop’s Potluck Dinner Party” alongside rapper Snoop Dogg since 2016.
She has been nominated for and won several awards for her television programming and cookbooks since 1995.
It makes sense that a coffee brand would want Stewart as a brand representative.
This ad represents more than a new coffee pod flavor, though. It also demonstrates an age-old marketing tactic: sex sells.
Stewart’s video has much more engagement than her other recent Instagram reels with over 6 million views and thousands of comments. Some view the ad as a positive contribution to body positivity and sexual liberation, which are undoubtedly important as women 50 years old or older are significantly less likely to have media representation.
There’s a fine line between ownership and exploitation of one’s body that Martha Stewart is currently walking.
“Thirst traps” and suggestive posts are not inherently bad and can be empowering in their own right. It’s the use of sexuality for business purposes that concerns me.
Women deserve to feel sexy as they choose. Women shouldn’t have to rely on sexuality to stay relevant. These are not contradictory statements.
Celebrating confidence is different from acting on social pressures.
If women aren’t listened to until they’re physically attractive, there’s an issue. Appearing nude under an apron to advertise a partnering coffee brand isn’t the solution.
We hold our public figures to a higher standard because they have a greater impact on social norms. It’s irresponsible for notable women to sexualize themselves for the sake of profit because they set the norms everyone else adheres to.
Self-objectification shouldn’t be the standard for women aiming to build or maintain a brand.
In the age of influencer marketing, thousands of young people are working to build up social media followings and secure paid brand deals for money and exposure.
This raises the question of who has more power to turn down a paid partnership or direct the content of a sponsored post: a 20-something-year-old with a few thousand followers, or multi-millionaire Martha Stewart?
Young people are going to see how much more attention Stewart has received from this sponsored post, as opposed to celebrations of her achievements.
This doesn’t send an empowering message, but a degrading one: even as Stewart has won high-level awards, opened restaurants, and published nearly 100 cookbooks, her body has recently earned more social media attention than any of these successes.
Whether we like it or not, celebrities affect the way we view the world around us. Sexualizing oneself as a means to sell product or increase engagement changes the landscape of social media.
This isn’t a specific call for Martha Stewart to advertise coffee fully clothed. Instead it’s important to examine why incredibly successful women may feel that their relevance is only tied to their physical appearance.
Women and our bodies are not commodities or marketing tactics.
Even if we’re selling our images ourselves, we need to pay mind to what exactly we gain and the cost it may cause to others down the road.
Katie Hettinga can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @katie_hettinga