Martha Stewart’s Empire Monetized More Than Just Domesticity

After watching Martha, the new Netflix documentary charting the rise, fall and eventual redemption of Martha Stewart, it’s difficult not to walk away with the vague urge to do something—throw a party, bake a pie, arrange some flowers, check in on your enemies. That’s not the point of the film, which was released at the end of October, but Martha just has that effect on people.

Stewart’s appeal as a titan of DIY homemaking and lifestyle media has long been described as aspirational, an unsurprising assessment given that the world she’s spent decades building for her audience is one occupied by the moneyed elite. Stewart wasn’t born rich—as she tells it in Martha, she and her siblings learned to garden at their home in Nutley, New Jersey, because they needed more food than her parents could afford, and she became a teen model, because the money was better than what she could earn for the family by babysitting.