Martha Stewart’s Success Lies In Her Credibility

We have taken the July/August issue of the outrageously successful Martha Stewart Living into the laboratory and uncovered a few of its secrets. Lifestyle mags catch on when they present a coherent, consistent world to readers eager to figure out their own lives. It’s a world of dreams, but to succeed they must be credible dreams. Some of the ways Martha Stewart pulls it off:

Everything looks real. Few magazines have figured out this trick. The rooms shown in Architectural Digest are arranged and photographed to appear forbiddingly perfect.

By contrast, on Page 55 of Martha Stewart Living we find a photo, typical for this magazine, of a pantry that appears to have been shot directly from life. The sink and countertop are old and scratched. The door is open to a scraggly back yard. The cat in the doorway has matted fur.

The lighting is different. A female consultant called in for gender expertise points out that, unlike the photos in most other home and garden mags, Martha Stewart’s shots appear “wistful and loving.”

It always looks like someone’s beach house. Even in winter, the Martha Stewart universe has the casual air of summer. The houses all seem like places that are lived in only part of the week. They are never full of objects, and what objects there are never appear precious or even valuable. In these kinds of houses, as on summer vacation, the possibilities for good, spontaneous living feel infinite.

Lives are being lived here.

You could live this way too. The reason so many women are hooked on Martha Stewart’s magazine - its circulation has topped a million - and her Sunday TV show is the promise she holds out. Her vision is not of some impossible paradise where rich people sport among themselves, but of a life that might be lived in any American suburb, right now, with the help of a few good recipes and decorating tips.

Best of all, the vision is inclusive: Stewart seems to really want others to learn these domestic skills and thereby attain the same middle-class ideal that Americans have been pursuing for generations - more fun and happy times in a roomy house with a yard.