'A Good Thing': the Commodification of Femininity, Affluence, And
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University of Massachusetts Amherst ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014 2-2009 It’S ‘A Good Thing’: The Commodification Of emininityF , Affluence, And Whiteness In The Martha Stewart Phenomenon Melissa A Click University of Massachusetts - Amherst Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_1 Part of the American Studies Commons, Gender and Sexuality Commons, and the Mass Communication Commons Recommended Citation Click, Melissa A, "It’S ‘A Good Thing’: The Commodification Of emininityF , Affluence, And Whiteness In The Martha Stewart Phenomenon" (2009). Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014. 42. https://doi.org/10.7275/5645130 https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_1/42 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014 by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For more information, please contact [email protected]. IT’S ‘A GOOD THING’: THE COMMODIFICATION OF FEMININITY, AFFLUENCE, AND WHITENESS IN THE MARTHA STEWART PHENOMENON A Dissertation Presented by MELISSA A. CLICK Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Massachusetts Amherst in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY February 2009 Communication © Copyright by Melissa A. Click 2009 All Rights Reserved IT’S ‘A GOOD THING’: THE COMMODIFICATION OF FEMININITY, AFFLUENCE, AND WHITENESS IN THE MARTHA STEWART PHENOMENON A Dissertation Presented by MELISSA A. CLICK Approved as to style and content by: ____________________________________ Carolyn Anderson, Chair ____________________________________ Lisa Henderson, Member ____________________________________ Marta Calás, Member ____________________________________ Jan Servaes, Department Head Communication ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This dissertation has been many years in the making and is the result of the support, guidance and generosity of many invaluable people. Carolyn Anderson has been endlessly helpful through this process, giving me priceless guidance and patient support. Her comments were always right on, and her advice to “keep rolling” kept me going. I could always count on Carolyn to tuck a funny comic strip or comment about Martha Stewart in the middle of her suggestions for revision; I always found it right when I needed a laugh. Carolyn, thank you for making my work stronger and for making me a better scholar. Committee members Lisa Henderson and Marta Calás offered unwavering support and rich feedback. Barbara Cruikshank, Sut Jhally, Justin Lewis, Michael Morgan, and Kathy Peiss contributed to my intellectual development and gave me many of the tools I needed to think through the issues raised in this dissertation. I was absolutely blessed to have had such a wonderful community of up-and- coming scholars with whom to develop ideas. James Allan, Andreas Correa, Esteban del Rio, Vincent Doyle, Alicia Kemmitt, Katie LeBesco, Kembrew McLeod, Saila Poutiainen, and Katherine Sender inspired me and kept me going. Maureen Gray, Kendra Olson Hodgson, and Ronit Ridberg helped me forget about grad school, when appropriate. The dedicated Communication staff offered me much help through the course of my graduate studies. Thanks to Susan Dreyer, Debbie Madigan, Kathy Ready, April Tidlund, and Pearl Simanski for helping me navigate the UMass bureaucracy. iv I am deeply indebted to the women and men who took time out of their busy schedules to come talk about Martha Stewart with a woman they had never met—your experiences added incredible depth to this project. Sandra Furey-Gaither, Barbie Greppin, and Sheba Ratzkoff helped me find people to interview, and the American Institutes for Research, Debbie Callahan, Nina Huntemann, the Media Education Foundation, Brad Seawell, and the University of Massachusetts gave me quiet, private locations to hold my interviews. The Department of Communication at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst provided recording equipment and funded many of the expenses incurred as I traveled to interview members of Martha Stewart’s audience. My colleagues in the Department of Communication at the University of Missouri, Columbia provided much-needed support and the promise of a tiara when I finished. Much thanks to Jennifer Stevens Aubrey, Lissa Behm-Morawitz, Loreen Olson, and Rebecca Meisenbach. Kathy Denker, Sacheen Mobely, and Leslie Rill regularly cheered me on and Michael Kramer’s regular inquiries applied necessary pressure. Thanks also to Cathy Illingworth, who always had a FedEx box when I needed one. Thanks to my parents, Gary and Carole Click for teaching me to value education and for enduring endless conversations about my dissertation. My brother Felix patiently waited through months of silence while I wrote; he is also really great at using tab leaders. Thanks to my amazing son Trey, who let Mommy go to work without too much fuss (and thanks to Johanna Oldham for being so wonderful with Trey—it made it ok for me to leave). Chip Callahan and Nina Huntemann have been tirelessly supportive through this whole process—I couldn’t have done this without either one of you and certainly wouldn’t have wanted to try! v ABSTRACT IT’S ‘A GOOD THING’: THE COMMODIFICATION OF FEMININITY, AFFLUENCE, AND WHITENESS IN THE MARTHA STEWART PHENOMENON FEBRUARY 2009 MELISSA A. CLICK, B.B.A., JAMES MADISON UNIVERSITY M.A., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Ph.D., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Directed by: Carolyn Anderson This study examines the ideologies of gender, race, and class present in Martha Stewart’s unprecedented popularity, beginning with the publication of Stewart’s first magazine in 1990 and ending in September 2004, after Stewart’s conviction for her involvement in the ImClone scandal. My approach is built on the intersection of American mass communication research, British cultural studies, and feminist theory, and utilizes Hall’s Encoding/Decoding model to examine how social, cultural and political discourses circulate in and through a mediated text and how those meanings are interpreted by those who receive them. Drawing from textual and ideological analysis of over thirteen years of Martha Stewart Living magazine and twelve weeks of Stewart’s four television programs, I investigate the ways in which the mode of address in Stewart’s media texts positions her simultaneously as a close friend and respected teacher. As the model for “living” in her media texts, Stewart uses these modes of address as the foundation of her messages about women’s roles, racial and ethnic traditions, and social mobility. To understand how readers and viewers make sense of these messages, I conducted focus group interviews with thirty-eight fans of Martha vi Stewart Living between October 2002 and July 2004. Two distinct types of fans emerged as my interviews progressed, and the participants, who have a range of different gender, race, sexuality and class identifications, expressed a variety of positions on the messages about gender roles, racial representations, and class aspiration they observed in Stewart’s texts. I was uniquely positioned to examine how fans’ feelings about Martha Stewart and Martha Stewart Living changed when Stewart was indicted, convicted and sentenced to prison because of her sale of ImClone stock; as a result of my observations, I argue that scholars should take a closer look at how fan practices and beliefs function in fans’ lives and in the larger culture. In total, this examination of Martha Stewart’s media texts and audience members offers a rich account of the ways in which discourses of gender, race, and class influenced American culture at the turn of the twenty-first century. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS.......................................................................................iv ABSTRACT...............................................................................................................vi CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................1 Purpose and Scope .........................................................................................3 Stewart’s Predecessors...................................................................................6 Martha Stewart and MSLO............................................................................12 The Exemplary Life ...........................................................................14 The Voice of the Expert.....................................................................15 Elite Taste ..........................................................................................16 Similarity to Predecessors..................................................................25 Trouble in Paradise ............................................................................27 Preview of Chapters.......................................................................................33 2. THEORIES AND METHODS ..............................................................................37 Introduction....................................................................................................37 Theories..........................................................................................................37 American Mass Communication Research........................................37 Dewey and the Industrial