Quote:
Originally posted by Not Me
Her products sold for two reasons - people liked what she had to say and people liked her. I don't like her and don't buy her stuff. But she has fans who do like her.
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Martha Stewart has made millions by taking decorating and entertaining tips from the urban gay men who invented her schtick, and putting it all into little kits than can be sold to suburban women who tell themselves they have no time to do this shit from scratch. She takes what happens in Chelsea and brings it to Connecticut, and is hailed as a hero.
Quick example --- the better-kept Victorians in the Castro/Noe Valley (read: gay men) have been stringing white Christmas lights in dangling icicle patterns for probably 15 years. When I first saw it, I thought "what a cool idea --- I never would have thought of that." Within a few years, you saw it on Martha. Then they started selling icicle lights at Walgreens. The pattern repeats itself.
The gardening fascination is the only thing she didn't steal. Gay men who garden, like Martha, is doing nothing Gertrude Jekyll didn't do decades ago.
