Does Martha Stewart’s Sports Illustrated cover promote unrealistic beauty standards for older women?

Sports Illustrated’s decision to put 81-year-old Martha Stewart on the cover of its annual swimsuit issue should be an occasion for celebration, right?

The longtime purveyor of unrealistic beauty standards, centered on young, lithe women, has given the spotlight to its oldest ever swimsuit model, ostensibly showing that a mature woman like Stewart doesn’t need to be invisible in American society. She, too, can be glamorous, beautiful, powerful and sexy. About her cover, the lifestyle entrepreneur regards it as a “historic” moment for  women’s empowerment, saying: “I want other women to feel that they could also be on the cover of Sports Illustrated.”

Thrilled to be on cover of the @SI_Swimsuit issue! I hope this cover inspires you to challenge yourself to try new things. Pick up on newsstands May 18th! #SISwimsuit #SISwim23 @ruvenafanador pic.twitter.com/DsRgLr6crK

— Martha Stewart (@MarthaStewart) May 15, 2023

But should Sports Illustrated get lauded for taking an anti-ageist stand with its Stewart cover, when it may very well have used a graphics editing software to remove any of the usual signs of aging from her face and body on the cover? In the photo, Stewart’s face is remarkably free of wrinkles, while her legs, throat, arms and cleavage look similarly smooth, as well as devoid of any sagging or age spots. Her hair is blonde and tousled. The cover is a bit of a departure with how Steward looks in swimsuit photos inside the magazine and in a video that accompanies the cover. Stewart looks more her age.

Maybe, as TMZ would say, the white-swimsuit-clad Stewart has good genes — or good docs. Many on social media lauded the cover, with one person tweeting: “Love to see it! She’s proof that a woman can be beautiful and sexy throughout life and that is inspiring!” Over on Martha Stewart’s Twitter account, people filled her feed with praise, with one fan writing: “Spectacular! Congratulations! So gorgeous and strong! A true role model for women!”

Some would say it’s ageist and sexist to scrutinize Stewart’s appearance and to question of whether she benefited from skillful airbrushing to make her look younger than 81 on the cover. Others would correctly point out that few celebrities would dare to appear on a magazine cover or on a social media post without at least some Photoshop help to remove small imperfections.

But others said the apparent manipulation of Stewart’s appearance on the cover undercuts any empowering message she or Sports Illustrated want to convey about women being beautiful at any age.

“I can’t blame her, she’s an attention-seeker, but I can’t help but think of the unrealistic aging standard being set, similar to the unrealistic body images magazines have always set,” one person wrote. “You need to pay a lot for this look at our age.”

Someone else wrote: “I’m a fan of Martha’s but nobody looks like that at 81. Don’t know what else to say except give me a cover of Judi Dench in a turtleneck any day.”

The excessive use of beauty filters and Photoshop for celebrity image-making has become a hot topic in recent years, with critics saying the practice promotes unrealistic beauty standards and contributes to the body image problems experienced by many women. Khloe Kardashian, her sisters and other celebrities regularly make news when fans suspect that editing software has been deployed make them look slimmer, younger or more impossibly perfect.

In 2021, the Harvard Business Review published a study that showed that tools used to enhance or modify appearance in photos and video can “provoke anxiety, body dysmorphia, and sometimes even motivate people to seek cosmetic surgery.”

Stewart’s Sports Illustrated cover comes at a time when ageism in American society is a hot topic. In some ways, older women are finding increased acceptance in Hollywood. At 61, Michelle Yeoh won the best actress Academy Award for “Everything Everywhere All at Once” while looking glamorous on the Oscars campaign trail. In her Oscars acceptance speech, she declared, “Ladies, don’t let anybody tell you you are past your prime. Never give up.”

Her 64-year-old co-star, Jamie Lee Curtis, also won best supporting actress and spoke forcefully about why it’s important for older women to stop feeling the need to “conceal” their wrinkles, gray hair or curves. While filming the movie, Curtis said she insisted that no filters or other alterations be used for her character. She wrote on Instagram: “In the world, there is an industry — a billion-dollar, trillion-dollar industry — about hiding things. Concealers. Body-shapers. Fillers. Procedures. Clothing. Hair accessories. Hair products. Everything to conceal the reality of who we are. And my instruction to everybody was: I want there to be no concealing of anything.”

Curtis’s approach may be in contrast to how Stewart and Sports Illustrated decided to present her historic swimsuit cover. Curtis also may be following the path being carved out by women who are openly celebrating their wrinkles, laugh lines and crow’s feet, while laughing off ageist and sexist standards of beautify, as explained in a 2016 HuffPost photo essay.

For the essay, women, ages 52 to 90, posed for images that didn’t conceal the passage of time visible on their faces. “Rather than fight the inevitable effects of aging, they see the lines on their faces as a road map of their lives,” the accompanying text read. “They are the etchings of many years fully lived — and each and every one of them has been earned.”

14 women reveal why they love their wrinkles in stunning photo series https://t.co/uvG1omeDkZ pic.twitter.com/fDE6g51SDt

— HuffPost Life (@HuffPostLife) June 9, 2016