Saint Martha Stewart

"It's a good thing," says Martha Stewart with a beatific glow, and her audience, enraptured, applauds the close of the familiar ritual. Martha has been lionized, derided, and imprisoned, a good start for a modern-day hagiography - but to a cultural anthropologist what she is doing is communicating values and cultural models.

Let's start by considering her audience. It comes as no surprise that they are mostly women, but even though her tastes seem decidedly upper-crust, do we imagine that she appeals to the very rich? No, for one thing, she used to work for them; she is not actually one of them (not old money, at any rate). For another, they have people to do the things she is demonstrating. Finally, they are tuned into their very own secret rich people television network, Plum TV (http://www.plumtv.com); check it out if you don't believe me.

What about very poor women? Again, this seems pretty obvious. If you have to get up at 4:45 am to catch a bus out of Pacoima, you probably do not have the time to conduct the precise rites she demands; or the stamina at the end of your assuredly long day to make a flower arranging gift kit.

No, Martha is communicating with all of us here in the middle. Women with a little bit of time in the corners of our day, a little wiggle room in the budget. We want to take those resources and exchange them for some cultural capital, and she happens to have some in her exquisitely organized closet.

"It's a good thing" places the object (milk glass collectibles, antique silver napkin rings) or activity (loading a dishwasher correctly, poaching an egg perfectly) squarely in the WASPy tradition to which 'we' all aspire to in America. For women who may be on the first rung or two of solid upward mobility, those words are a blessing, a balm to minister to stressed out souls. By mastering the code of Martha, a woman can unlock new levels of membership and access in the complicated status game that is the 21^st Century United States. That is no trivial reward.

Martha is a missionary - spreading the good news about good taste to women whose grandmothers and mothers, though full of great advice, may not have possessed the Rosetta Stone for WASP culture. Martha, no WASP herself, has translated the key for her followers. She also, like any good household saint, leads by example. Her homes are now being replicated by KB Homes; her furniture choices are being reproduced for the (well-heeled) masses; and of course, most famously, she brought her signature style to Kmart. Her taste is not haute, not avant garde, but genteel, lady-like, and safe. She offers a palette of crisp khakis, smooth creams, and muted pastels (eggshell blue, never baby blue), classic lines, and symmetrical Georgian details. She samples the blandest of the bland from every era: Colonial architecture, yes; Colonial iconography with its penchant for memento mori and symbols of damnation, no; swooping Victorian lines on furniture, yes; weird wall art made from the hair of dead relatives, no.

This makes sense when you think of her as in loco grandparentis. My very Southern, very WASPy grandmother taught similar rules by both edict and example. Beyond the obvious ones about 'always wearing clean underpants' and 'not wearing white after Labor Day' (not just shoes, y'all) there were a thousand other subtler, weirder rules while you were growing up. It was enough to have you thinking your family was just making these up to drive you crazy. Yet, when you got out into the wider world, you found these functioned like signals, allowing you entrée into certain circles like a secret handshake. Wearing red shoes and piercing your ears was out of the question unless you wished to be mistaken for a lady...of the evening (to this day I have never owned a pair of red shoes, Christian Louboutin be damned). You can use a Southern lady's silver pattern as a zodiac - as in the book 'A Southern Belle Primer: or why Princess Margaret will never be Kappa Kappa Gamma' by Maryln Schwartz - or even to diagnose personality disorders (my grandmother's choice of Buttercup was a clear indication for megalomania). Here's another one: always cut a sandwich on the diagonal, and eat it across from point to point, never chomping down directly in the middle. Some rules only become obvious in the breach; I once dumped a guy for chugging a Kir Royale. I mean, c'mon! You don't see James Bond glugging champagne, now do you?

Martha's 'Good things' are initiation into this secret code. Any system of communication functions through the natural application of rules for creating meaning. Languages and cultural codes are constantly evolving, within a framework of rules. Once you know the rules inside and out, you can apply them in any situation. Culture is adaptive and flexible, and changes with the times. Just like I listened to my Grandmother on the topic of the red shoes, so I did not listen to her about the ear piercing, and my lobes have been violated multiple times. Most people play with the rules - revising, revisiting, reinventing - of their culture, bending and shaping them to their circumstances.

A disciple of Martha can cash in her cultural chips for some social credibility once she understands the rules. Only one problem arises, and that is when followers apply the rules too literally. This, of course, is no trouble to Martha as it is what she has built her empire upon. However, if one fails to extract the principles from what Martha is communicating, and attempts instead to put them exactly into practice, one runs the risk of being unmasked as a pretender. A literal translation often makes no sense to the native speaker. So take Martha's message to heart, she is singing out the rules for aspirational success, but just make sure and have fun with her instructions; play with them, bring your own taste to them; don't take them as a lock-step manual for getting yourself invited to a weekend party in the Hamptons!