From the WebMD Archives
June 10, 2003 — Recent allegations against the so-called “Queen of Perfection,” Martha Stewart, may be distressing to some of the millions of people who cook and decoupage along with Martha every morning on Martha Stewart Living and those who dog-ear every other page in her magazines and catalogs.
Last week, domestic goddess Martha Stewart was hit with a five-count indictment including conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and securities fraud related to the sale of her stock in a biotech company called ImClone that is run by a close friend. If convicted, she could face a maximum sentence of 30 years and a $2 million fine.
And some fans are up in arms. They are selling T-shirts and hats with such slogans as “God Save the Queen” and “Free Martha: It’s a Good Thing” and raising money for her defense, according to recent media reports. And entrepreneurs are hawking copies of the indictment on Ebay.
There’s Something About Martha
“People identify with their favorite celebrities and invest a lot of emotional energy into following them, believing them and trusting them,” says Jason Kornrich, PhD, director of ambulatory mental health services at the Nassau University Medical Center in East Meadow, N.Y., “and for a lot of people — especially those who are not very involved in their own relationships or work, [scandals like the current one involving Martha Stewart] can be a real let down, raise real trust issues, and cause feelings of sadness, loss, and betrayal.”
For certain people, “when a celebrity lets you down, it’s almost like a father figure or mother figure is letting you down,” he tells WebMD. “People who are not happy in their relationships can idealize celebrities, and when something happens, that shows they are not who they say they are and we see the dark or the human side. People can really feel crushed.”
If you fit this bill, let it serve as “a wake-up call,” Kornrich says. “If [Martha Stewart’s ‘fall from grace’] really affected your sleeping, eating, and mood, it could be a wake-up call to find new friends, start exercising, get a pet, take some art classes, and spread out your emotional energies.”
Psychoanalyst Susan Vaughan, MD, an assistant professor of psychiatry at Columbia University School of Medicine in New York, has faith that most people will be able to divorce Martha’s latest soufflé recipe from her current financial and ethical woes.
That said, “It can be unsettling,” she tells WebMD.”We know, trust, idealize, and put celebrities like Martha Stewart on a pedestal, and they walk on water, so when that person starts to make changes and shows the range of their human qualities, you can feel betrayed, as in ‘why is this person doing this to me?'”
This can cause anxiety, she says, especially “combined with terror alerts and everyone thinking that we are not getting the whole story and that nothing is as it seems,” she tells WebMD.
Instant Access to Information Partly to Blame
“People can get into real anxiety cycles where they are following a particular story or issue especially with all the access to instant information,” Vaughn says. “Anxiety gets them to latch on to information more and chase it more, [but] to feel less anxious, more in control, you have to step back and say, ‘This story is not that important and a year from now I can read about what happened to Martha and there will be an ending.'”
Her best advice? Turn off your computer or television and go for a walk.
Sociologist Carla Rodriguez, PhD, professor of sociology at Fordham College at Lincoln Center in New York, tells WebMD that “the expectation might be that people would lose confidence in communication and begin to distrust what they see on television and what they read in the newspaper, [and] I think there is a lot of cynicism that has crept into the body politic.”
“Adding to everything,” she says, “is the kind of corporate crimes that have also received media attention where workers take salary cuts, discontinue their cost-of-living increases, or are fired at the same time top CEOs have been adding to their income,” she says. “This makes people more distrustful then they have been before.”
“If you are a diehard Martha Stewart fan, this is one more thing that can cause worry and tension,” says Hiten Patel, MD, a psychiatrist at Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, Mich. “Along with betrayals by other people in the news, people become very cynical and skeptical about public figures, and, obviously, we look to them to set an example. … The kind of examples that they are setting are not really healthy.”
