Express View on Martha Stewart on the Sports Illustrated cover: Age is just a number

Putting 81-year-old Stewart on the cover sends out an especially powerful message against the unconscious — or even conscious — ageist bias that exists in industries such as beauty, fashion and entertainment

A decade ago, it would have been hard to imagine that the swimsuit issue of Sports Illustrated magazine would be helping to subvert a certain narrow idea of female beauty — toned, smooth and young — that continues to grip the collective imagination.

After all, the annual issue, with its widely-publicised and discussed covers, was one of the prominent pillars holding up that idea. With entrepreneur, cookbook author and television personality Martha Stewart on the cover this month — wearing a white swimsuit and big smile — is the magazine finally acknowledging that beauty, female or otherwise, is a concept with a much wider embrace than it had previously dared to accept?

Putting 81-year-old Stewart on the cover sends out an especially powerful message against the unconscious — or even conscious — ageist bias that exists in industries such as beauty, fashion and entertainment. Women bear the brunt of it, having to project an “ageless” beauty, if they are to remain relevant at all. Things may be better now compared to when talk of a married actor’s “shelf-life”, as if she is a bottle of pickle, was all too common, but the problem persists.

In Bollywood, for example, actors like Neena Gupta and Sarika have spoken up about roles drying up or being cast to play the mother of male actors who are only two or three years younger than them.

While these standards, which seem to have been hard-wired into the wider culture thanks to decades — even centuries — of unquestioning acceptance, might be hard to root out, there are signs of change. For example, Sports Illustrated had last year featured 74-year-old Maye Musk on its cover, while international beauty conglomerate L’Oreal includes among its spokespersons 77-year-old Helen Mirren, 85-year-old Jane Fonda and 57-year-old Viola Davis.

Could they help reduce age, as the cliche goes, to a mere number? The largely positive response that Stewart’s recent turn as swimsuit model indicates that there is yet hope.