As I talk to people about what I do, setting the table, I frequently notice defensiveness rising from my listeners. No one has ever been impolite, but sometimes they are anxious to change the subject. I am not surprised because as simple and common as setting the table may be, elevating it in any way touches off an immediate fear in others that they are being judged. I think of this as the Martha Stewart reaction.
When Martha first appeared, her aesthetic sense overall, and especially her tablesettings seemed simpler and more appealing than a lot of what I was seeing in magazines at the time. (I remember one table in House Beautiful that layered floor-length purple plaid silk taffetas heavy with tassels and fringe over a table so laden with gilded dishware and expensive knickknacks that there was hardly room for the Old Master oil paintings on easels that made up the focal point.) Martha's tables made use of plainer, more muted colors, and relied on texture and naturalistic elements like leaves, stones and simple flowers to add interest. I liked them instinctively and it seemed like I was not alone. She rocketed in popularity as she brought homekeeping back from the drudgery vilified by the womens' movement and re-introduced it as a worthy occupation.
Very soon, however, a backlash appeared. Martha was a bitch, you know. Of course she could spend her time thinking about how things looked because she had a STAFF to do all the work. Those perfect rooms and enormous weed-free gardens were just another way to make everyone else look bad. Telling someone that their house looked like Martha Stewart often meant that it was too carefully curated and detailed...not a real house, but something out of a magazine unapproachable by regular people, which was a full reversal of its initial appeal. It was another standard you could never reach.
I think Martha exemplifies the struggle we are still having about what is important. It was important for women to be freed from their required servitude to Home and Family, with its corollary exclusion from any public or self-directed roles, but those homes and families still call to most women (and many men, whose roles are even more prescribed.) We say that "having it all" is impossible, but we still don't know how to balance all the things that seem to matter. In my opinion we are being fed a lot of corporate lines about how we should work and what we should buy, but that's another rant. The cultural changes that our society is undergoing are real and the pressures are significant. No wonder some people take any demonstration of a beautified life as code that they are doing it wrong.
In the best of all possible futures men and women should be free enough from societal or gender expectations to be who they really are. I hope that many people who can choose for themselves will seek a life that encourages beauty, connection and love. The table could be a practical, real-life conduit for those values as a place set aside for coming together, not a test of superior taste or a display of acquisitions. Martha Stewart's (or anyone's) projects and photos could be taken as the suggestions that they are....a palette of possibility from which you can choose (or not), not fiats to be obeyed for fear of revealing yourself as unworthy.
As I get louder in praising the table as a sort of altar of connectivity, I need to find ways to soothe the Martha Reaction and encourage people to do what works for them.