Cloud bread, pesto eggs, pancake cereal, pasta chips, smash burgers: ever since the broad launch of TikTok in 2017, the video-sharing app has evolved into a digital cookbook for viral recipes. Here, we’ve got sexy chefs plating aesthetic grub, silent vloggers hypnotising viewers with meditative ASMR, and even cucumber girls redefining the way we cut fruits.
Although TikTok has aided the rise of several creators and experts in the food and dining industry, the internet has always had a sweet spot for the OGs. While the 60s recorded Julia Child, the messy and forgiving chef who vowed to “take a lot of the la dee dah out of French cooking,” the 90s witnessed the ascent of a corporate overachiever-turned-domestic superachiever.
Cue the lights! In waltzes lifestyle whiz Martha Stewart, “America’s first self-made female billionaire.” For baby boomers, Stewart professionalised housekeeping with her expertise in “beautiful soups and how to make them, beautiful houses and how to build them, beautiful children and how to raise them.”
For millennials, her books became saturated with nostalgia for lost traditions and a simpler era. Meanwhile, for gen Zers, the kitchen sink idealist has now evolved into an ageless icon synonymous with thirst traps and NSFW subreddits. Who would’ve guessed, huh?
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Nevertheless, Stewart presides over the cult that she has built up from scratch, devoted both to her name and image. If you’re ever on a quest for recipes and stumble across her website, chances are that you’d end up following the same—given her footing as a seasoned lifestyle guru.
Although Stewart’s identity as a wise queen of domestication has catapulted her to a ‘soft-spoken gran’ status among gen Zers, the DIY diva has done some not-so-adorbs things in the past. From committing food crimes against humanity to raising her daughter with a “glue gun pointed at her head,” here’s the ugly truth behind the cookie-cutter exterior of Marthaland.
One of the highly-publicised controversies surrounding Stewart is her insider trading scandal back in December 2001—when she avoided a loss of $45,673 by selling all 3,928 shares of her ImClone Systems stock after receiving material, non-public information from Peter Bacanovic, her broker at Merrill Lynch. The day after her sale, the stock value fell by 16 per cent.
In the months that followed, Stewart drew heavy media scrutiny. On 25 June 2002, CBS anchor Jane Clayson grilled the shrewd businesswoman on air about ImClone during her regular segment on The Early Show. In response, Stewart continued chopping cabbage and stated: “I want to focus on my salad.” Understandable.
Come 3 October 2002, Stewart resigned from her position on the board of directors of the New York Stock Exchange—which she held for a mere four months. The following year, she was indicted by the government on nine counts, including charges of securities fraud and obstruction of justice. She then voluntarily stepped down as CEO and chairwoman of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia Inc. (MSLO), but stayed on as chief creative officer.
In March 2004, after a six-week jury trial, Stewart was found guilty of felony charges including conspiracy to obstruct, obstruction of an agency proceeding, and outright lying to federal investigators. Side note: during the investigation, Stewart told officials that she never received the insider information and instead had an agreement with Bacanovic to sell if the stock fell below $60. The one document to back up this claim was proven to be a forgery.
In July 2004, Stewart was sentenced to serve five months in a federal correctional facility and a two-year period of supervised release—including five months of electronic monitoring, which she didn’t have the best track record for compliance, but more on that later.
Stewart also agreed to a five-year ban from serving as a director, CEO, CFO, or any other officer role responsible for preparing, auditing, or disclosing financial results of any public company. What’s more is that, in June 2008, the UK Border Agency refused to grant her a visa to enter the country because of her criminal convictions.
Martha Stewart avoided a loss of $45,673 by inside trading. She spend 5 months in prison and 5 months home confinement and a court fine of $30,000. She was fined by the SEC an additional $137,019. How much time and fine should Elon Musk be given for his pump and dump of Twitter?
— Louie Gohmert's Bailiff (@GohmertS) April 14, 2022
The same day that she was sentenced to five months in the Federal Prison Camp in Alderson, West Virginia, a stoic Martha Stewart declared: “Many good people have gone to prison. Look at Nelson Mandela.” During an ABC interview, the then-62-year-old added: “I could do it. I’m a really good camper. I can sleep on the ground.”
During her time in jail, Stewart said her nickname was “M. Diddy.” In the minimum-security federal prison—which she dubbed “Camp Cupcake”—the business mogul spent her time doing what she does best: arts and crafts. According to The New York Times, Stewart’s jail stint involved everything from making “jam out of the crab apples on the tree” to a ceramic nativity set.
“You’re allowed to make three things in a year, I think, and I only had five months so I made an entire creche… the entire scene of the nativity,” she said. “So, I had many figures, something like 15 figures, and you’re only allowed to make three, but I persuaded them the whole nativity was one and they fell for it. You couldn’t just make three camels—you had to make everything.” Martha knows best, I guess?
Although she has since eased on her comments about the South African anti-apartheid activist, many believed that Stewart served a relatively-light sentence at a pretty cushy prison before being put on house arrest. And boy was her house arrest yet another controversy in Marthaland.
As it turns out, Stewart’s massive estate was not big enough to contain her for an additional five months. According to the New York Post, Stewart was allowed to leave her home for up to 48 hours per week, but only to attend work, church, doctor appointments, and food shopping.
However, she was spotted around town taking a yoga class and book shopping, among other leisure activities. The Post also reported that Stewart gave an interview in which she “mimicked the voice of her probation officer, bragged of knowing how to remove her electronic monitoring anklet, and spoke of leaving the confines of her house.” The result of her antics? Authorities forced Stewart to spend an extra three weeks of home timeout. Plenty of time to think about her actions, if you ask me.
Despite the routine homage that Stewart pays to the concept of ‘family’, she is not remotely interested in the messy contingencies that come along with the same. Although that’s understandable in the right context, Stewart’s daughter Alexis has previously admitted that being the lifestyle guru’s offspring is no easy feat.
In her 2011 memoir, Whateverland: Learn to Live Here, Alexis penned that Stewart was extremely tough on her. “If I didn’t do something perfectly, I had to do it again,” she wrote. “I grew up with a glue gun pointed at my head.” Alexis also levied claims against her mother including peeing with the door wide open. “I remember saying, ‘You know, now I have friends over! You can’t do that anymore! It’s gotta stop! My friends’ parents don’t do it! Give me a break here!’,” she shared.
Apart from her ill bathroom manners, Alexis claimed that the domestic goddess was a total Grinch during the holiday season. Forcing her to wrap her own Christmas presents, Stewart reportedly cancelled Halloween. “There were no costumes. There was no anything. We turned off all the lights and pretended we weren’t home,” Alexis admitted. Yikes, it seems like Stewart even had it out for all the children in her neighbourhood.
Stewart also wasn’t a fan of keeping any sort of prepared foods in the house. On these terms, Alexis went on to state that her mother was “a hoarder” who took “a very hands-off approach to child-rearing.” Heck, she further mentioned that Stewart refused to get her a bra when she hit puberty.
Although Alexis dedicated the book to her mother, who called the read “hilarious,” it seems that they still share a somewhat strained relationship. In her book, Alexis stated that Stewart is a terrible guest. “My mother will occasionally complain that I don’t invite her over for dinner,” she wrote. “But can you blame me? Because, sometimes this is what will happen: whatever I serve, she will sip it, taste it, make a face, and push it away.”
If there’s one thing fans praise Stewart for, it’s the fact that she always “lets her intrusive thoughts win” against public figures and world news. However, this trait has only landed the business mogul in hot water and controversies beyond recovery—and one of her most notable feuds has been with American actress and Goop founder, Gwyneth Paltrow.
In 2013, Stewart told Bloomberg TV: “I haven’t eaten at Gwyneth’s house, and I’ve never seen how she lives. But if she is authentic, all the better. I mean, I certainly hope she is… She’s a charming, pretty person who has a feeling for lifestyle. She wants to be a lifestyle arbiter. Fine. Good. I think I started this whole category of lifestyle.”
The following year, Stewart took a more aggressive approach to establish her footing as a lifestyle queen by stating that Paltrow “just needs to be quiet. She’s a movie star. If she were confident in her acting, she wouldn’t be trying to be Martha Stewart.” A few months later, she also went on to design a dessert called “Conscious Coupling” for her Martha Stewart Living magazine. This was a clear swipe at Paltrow’s divorce from Chris Martin, in which the couple referred to the split as “conscious uncoupling.”
But Paltrow didn’t let Stewart have the last word. In retaliation, Goop followed suit by uploading a recipe for “Jailbird Cake” on its website. Spicy, indeed. Paltrow was later quoted saying: “No one has ever said anything bad about me before, so I’m shocked and devastated. I’ll try to recover.”
Then, in January 2020, Stewart once again decided to comment on Paltrow’s iconic vagina-scented candle by saying that “she’s trying to shush up the public to listen to her. And that’s great. I mean, let her do her thing. I wouldn’t buy that candle.”
As it turns out, Stewart isn’t fond of Gossip Girl alum Blake Lively either. When Lively launched her own lifestyle company called Preserve in 2014, Stewart slammed the actress for emulating her. “Let her try,” she told HuffPost Entertainment. “I mean, it’s stupid. She could be an actress! Why would you want to be me if you could be an actress? I just did a movie yesterday, though—I can’t even tell you about it—but I want to be Blake Lively.” You see, Martha, your intrusive thoughts are having intrusions of their own here.
Fast forward to 2015, when Lively’s Preserve had to eventually shut down. At this point, Stewart offered minced words of encouragement by stating: “I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I know she made a big effort… Sometimes shuttering is good. Listen, she’s a movie actress. Why bother with commerce right now? She’s at the top of her career. I’m totally supportive, but you know what? Maybe you can’t do everything at the same time.”
In 2010, Stewart also took a veiled dig at Oprah Winfrey when she appeared on her talk show and discussed her prison sentence. “I used the time extremely well and I had visitors all the time, very good visitors,” Stewart said. “A whole lot of fabulous people came and visited me. I knew you were too busy.”
Lastly, the DIY diva called out the ride-hailing app Uber in 2018 after her first drive turned into what she described as a “mess inside and out.” According to Stewart, her first Uber didn’t show up. Meanwhile, the second car arrived ten minutes late and at the wrong address. She further claimed that it stopped halfway down the block and she “could not see the licence plate.”
When she successfully got inside the cab, Stewart then took issue about water bottles being stored in the back along with the dirt on the floor. Hey, Martha, have you ever considered the possibility that it may have been “a good thing”?
Martha Stewart's first Uber ride deserves to be a film https://t.co/eJyVLi9KOA pic.twitter.com/cyevTzvfm1
— 𝐭𝐫𝐞𝐲 𝐭𝐚𝐲𝐥𝐨𝐫 (@treytylor) November 19, 2018
In 2000, Stewart purchased a 152-acre property in Katonah, a suburban town just north of New York City. Spending most of her time on the impressive farm, it’s safe to say that the business mogul adores her house. That being said, she also had an affinity for the name of the town in itself.
Come 2007, Stewart tried to trademark the name ‘Katonah’ for use on home furnishings, paints, and other products. Maybe she should’ve thought twice before being such a Halloween party pooper because surprise, surprise—her neighbours were not too pleased and fought to stop the trademark. In the end, they reached a compromise and Stewart could only use the name for furniture, mirrors, pillows, and chair cushions and not hardware, paint, lighting, and home textiles.
However, her stunt didn’t just anger the residents of the town. Stewart also insulted the indigenous people of the region. As noted by Mashed, Katonah is a Native American name belonging to a 17th century chief and the local Cayuga Nation wanted no part in sharing it with the magnate. At the time, a representative said, “If it’s being done for profit, then of course it’s offensive. Of all the names in the world and all the words, why can’t she pick something out that’s not offensive?”
At this point, we’ve all established that Stewart is a bit of a perfectionist. It hence comes across as no surprise that she’s a control freak in professional settings. In 2013, a former MSLO executive told Vanity Fair that Stewart was destroying her own empire.
“The company should be more successful, but it is just limping along, because of her—because she doesn’t trust anybody and she has to control everything,” they shared. “Martha is delightful, charming, brilliant, fascinating—if you are in the room alone with her. You bring a third person in and it becomes poisonous. She has to dominate.”
The source went on to add: “Martha’s an omnivore. She just wants more, more, more. She has many houses. Even though she has a million pieces of garden ornaments, she buys more garden ornaments. Even though she has a million trees, she buys more trees. It’s her genius and it’s in some ways her downfall—that ‘always hungry’ thing.”
Other people interviewed in the article concurred, stating that Stewart always put herself before the company. “[MSLO] was almost like two companies: one was the group of people who were trying to run a company that is publicly held. The other was Martha’s camp: the little girl who is trying to make sure that she gets as much money as she can,” they claimed.
As someone who repeatedly hammers her self-proclaimed status as a lifestyle queen in humanity’s collective consciousness, the truth is that Stewart is a really, really, really bad food photographer. So bad, in fact, that her fans have previously cried out in protest, questioned her sobriety, and circulated an intervention-style petition requesting that she “get the help she needs.”
Although her content has indeed witnessed an evolution in terms of aesthetics, her 2013 self just can’t be ignored—or should I say digested. Here’s a peak into some of the food crimes the diva has committed in the not-so-distant past:
@MarthaStewart that LITERALLY looks like diarrhea
— Michael Saggio 🥋 (@MichaelSaggio) November 20, 2013
@MarthaStewart LOOK LIKE DISHWATER SUDDS
— ITS JUST ME AGAINST THE WORLD🖕🏾 (@BIGBOSSBLANCA) November 16, 2013
At the end of the day, Stewart still doesn’t get why people don’t like her and is apparently clueless as to where and why some pesky rumours started in the first place.
“I don’t understand it. I write books. I’ve [published] beautiful magazines. I’ve done television shows that are devoted to good living. I don’t know,” she told Today. “Maybe because I’m confident. I think sometimes, ‘Maybe I’m too confident. Maybe I should have failed’. And maybe I should have, just, gone away and dug a hole and jumped in. You know—who knows?” Okay, now who’s going to sit Martha Stewart down and inform her of the countless listicles on her questionable behaviour circulating on the internet today?
Depending on which generation you were born into, you might know the American actor and musician Jared Leto for a wide array of reasons. I personally remember him from Requiem for a Dream and the absolute trauma that movie caused my 15-year-old self. Some may also associate Leto with Fight Club’s Angel Face character while for others his face brings forth unwanted flashbacks from the car crash that was his performance as Suicide Squad’s Joker. Heck, if you’re not much of a movie buff but know a thing or two about fashion, then Leto can only represent one thing to you: Gucci’s creative director, Alessandro Michele’s most favoured muse, placed even before Harry Styles and Lana Del Rey on the pedestal.
But Leto should be known for more than his surprisingly long-lasting acting career or the name he’s made for himself in the music industry with his band Thirty Seconds To Mars—fronted by the man himself along with his brother Shannon Leto on drums. It’s time for Leto to be dragged for more than his embarrassingly meme-worthy acting attempt in House of Gucci—it’s about time we addressed the problematic behaviour he’s been displaying for years without ever facing the repercussions. From accusations of paedophilia and rape to his bizarre cult island, we’ve gathered all the receipts.
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When the Leto brothers formed their rock band in 1998, they probably never imagined the fan base it would accumulate over the years. Thirty Seconds To Mars (also known as 30STM) went on to consistently enjoy sold-out tours and even headline numerous festivals. Known for its energetic live performances, fused elements from a wide variety of genres, its use of philosophical and spiritual lyrics, concept albums, and experimental music, the band took a strange turn when it started holding cult-like “summer camps” for its audience in 2015.
What seemed to have started as an ironic comment—in 2013, Leto told The New York Times Magazine that it was “a joke, a response to journalists saying, ‘You have such a cult following.’”—quickly turned into a golden opportunity to fleece their audience. In August 2019, while on yet another island retreat they’d held in Croatia for hundreds of fans, Thirty Seconds To Mars tweeted, “Yes, it’s a cult,” sending the internet into an understandable frenzy.
Yes, this is a cult 🔺 #MarsIsland pic.twitter.com/4I7JROg90w
— THIRTY SECONDS TO MARS (@30SECONDSTOMARS) August 15, 2019
As reported by KQED in September 2019, the band’s fans “collectively refer to themselves as ‘the Echelon’, and are a group that seems overwhelmingly immersed not [just] in music nerd-dom, but rather a more general sort of love for the community surrounding the band.” I mean, just watch 10 seconds of the fan-made video below and you’ll get an idea of the megachurch vibes 30STM is giving off:
Oh, and in case you’re still not convinced, keep in mind that the Echelon also seems more than happy to don all-white uniforms and worship Leto’s feet. No biggie.
The Meniac Messiah....
— P⨺OL⨺ ₪ ø lll ·o. (@PaolaOnMars) August 15, 2019
Seduction is his game... 💜 pic.twitter.com/SCN8iI5qj2
Yes it is and I'm proud to say I am one of the believers.
— Matti (@altum68) August 15, 2019
🙏🤗❤💃🎶🦄🥒🥵🐜😂😎🌈 Thank you for the best 3 days of my life. #LiveLikeADream #MarsIsland #MarsIsland2019 #yesthisisacult #youwouldntunderstand 😜 pic.twitter.com/Ca0ljFe8j4
KQED further noted, “Like many cults, the Echelon espouses an us vs. them mentality via the hashtag #YouWouldntUnderstand, a refrain Leto repeats often. That idea has pushed supporters to ever more fervent degrees of devotion any time the band receives any degree of criticism.”
Looking into the band’s eyebrow-raising trips, the publication revealed that its Camp Mars event, which was held between 7 and 9 September 2019, charged $999 for two nights of outdoor camping, where you had to bring your own tent and supplies, Fyre Festival-style. The getaway also included daytime outdoor activities like rock-climbing and archery, plus two Thirty Seconds To Mars concerts, which the band called ‘Church of Mars’. More expensive dorm options were also offered, but the only way to sleep in a space that wasn’t shared with strangers was to pay $6,499 for a “VIP experience.” Neat.
But that’s all fine, because Leto declared the band “anti-greed” back in 2013. Whether the whole cult aspect surrounding 30STM started as a joke or not, what certainly seems to be serious is how aware Leto is of his fans’ dedication to him. This thirst for devotion has most definitely played a part in the worrying accusations the celebrity has faced both before and after.
In May 2018, in the midst of the #MeToo movement, Dylan Sprouse—yep, that’s the twin brother of Cole Sprouse who is best known for his role as Zack Martin on the Disney Channel series The Suite Life of Zack & Cody and its spin-off, The Suite Life on Deck—posted a tweet accusing Leto of sending DMs to every model aged 18 to 25.
Yo @JaredLeto now that you’ve slid into the dm’s of every female model aged 18-25, what would you say your success rate is?
— Dylan Sprouse (@dylansprouse) May 16, 2018
It quickly escalated when Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn tweeted the following as an answer to Sprouse’s initial tweet, “He starts at 18 on the internet?” Though the tweet has since been deleted, many netizens managed to grab a screenshot beforehand:
This was not the first time Gunn tried speaking up about Leto’s predatory behaviour either. In June of 2015, the director reportedly did a live stream on the video app Periscope in which he made similar remarks about the actor’s habits of sleeping with underage girls. SCREENSHOT did not manage to locate a copy of the video in question.
In that same year, the New York Post reported that the 30STM frontman had been pursuing teen models. “He’s been approaching all the girls and inviting them to his shows,” an anonymous source told the paper. “He’s a serial texter. He is constantly texting these 16- and 17-year-old girls. It’s really kind of creepy.”
For a man who openly held a competition in which the prize was a night sleeping in his bed and who fronts a band that is known to specifically request their fans get tattoos in their honour, to be accused of such things should have been enough to eventually lead the actor to face at least some kind of consequence. And yet, not much happened to the cult leader in 2018, even after a worrying number of allegations, some from years before then, started appearing online.
Though the article has since been wiped clean from the internet, in July 2015, pop culture writer for the now-vanished media criticism site Contemptor, Evangeline Van Houten, made some waves for her piece titled Another Cosby? A Reminder That Several Women Have Accused Jared Leto Of Sexual Assault. In it, the journalist collected several confronting allegations of sexual misconduct from fans of 30STM.
A number of victims, as young as 15, described having sex with Leto and some of the allegations suggested the singer acted despite a lack of consent or continued even when asked to stop. One account stated, “He was very pushy into coercing me to do sexual acts with him and he was quite rough and forceful. Once he was unnecessarily rough and when I told him it hurt he didn’t stop—he never did anything slowly or for my pleasure… And no, he never asked me if I was ever ok or comfortable with anything he wanted to do, simply because he is not the person to care.”
The 50-year-old actor never tried to respond to such accusations, and let’s be honest, it never seemed like he really had to, especially since barely anyone even made the effort to shed light on his alleged predatory behaviour. A Reddit thread based on the article mentioned above includes many more shocking accounts, in case you’re wondering exactly how many victims we’re looking at here.
In 2014, a Star Magazine print issue featured an interview with former adult film star Vicki Marie Taylor claiming that, back when Leto dated Cameron Diaz, she and three other strip dancers had been invited to a post-concert get-together one night in April 2002.
“The other girls and I stripped down to bikinis and hung out with Jared and the band backstage,” Taylor told Star. “After a while, Jared invited me onto his tour bus. His brother, Shannon, the band’s drummer, was already on it and the three of us were the only people there. I gave Jared a lap dance for just a minute, but then he asked me to do the same for his brother, who was sitting on a couch. As I started to dance for Shannon, Jared suddenly grabbed me around the throat from behind and said to me, ‘I can reach pure sexual enjoyment in 30 seconds just by looking into your eyes’. Obviously, it was kind of a weird situation.”
She went on to say that Leto then sat back down and watched Taylor lap dance his brother for ten minutes until a roadie announced it was time for them to leave for their next gig.
Is Jared Leto’s consistent predatory behavior really unknown to the public or did the collective conscious shut it down a la Bill Cosby’s 2004 sexual assault case everyone selectively forgot about until Hannibal Buress made ppl remember?
— helen (@helen) May 17, 2018
The internet is home to many (many, many) more accounts of Leto allegedly sexually assaulting (sometimes underage) victims. However, some internet users have suggested that such online accusations are not to be taken seriously due to the fact that they never actually evolved into sexual assault and rape police cases—a very stupid and uneducated way of looking at the situation.
How many times do we have to say it? The fear of not being believed makes it even harder for victims to come forward, so imagine how frightening it must be for anyone facing Leto and his somewhat invincible yet invisible team of lawyers. Almost 90 per cent of sexual assault survivors will never go to the police.
And it’s not only that victims are worried people won’t believe them, they also worry they will face horrific repercussions for coming forward with their story—whether personally, professionally or from the perpetrator themselves—especially if they go on to report the assault to concerned authorities. Seeing how much of an expert Leto is at emptying his fans’ pockets, it’s not hard to think of the many options he has under his belt when trying to silence his victims.