Where is our Martha Stewart or our Oprah Winfrey? Lost in our cultural cringe I suspect.
While newsagencies across Australia have two or three magazine titles connected with Oprah Winfrey and Martha Stewart, we don’t have any for an Australian. It seems we crave more of these iconic US celebrities and their stories, opinions and supporters than we do our own.
Ita is the closest I can recall and that had a short life.
So what is it with Oprah and Martha? Leafing through the titles, I don’t get it. The content is aspirational on the one hand and adding weight to the iconic status of the two ladies on the other. As I said, I don’t get it – but, then, I am not the target demographic.
As with movies and TV shows, I wonder about the Australian voice and whether is is becoming lost. Magazines play a smaller yet important part in telling our stories, considering world events from an Australian perspective and creating local icons over whom we can fawn.
There was talk of swimmer Susie O’Neill planning to become a media personality with matching lifestyle products after the 2000 Olympics. But she’s hardly been heard of since. Deborah Hutton? Kerrie-Ann?
Oprah and Martha control their own image and associated products and publications in the US, whereas here it’s always a TV channel creation.
Martha Stewart Weddings is a fantastic magazine (its content anyway not the massive amount of adverts) and it was a long time before Australia had similar magazines with a similar vibe about them (Real Weddings/Creative Weddings do it now). For weddings anyway!