Martha Stewart has apologised after sharing an image of herself dressed as a homeless person for Halloween, which provoked a backlash online.<\/p>\n
The 85-year-old media personality, who is worth an estimated US$400m, shared a picture of herself on Instagram on 31 October, in which she had a dirty face and wore ripped jeans and a beanie while holding up a sign that read: \u201cI AM HUNGRY HELP ME!!\u201d The post promoted Stewart\u2019s candle range in the caption and two photos in the carousel.<\/p>\n
Multiple commenters immediately criticised her decision. \u201cWhy do you think poor people who are dying on the side of the road are a costume?\u201d one asked, while another wrote: \u201cRead the room Martha, people are struggling out here.\u201d<\/p>\n
On Sunday, Stewart issued a statement to media outlets including Page Six and People magazine explaining the costume<\/a>, but fell short of apologising.<\/p>\n Her costume was \u201cintended to bring more awareness to the very serious subject of homelessness\u201d, she claimed, adding that she was \u201cdistressed\u201d that the costume \u201coffended\u201d people.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve spent decades teaching others how to celebrate Halloween<\/a> \u2013 sharing fun, festive recipes, providing unique craft ideas and giving tips on entertaining and hosting to make the most of one of my favorite holidays of the year,\u201d Stewart said.<\/p>\n \u201cI am distressed that my Halloween costume yesterday, which was intended to bring more awareness to the very serious subject of homelessness, has offended people, which was never my intention.<\/p>\n \u201cHomelessness continues to remain one of America\u2019s greatest challenges and ongoing crises, something that I care deeply about and I have spent a significant amount of time and effort supporting charities that combat this ongoing social epidemic. I am committed to continuing to make a difference.\u201d<\/p>\n Hours after that statement was published, Stewart wrote a second statement on her Instagram in which she apologised.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s hard to admit when you\u2019ve really screwed up. My earlier statement didn\u2019t go far enough,\u201d she wrote. \u201cI know many people are economically struggling. Wearing a costume like I did was insensitive and not funny. I\u2019m very sorry.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI want to know the annual salary of everyone who was OK [with] it,\u201d one commenter wrote. \u201cLove Martha but how did no one on her PR team tell her that wasn\u2019t a good idea?\u201d another asked.<\/p>\n There are at least 770,000 homeless people across the US, according to official figures, with hundreds of new bills criminalising<\/a> sleeping outside<\/a> or lingering in public spaces having passed since the supreme court ruled in 2024<\/a> such laws were constitutional.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Martha Stewart has apologised after sharing an image of herself dressed as a homeless person for Halloween, which…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":955363,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[49,48,75],"class_list":["post-955362","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/955362","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=955362"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/955362\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/955363"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=955362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=955362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=955362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}