Martha Stewart's apology came late: a costume joke can't hide behind 'awareness'

Can you raise awareness of hunger by putting on dirt makeup, grabbing a cardboard sign and posting it next to a candle ad? Martha Stewart's weekend suggests the answer is no, and that she eventually figured that out too.

Here is what happened. On Saturday, October 31, Stewart, 85, posted a photo in ripped clothes with a smudged face, holding a sign that read "I AM HUNGRY HELP ME!!" It sat inside an Instagram carousel promoting her QVC candles, captioned "My QVC candles are perfect for Halloween!!!", as the Sydney Morning Herald reports. The post was deleted, but screenshots had already spread. Her first statement said the costume was meant to "bring more awareness" to homelessness and that she was distressed people were offended. It did not include an apology.

Hours later she changed course. In a follow-up on her Instagram, quoted by Fox News, she wrote: "It's hard to admit when you've really screwed up. My earlier statement didn't go far enough." She called the costume "insensitive and not funny" and said she was "very sorry."

"Awareness" is the alibi everyone reaches for

The first statement is the interesting one, because it follows a script we know well. Do something that lands badly, then retroactively assign it a noble purpose. The trouble is that awareness needs a mechanism. Somebody has to learn something, give something or do something differently.

None of that was visible here. As IBTimes notes, she didn't name the charities she says she supports, didn't say whether the costume was tied to any fundraising, and there is no confirmed evidence it was part of a charitable campaign. Add the sales pitch for candles around it and "awareness" starts to look like a label applied after the fact. We can't know what she was thinking, and we won't pretend to. But the crowd's reading, that she explained it only once people stopped laughing, was an easy one to reach.

The joke was on the wrong people

A costume is a joke, and every joke has a target. Heidi Klum, the same weekend, went as a giant severed hand, a gory fantasy that mocks nobody. Her Halloween party is a case study in the idea that the best costumes are absurd, ambitious and aimed at no one in particular.

Stewart's target was a person with no home, played by someone with a fortune that sources put anywhere from $400 million to $570 million. The sources disagree on the figure, and one of them notes that it is not independently verified. Still, "hundreds of millions" is not in dispute. That gap is the whole problem. Putting on poverty for a night is only possible for someone who can take it off.

The stakes are not abstract either. According to a Congressional Research Service report cited by IBTimes, 745,652 people were experiencing homelessness on a single night in January 2025, and 266,320 of them were without shelter. For them, the sign is not a prop.

Defenders said people are "thin-skinned" and that "it's Halloween." We understand the impulse, and Halloween is supposed to be a license to be silly. But a license to be silly is not a license to punch down, and "it's a joke" works only if the people it describes are in on it.

The apology is the part worth copying

Credit where it's due: the second statement was better than most celebrity apologies. It names the mistake, drops the excuses and doesn't ask us to feel sorry for her distress. We think the first statement did more damage than the costume's afterlife on Reddit, because it asked the public to accept a rationalization. The second one simply said "not funny."

There is also a lesson in the commercial setting. We can't know who saw this costume before it went up, but it looks like nobody with a say stopped a brand with Stewart's reach and resources from pairing a begging sign with a candle promotion. One critic noted that she has the creative team and budget for any costume she wants, and in our view the one she picked was among the least imaginative on offer. If no one flagged it, that is a process failure, not just a personal one.

Our verdict

Celebrity costumes need a simple test: who is the joke on? If the answer is a group of people in crisis, change the costume. Good intentions are not a defense, and "awareness" is not a punchline. If you want to help people who are hungry or unhoused, name the charity, give the money, and leave the cardboard sign at home.

Stewart ended up in the right place, but she took the long way there. The lesson for the rest of us, and for next October's publicists, is to skip the first statement and write the second one in advance.