If Martha’s world went masculine …

Having just read a recent newspaper column by the one and only Martha Stewart, I am beginning to understand why so many women cringe at the mere mention of her name.

How could an average woman live up to such lofty domestic standards, and why would she want to? In this installment, for instance, the Exalted Matron of the Manse guides hapless women through the many chores that absolutely must be done to ensure a flawless new spring season – the only kind worthy of the Martha seal of approval. In a long checklist that her loyal readers are asked to follow closely, lest something critical be overlooked and spring become a time of shameful household dysfunction, she tells homeowners to freshen their rugs and carpets by hanging them on a clothesline and beating them with a tennis racket. She urges them to get busy and wash and wax their floors, to flip their mattresses and box springs, to clean their refrigerators by discarding all food items that are past their expiration dates. Who but the ever-creative Martha could have conceived such clever ideas?

Then it’s on to those dingy curtains, which Martha sagely advises women to take down and wash, before replacing the batteries in the smoke detectors. And if there’s any time left in the day, presumably before women must head to the kitchen to prepare an elegant little gourmet dinner for 12, Martha suggests getting out the ladder to trim a few asymmetrical trees and inspect the chimneys.

Do women really need to be told such things, I wonder? How many years must a woman live in a house before she recognizes, all by herself, that dirty things actually do need cleaning and that moldy food is no longer suitable for the kids’ lunch? How did women survive on this planet before there was a Martha Stewart to lead them down the pristine path to domestic perfection?

Then I had an eerie thought. What if, for purposes of gender equity, there existed a male counterpart to Martha Stewart? A Martin Stewart, perhaps – a tall, blond, handyman god capable of doing everything better than any mortal male could hope to, a square-jawed fussbudget whose sole purpose was to make men obsess about all they had yet to accomplish around the house.

“While the wives are busily weaving fettuccini noodles into whimsical little pasta baskets,” I can hear him say, “this would be a great time for husbands to get the family vehicle back into tip-top running shape after a harsh winter. So, let’s put on our safety goggles, gentlemen, and begin by dismantling that dirty engine piece by piece, being careful to color-code each part with …”

A Martin Stewart could explain, for example, how men might build a handy backyard steel-smelter with which to fashion new lawnmower blades and hand tools. With Martin’s help, we could learn a nifty method of making appealing golf-club grips, rubber fishing boots and garden furniture from recycled automobile tires. Ask Martin, and he’ll tell us how to resurface our worn roof shingles with the gravel that the public works trucks have deposited all over our property through the winter. In subsequent columns, we’ll even learn how to turn old appliance cords into sturdy doormats by knotting them in eye-catching nautical motifs that our bowling buddies are sure to envy.

Want to add a bit of country charm and instant curb appeal to your home? A simple project, explains the April edition of “Martin Stewart Living.” Just spruce up a 1940s-era John Deere tractor with red paint, add subtle faux-rust accents, then park it on the side lawn to create the impression of a genuine back forty right in the heart of suburbia.

No, it’s definitely not a good thing.