Martha Stewart's posing for Sports Illustrated's swimsuit issue a blow against agism?

A stooped woman once tottered up to Mark Twain and asked if he liked old ladies. He replied, “Yes, and I also like them your age.”

This quote is notable for being one of the few times Twain was caught in an overt act of political correctness. He savaged politicians, robber barons, kings and titans “with a pen warmed up in hell,” as he phrased it, but he was wise enough not to cross women of a certain age.

So what would he have said about Martha Stewart, who at 81 posed for the cover of Sports Illustrated’s annual swimsuit issue? What can anyone say, in an age where we are expected to talk incessantly without saying anything?

If this were 1993 instead of 2023, an octogenarian swimsuit model would have been a hanging curveball to humor writers and Baptist preachers alike — the latter seeing it as a sign of apocalyptic hedonism, the former making jokes about croquembouche pasties. But we can’t do that anymore obviously, so we sit back and offer up universal polite golf applause for a blow struck against ageism. I guess.

But there is 81 and there is 81. It’s not like the magazine put Granny from "The Beverly Hillbillies" on its cover. If SI really wanted to be provocative, it would have published swimsuit pix of an 81-year-old who had spent her life working in a chicken plant, struggling to feed her family, and unable to afford adequate health care.

Martha Stewart is a freak; she’s the LeBron James of lifestyle. And she's worked hard at it. Don’t assume you’re going to get to 81 and be like her, kids, because I’m here to tell you it ain’t so. Insisting that age is just a number is like believing IQ is just a number. It might be a number, but it’s a number that has relevance.

Most people get to 81 and, like George Burns said, you bend down to tie your shoes and you wonder what else you can do when you’re down there.

There are all kinds of ways to measure old age, but mine is this: If you still wave at the flagman when you drive through a construction zone, sorry, you’re old. I’m not being critical, because I fall on the old side of this dividing line myself. (Although I do think it’s a real shame that everyone else my age is getting old; thank heaven that isn’t happening to me.)

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In fact, this standard reveals the truth that sometimes old is better. We have a residual friendliness about us, leftover from the days when you could turn around in someone’s driveway without worrying that your car would wind up looking like Bonnie and Clyde’s.

We have the time to look a stranger in the eye, wonder where they live, if they have a family, what they like to do in their spare time, and offer up a gentle genuine wish that their life is going OK.

I’m sure Martha Stewart waves — well, not at the flagger in particular, but at the gardener outside the gates of her mansion going after that one stray ragweed with a flamethrower.

What people seemed to miss, though, is that the cover said less about MS than it said about SI.

How many people knew Sports Illustrated was still publishing a swimsuit issue? Or for that matter, how many people still knew Sports Illustrated itself was still being published?

Here’s how you know if you're old: if you can remember when SI was essential reading and had the most eloquent and talented stable of writers of any publication in the country.

Today, Sports Illustrated is the Bell and Howell of magazines, publishing the print equivalent of tactical sunglasses. Last year Elon Musk’s mother was on the cover and no one noticed; this year Martha fulfilled SI’s cry for attention, but where do they go from here?

Grandma Moses, call your service.

Tim Rowland is a Herald-Mail columnist.

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Mail: Swimsuit issue magazine cover a reminder of getting older