At 81, Martha Stewart Is the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue Cover Star

It’s useless to try to pigeonhole Martha Stewart. Decorously entertaining homemaker-slash-lifestyle guru, television personality, publisher, canny entrepreneur-turned-white-collar criminal, Snoop Dogg’s unlikely BFF — these are labels she spins, or drops when it suits her, as adroitly as a juggler.

Resisting attempts to peg or malign her, Ms. Stewart has survived, even thrived, “not as a Superwoman,” as Joan Didion once put it, “but as an Everywoman.”

But now, at 81, she seems intent on shrugging off that label as well, swapping her “domestic goddess” persona for something a little saucier: badass Martha, a hottie who, it would seem, will shuck her inhibitions as lightly as an ear of corn.

In recent months, Ms. Stewart has teased her four million Instagram followers with goofily seductive, demiclad snaps of herself. She promoted her partnership with Green Mountain Coffee wearing an apron, halter-style, over what seemed to be nothing at all. She baited her fans, pouting suggestively at the edge of her pool. And she followed those antics with a naughty throwback, her 1996 Spy magazine cover, a siren on a seashell, knees hugged to her chest to cover her nudity.

And now, in what some may consider the ultimate stroke of bravado, Ms. Stewart appears on one of the four covers of the storied Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, which dropped on May 15.

She is not the first woman over 60 to appear on the cover. At 74, Maye Musk claimed that distinction. But Ms. Stewart may well be the most candidly cheerful participant in what seems a bid by Sports Illustrated to court controversy and hang on to its relevance.