Mad About Martha? Have We Got a Doll for You

She has taken elegant living to a place beyond the stratosphere.

Perfectly executed dinner parties, faultlessly handcrafted gifts, wondrously symmetrical gardens--the indomitable Martha Stewart can and has done it all.

But now, someone has finally cut her down to size--10 inches, to be precise.

“Mad About Martha: The Fabulous Paper Doll Book” (Cader Books, 1996) is an unauthorized parody that pokes some nasty fun at the blond empress of divine domesticity who is quickly taking over the world with her Martha Stewart Living magazine, a Lifetime cable show, a mail-order business, holiday TV specials, a line of house paint and numerous books.

(Warning to devoted Martha worshipers: This book is only for those carrying on a love-hate or hate-hate relationship with Stewart.)

Among the 10-inch Martha’s outfits and accessories:

* A lime green pantsuit and a tray of junk food goodies.

* A “Kiss Me I’m Polish” apron, pink bunny slippers and a recliner.

* A “Martha’s Day Off” ensemble complete with green mud mask, a copy of “How to Marry the Man of Your Dreams” and a big bowl of Toasted Sugar cereal.

* Martha as Marie Antoinette.

* Martha the dominatrix, clad in spiked leather gear and fishnets, with a whip and a voodoo doll bearing the face of her ex-husband.

The book also contains mock “to-do” calendars, a la the ones in her magazines. On her list: “Paint Detroit,” “Look fear in the eye,” “Manipulate world chintz market” and “Initiate leveraged buyout of Time-Warner.”

It’s a life that just begs to be parodied, and Michael Cader, president of New York-based Cader Books, decided to take on the task with an editorial and production team, and illustrator Robert Rodriguez.

“We tried to think of how to get at the kinds of things we thought were interesting, compelling and ultimately funny about Martha,” he says, “and somewhere along the line we realized it should be product-oriented. Paper dolls popped into my mind as the inverse of most Martha Stewart projects.

“The problem with what Martha does is that everything takes so long, and when you try to re-create it, it never looks like what she does, and you’re always disappointed that it doesn’t look the same. These are pre-printed, and as long as you don’t cut too far with the scissors, you should be OK.”

This isn’t the first published dig at Stewart. Tom Connor and Jim Downey penned “Is Martha Stuart Living?” (Southport Beach Productions, 1994) and “Martha Stuart’s Better Than You at Entertaining” (HarperCollins, 1995), books that have delighted the anti-Martha camps with a spoof of a dinner party (after dessert Stewart presents the guests with a five-figure bill) and a chapter where she changes water into Merlot.

Cader is in awe of what Stewart accomplishes yet still can’t fathom trying to re-create some of her projects, such as sawing little grooves into walnuts to make place cards.

“It’s ingenuity bordering on insanity,” he says, “because if someone started doing that in your house, you’d lock them up.”

And Cader believes that depicting Martha as a dominatrix or as a mad, poultry-slaughtering chef is completely in keeping with the spirit of satire.

“Sometimes I think you make your point better by going to extremes than by staying too close to home. You hear people speculating about what she’s really like. Is she really the smooth, Armani-clad entrepreneur, or is she something a little badder underneath?”

Cader hasn’t heard from Stewart directly since the book has come out, but a couple of gossip column items indicated that she may not be amused.

“I hope they recognize that it’s in the spirit of fun,” he says. “I think it’s just a reflection of what a large part Martha has assumed in our pop culture. If she’s not enjoying it, maybe she’s making a Michael Cader paper doll book.”