Doing time in “Camp Cupcake”: Lessons learned from newspaper accounts of Martha Stewart’s incarceration.

Popular media images of women in prison are rare and often distorted. Newspaper articles on women in prison are also rare yet potentially offer an alternative view of these women. To understand how female prisoners are depicted by the news media, this research examines newspaper articles written about Martha Stewart’s incarceration. While several themes were identified, this article examines messages related to the correctional system and the effects of incarceration. These articles project distorted and damaging images of female prisoners. By failing to acknowledge how Stewart is different from the typical female inmate these articles normalize her experiences. Overall, these articles send messages that female offenders are not being punished and that they easily transition back into the community after incarceration.