Uncategorized

Elon Musk’s Fabulous Mother Maye, 70, Has Some Life Advice For Us, And, Arguably, Also For Him

It’s axiomatic that the mothers of great movers and shakers are themselves formidable characters.  Living up to that, and then some, is the indomitable Maye Musk, whose half-century-long career as a fashion model and nutritionist is as remarkable as, well, as the seismic NASDAQ jitters and SEC moves generated by her son, Elon.  Not that Maye Musk will be focusing much on her son’s recent settlement of his spectacular SEC lawsuit, or his having to step down from the chair of his own board, thank you. One senses that the Musk clan lives by the notion, certainly emanating from the matriarch, that those sorts of setbacks are regarded as the knocks one simply takes on the larger fields of play, worthy of serious attention, surely, but no cause for useless fretting.

Rather, last week, as her most headline-generating 𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘥 and his car company were negotiating one of the thorniest and yet most swift page-one SEC settlements in history, Maye Musk walked for Dolce and Gabbana in their SS19 Milan Fashion Week show. She did a similar turn at the beginning of the month during New York Fashion week for Concept Korea’s label. Represented by IMG Models in New York, she’s just landed a Cover Girl campaign.  Not bad for a girl legging into her eighth decade.

Less well known about the senior Ms. Musk is that she was a single mom (of three 𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘥ren) when she moved back to Canada from South Africa, and living up to the J.K. Rowling example, has earned two master’s degrees along the way. As a nutritionist, she regularly gives lectures and presentations around the country and around the world.  Then again, this is the model who, as she puts it, to “celebrate” her 60th 𝐛𝐢𝐫𝐭𝐡day, stopped coloring her hair, preferring instead to let fly her natural silver flag.

That was a decade ago, just as author Anne Kreamer’s clarion anthem to an embrace of the changes of age, Going Gray, was being published. In other words, Maye Musk took the decision before ᵴtriƥping back the layers of female armor and artifice became an established ‘good’ thing to do. For a figure of considerable standing in the business of fashion who traded and still trades on her looks, such as Ms. Musk, the move required admirable steel. In effect, her decision to go gray was a challenge to her industry and the rampant age-ism within it, not unlike some of the past technological challenges engineered in his own fields of automobiles and aerospace by her son, limning the message:  I’m doing this now. You figure out whether or not you can take it, but in the meantime, do please get out of the way.

Not that that example of maternal fortitude was specifically or even generally an inspiration for her son’s tweets about taking his company private back in April, which so caught the attentions of Wall Street and its government regulators. By contrast, there is a streak of stoicism at work in the mother.  Maye Musk has a weakness for chocolates but keeps none in the house so that she cannot indulge, a fact recently admitted in an interview. She remains an unabashed fan of romance novels and an unstoppable plugger of daughter Tosca’s all-romance-all-the-time streaming service startup, Passionflix.

Fifty-year modeling career or no, the recent Cover Girl anointment is definitely a career high not often seen among the grandmother set (at last count, Maye Musk had a reported eleven grand𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘥ren, with Elon contributing six). She is definitely firing on all thrusters, to employ a space travel metaphor, and key to that, in addition to her twin precepts of good nutrition and good manners, seems to be a kind of relentless optimism. Asked by fashion Bible Harpers Bazaar how she felt about meeting the “milestone” of 70, she replied with dry understatement, and with a sharp little dollop of vinegar directed at her interlocutor for broaching the clearly somewhat shopworn question.

“I had been looking forward to it because I feel like things are really going to take off in my seventies,” she said.

As if nothing had, before, taken off.  The message? Don’t mess with Maye Musk.

Related Posts

Meet The Boy Who Vowed To Complete “10 Acts Of Kindness” By 10 Years Old

Maxx Raser is almost 12 now and continues his mission to be kind. When he turned ten in 2023, Maxx heard about Bryan Tsiliacos, who had vowed to complete…

Elon Musk’s mom shares throwback of being Miss SA finalist

Maye Musk – the mother of the world’s richest man, Elon Musk – has shared a throwback of her time as a South African beauty queen, including being…

The new innovation, Elon Mᴜsk claims he can build a $20 billion tunnel that will take people from NYC to London in 54 minutes. Check out his concept

The idea has been dismissed several times due to astronomical costs and technical hurdles Tech billionaire Elon Musk has hinted at a groundbreaking innovation: a transatlantic underground tunnel…

Neighbors Throw Special Parade To Celebrate WWII Vet On His 102nd Birthday.

The residents of a Van Nuys, California, neighborhood may be staying isolated due to the novel coronavirus, but that didn’t stop them from celebrating a very special member…

Air Force Vet Gets Sweetest Surprise From Dunkin’ Workers On His 95th Birthday.

For the past 40 years, the Air Force veteran has left his home in Lynn, Massachusetts and walked about a mile to Dunkin’ on Lewis Street. Inside the…

TGL expansion bidders emerge as Serena Williams’ husband puts Rory McIlroy and Tiger Woods on spot

The man behind Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy’s TGL says bidders are lining up to create an expansion franchise, while Serena Williams’ husband continues his push for the league to…

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *