My friend, Maye Musk: What I know about America’s most famous mom

Sarah Hampson Special to The Globe and Mail Published January 17, 2025

Sarah Hampson is an award-winning journalist and former columnist and senior feature writer for The Globe and Mail.

I know the world’s most famous mother.

Well, I knew her, in the before times.

The rise of Maye Musk has been remarkable to watch, which I have closely done over the years with a sense of delight and curiosity. Today, however, I watch with some trepidation.

She has three children, Tosca, Kimbal, and her eldest, Elon. That boy is now the world’s richest man (net worth: US$400-billion), the entrepreneur behind Tesla and SpaceX, and a prominent ally of president-elect Donald Trump. As a result, Ms. Musk now runs in the highest circles of American life.

It’s an astonishing and inspiring story of life’s unexpected trajectories: the ascendant mother and now, strangely, a secret weapon for Republicans who can put a graceful face on a leadership many call rude – and even fascist.

She hangs out at Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s Florida estate. She will no doubt attend the presidential inauguration next week, dressed in a stunning outfit – a First Mother of sorts, rivalling Melania Trump, who will once again be first lady. (Her U.S. agent tells me that Ms. Musk is unavailable for interviews until the end of January.) At 76, she travels the world as an international silver-haired model, speaker and author of her 2019 book, A Woman Makes A Plan: Advice For A Lifetime Of Adventure, Beauty and Success, which documents her approach to life.

She has become a frequent guest on Fox News, effectively “mom-washing” her brilliant first-born, who describes himself as a “dark, gothic MAGA,” intruding into the geopolitical sphere with his money and his social-media-happy fingers. “His goal was just to do good things,” Ms. Musk helpfully explained with a reassuring smile when a Fox TV host recently tried to wheedle her to reveal something, anything, about her unpredictable son.

When I first met Maye Musk, it was around 1995 and she was a somewhat frumpy dietitian and part-time model. I had come to her through my family doctor, one of many Ms. Musk had written to, encouraging referrals. By her own account in her book, she was overweight and had no sense of style at the time. (I remember her wearing Hillary Clinton-style pantsuits.) Her clinic was in an office for a modelling agency, where she taught courses part-time about the industry and how to succeed. She was living in Toronto in a rent-controlled two-bedroom apartment where all three of her children lived at one point.

Born in Canada, she had lived in South Africa since she was a child after her adventurous parents flew their five children around the world in a propeller plane. At the time, she had recently returned to Canada with her three children. Having modelled since she was a teenager, she occasionally got modelling jobs, often portraying a grandmother or Mrs. Claus, even though she was in her forties.

We immediately had a connection. I was in my thirties, struggling in a difficult marriage with three young children of my own who had also been born in quick succession in my twenties. When I confessed this, she didn’t jump in with a tale of her own woes. She offered unspoken reassurance that such personal challenges were survivable by simply being a calm presence, like an older, wiser sister. She spoke about her children in glowing terms, never as a burden. They worked hard in school and part-time jobs, she told me, helping to make ends meet.

She intimated that she had left a troublesome marriage in South Africa, but didn’t elaborate or complain about her ex. (She has since described her marriage to Errol Musk, an engineer, as a physically abusive one, saying that she returned from her honeymoon “bruised and pregnant.”)

For more than a year, I went to see her. We talked about our lives – which happens easily when you’re already divulging personal daily habits, such as stress-eating or drinking too much wine. Her youth in South Africa was marked by a strong work ethic and sense of privilege as part of a daredevil family who lived simply but fully; her father, a chiropractor, took the family in search of the Lost City of the Kalahari Desert every summer for nearly a decade. She told me this story matter-of-factly, perhaps to explain her lack of trepidation in starting over. Clearly, she saw her move back to Canada as a great adventure.

During the time I met regularly with her, she quickly gained momentum in her Toronto life, relocating her office to the swish luxury neighbourhood of Yorkville, becoming slimmer and wearing cool clothes. “Do I look hot?” I remember her asking me wryly during one of our appointments. Dressed in over-the-knee leather boots, skinny pants and a top, she seemed amused by her own transformation.

She was “power-dating,” she confessed. A lot of men criticized her: about her figure, and how she was too fat and then too thin, and about her clothes. One ridiculed her for sitting in a restaurant to take advantage of the most flattering light. But she laughed off the rudeness with a graceful equanimity. There was a no-nonsense, almost scientific practicality about her, on every subject from dating, to building her business, to allowing oneself a bite of chocolate cake on occasion.

In 1997, she wrote a self-help book, Feel Fantastic, which her children helped edit. She was ambitious, becoming chair of the Consulting Dietitians of Ontario, and later, president of the Consulting Dietitians of Canada. She appeared on cereal boxes with her book. When I worried about money, she suggested a barter arrangement: I could help her draft letters for more projects and speaking gigs in exchange for her fee. In A Woman Makes A Plan, she describes a similar barter arrangement with Julia Perry, a Toronto stylist who has been her friend and wardrobe consultant ever since.

As time went by, Ms. Musk and I lost touch. But in 2002, I got divorced, and in 2009, when I was writing Happily Ever After Marriage: A Reinvention in Midlife, my book about divorce as a contemporary rite of passage, I contacted Ms. Musk.

She was living in New York, she explained in her e-mail reply. When her children were young, they had given her a tiny wooden house and wooden car, promising her that one day they would buy her both for real – and in 1999, when Elon and his brother Kimbal sold their city-guide software company Zip2 to Compaq for approximately US$305-million, that’s exactly what they did. She had purchased a prewar Manhattan apartment, and had once more relocated her dietitian practice there.

In that e-mail exchange, she reported that the modelling jobs had slowed down in spite of her agency’s efforts: “Ford Toronto is trying to get me modelling jobs,” she wrote. She suggested I come to New York. I couldn’t, so we arranged a phone interview. When we spoke, she joked that she was a “jerk magnet” in her dating life. Besides, she offered, confidence in one’s naked body changes from your forties to your fifties and sixties. “And what’s the point of being in a relationship if it doesn’t make my life better?”

Her daughter suggested she get a dog, which she did. “I have not had a relationship in almost 10 years and now at 61, it’s easier than it was at 50 because I have learned to cope,” she told me.

As it turns out, she was on the cusp of a major career upswing. Having decided to let her blond hair go silver and as mature representation in fashion became a trend, she was suddenly in demand. At 63, New York magazine suggested a controversial cover shot, mimicking Demi Moore’s famous nude pose on the cover of Vanity Fair when she was pregnant. A pregnant belly was photoshopped onto Ms. Musk’s body, wearing nothing but pasties and nude panties. The cover made headlines. In 2015, she appeared as a classy, silver-haired airline passenger on a Virgin billboard. Soon, she was gracing magazine covers around the world due in part to her striking facial architecture; she can look androgynous and hip as well as divaesque and glamorous.

At 67, she walked her first couture show. Thanks to her popularity on Instagram (now with 1.5 million followers) as well as on Chinese platforms, she was signed to IMG Models and became the oldest person to star in a CoverGirl campaign.

It didn’t hurt that her son Elon’s star was rising too. Being the M of E (Mother of Elon) boosted interest.

I was an avid follower, watching her on Instagram, delighted by her success. But as the 2024 presidential election neared and Elon’s involvement with the Trump campaign intensified, I developed a morbid curiosity as her feed filled with Fox TV appearances. Once a registered Democrat, Ms. Musk had switched political allegiances because of negative remarks about her son from the White House and “dishonest” coverage by the left-wing media, she explained.

Wading waist-deep into the nasty political fray, she redeems Mr. Trump and his cabal. “Trump just wants things to be honest and open,” she said, emanating her trademark optimism, calling the Trump family loving and “self-spoken.” I wondered what she really thought of Mr. Trump’s love of McDonald’s; his rudeness; his predilection for sexual assault; his desire to annex Canada. I’d love to hear an answer to all this, if anyone were to dare ask her a pointed political question.

When she goes on Fox News to talk about lies in the media, not a wrinkle of irony appears on her face, despite the network’s US$787-million settlement for promoting misinformation about the 2020 election. On her son’s platform X, formerly Twitter, Ms. Musk has 1.3 million followers and is an active voice, reposting right-wing commentators, trolling liberals, and thanking hosts around the world who have invited her to appear on their shows. Last week in Dubai, as a guest at the 1 Billion Followers summit, she said her son was shocked to see what she described as “all the corruption that the [Democratic] government was paying to Twitter to remove any opposition to the government.” As a result, she explained, her son was “forced to buy it,” as if he had no desire to increase his influence.

Ms. Musk has come a long way since I sat in her office 30 years ago. She is now a global icon as a fashion model and the head of her family (all of her children are successful entrepreneurs.) I wish that she would just be that. She is an exemplary role model for women who often feel they become invisible and inconsequential as they age.

Being a pawn of right-wing media, and an apologist for Mr. Trump and his entourage, is beneath her.

I’ve watched for a long time. But no longer.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-maye-musk-elon-musk-mom-life/
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1. The term mom-washing appeared in this article. Kind of new and interesting.

2. Maye Musk is has been a regular user of the app xiaohongshu apparently.
A Twitter post noting that, hit the link.

Musk's mother gave a welcoming messages to the TikTok Refugees flocking over there.

3. Last three sentences of the article. What did we expect, eh? It was like so typical. Canadian Liberals of the world unite and start whining!