Maye Musk: Mother of invention
Her children have made waves with fast cars and slow food. Maye Musk tells Natasha Loder how she produced a family of entrepreneurs.
By Natasha Loder
“Oh God, that is so horrible,” grimaces Maye Musk, as though I had pointed out vermin in her son Kimbal’s impeccable new restaurant. All I had done was to ask for her views on the current fashion for raw-food diets. “I went to a raw-food restaurant and afterwards I said, ‘Please take me out for a hamburger!’ I couldn’t eat anything.”
Musk, a striking woman with cropped white hair, glowing skin and brilliant blue eyes, does not mince her words. As a dietician she has no truck with fads. As a mother — of Elon, the world’s most famous inventor, Kimbal, a tech and food entrepreneur, and Tosca, a film director who recently started a streaming service to bring romance novels to television — she has a similarly robust attitude.
Unlike most women of her generation — she is 69 — maternity has not defined Maye. She has run her own nutrition business for 45 years and has been a model for 54 years. In an era in which parents and children are ever more closely intertwined as they navigate the hazards of competitive education, she has a refreshing enthusiasm for her and her children’s…
