Powerful women like Martha Stewart should apologize. No.

Martha Stewart is not a cuddly person. She does not suffer fools. She built an empire, once worth more than $1 billion, based on a skill she mastered as a child to help her family eat. If she were a man, she would be seen as calculating and steely, a genius willing to risk losing friends if it meant becoming an icon.

But she’s a woman, so “she was a bitch,” as a former colleague says.

That blunt and depressingly recognizable observation comes from “Martha,” the candid Netflix documentary about the 83-year-old lifestyle legend. If we were talking about any other successful woman who was humiliated by her own alleged actions, the film might end on a chastened and apologetic subject, as American society demands when you get too big for your britches.

But this is Martha Stewart, who doesn’t act chastened. Notably, she is the only person interviewed on camera throughout the entire film – seemingly saying that she wants you to understand that this is her, fearless, in all her glory and foibles. She says, ‘That affair? Yes, that happened. Those letters I wrote to my cheating husband, begging him to come back? Please. Read them on-air if you like.”

She refuses to portray humility for the comfort of the less brilliant, and I think it wasn’t just her specific actions they wanted an apology for, but that they had ever been such a boss lady in the first place. When she wouldn’t tap dance like a good girl, people got angry.

“I think the role that women have to play as contrite people is infuriating, when you think about it,” says Elizabeth MacBride, author, veteran business journalist and senior knowledge and advocacy advisor for the World Bank’s Women Entrepreneurs Finance Initiative.

MacBride has some interesting parallels with Stewart, with whom she shares a physical resemblance (“I think I was her for Halloween once,” she said). MacBride, co-author of “The Little Book of Robo Investing: How to Make Money While You Sleep,” also knows about the pressure on women in the public eye to continue as expected no matter what. There was the time she “kept it together” when her water broke during a 2004 television interview she did as editor-in-chief of the business newspaper Crain’s New York.

The subject? Stewart’s conviction on federal charges including obstruction of justice. You can’t make this up. “It feels like I’m peeing and I’m on TV news,” MacBride recalled. Can you imagine it? If you’re a woman who knows you’re being watched extra closely by people who might be looking to crack your self-confidence, I bet you can. Ever the professional, she wrapped up the interview and then quietly headed to the hospital.

I asked what she thought would have happened if she had admitted that she was literally giving birth on air. “Maybe it would have been, ‘Oh, cool, she’s having a baby!’ Congratulations!’” she said. “And maybe it would have been, ‘Oh, we can’t show that.'”

It’s not that Stewart is a flawless angel. Apparently she’s a tough boss that I would never want to work for; she is seen in the documentary reproaching an employee for using too small a knife to cut an orange. Admittedly not a warm mother, she had the aforementioned affair and, most famously, served five months in federal prison in the 2000s on charges that, in retrospect, as Stewart said, seem like she was a “trophy” for prosecutors. (The involvement of James Comey, who would become the face of the investigation into a certain other high-profile woman little more than ten years later, it is noted.)

What’s startling is the cackling glee with which people from Jay Leno to casual observers welcomed Stewart’s fall, as if she had made exquisite homegrown holly wreaths, too close to the sun or something. In the film, Isolde Motley, the founder and editor of Martha Stewart Living, stated that “the level of hatred people have” for Stewart stems in part from the fact that her fame is rooted in the traditionally feminine and previously unheralded practice of doing homework , “something many of us could do, but she just does it better.”

Snoop Dogg’s best friend isn’t the only prominent woman seen as somewhat suspicious for not getting all mushy and regretful about their past decisions or their ambition. Stevie Nicks She was recently asked how she would respond to those who ‘condemned’ her decision to have an abortion as Fleetwood Mac’s success continues to grow. “If people want to be mad at me, be mad at me. I don’t care,” she said.

Meanwhile, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders has taken a swipe at Vice President Kamala Harris’ lack of biological children, saying in September that Harris had “nothing that kept her humble.” Harris responded that there are “a lot of women here who don’t strive to be humble.”

Hell yes! I’m not nearly as talented as these people, but even I was expected to fold myself into a handy, cute little package when asked or risk being ridiculed. As a baby columnist in my late twenties, a mentor half-jokingly told me that I had a talent for being the center of attention, which I interpreted as being a showboater.

“I know you didn’t mean that as a compliment,” I said—I may have spun around a bit as I did it—”but I’ll take it that way anyway.” I’m a woman who pays her bills with her opinions. Do you think I’m going to apologize for being extra? Dude, have you met me?

In 2018, Judge Maria L. Oesterreicher became the first woman to serve on the Circuit Court of Carroll County. She said she is “out of it” with the expectation that successful women will be humble. When people are offended by her attempts to “shame or undermine me, I have been conditioned to believe that I need to apologize,” she said. No. “It is no longer my job to make you feel comfortable with my success. If your uncertainty about my success causes you to behave poorly, you will have to sit with your discomfort. I’m not going to apologize for it.”

She shouldn’t either, because if she were a man, it probably wouldn’t be expected of her. This is where Stewart stands. She never claimed to be nice. She claimed, as her former editor said, to be better than you at many things. That’s your problem, not hers.