And that's a good thing...

I have been asked whether I was sarcastic when I claimed Martha Stewart responsible for empowering women. Now as often times as I utilize sarcasm here in The Cave, yesterday's comment about Martha was not one of them. (If O'Reilly can call his show "The Factor," I can call my blog "The Cave." It's ultra hip!)

See that aside? THAT was sarcasm.

Martha Stewart has made the concept of the home a valid arena for empowerment and self-expression. Martha has broken new ground—a brand of stealth feminism similar to Helen Gurley Brown, publisher of Cosmopolitan.

Feminists in Brown's time resented her magazine for catering to a "male fantasy" of the sexy, no-strings woman. Critics said it embraced women as nothing more than a sex object. But much like the critics who don't see Martha's positive effect, critics missed the point of Cosmo. Brown's aim was to reclaim sex, to derive pleasure from something once considered a woman's duty. Martha does the same, reclaiming and deriving pleasure from domesticity.

Beneath the veneer of Brown's sex talk and seduction advice was steel. Brown was not teaching girls to be geishas. She was teaching them to be bosses. Likewise, beneath the veneer of Martha's faux-finishing advice, there's more than steel wool. Stewart is not teaching women to be shrinking violets or stay-at-home moms. She's encouraging them to reclaim the home using 2-by-4s and a rotary saw.

Her ideas are so very empowering to average women. She makes them feel their chores and household drudgery could be transformed by creativity into something glamorous and unique. Those who compare her to a dutiful `50s wife and mother are mistaken; Martha is no nurturer; she is a skilled craftsman. When she proclaims a project "perfect," it's because she's satisfied herself, not a husband or child. That's feminism. Or at least a certain brand of it. And Martha's brand name (she's a capitalist as well!) represents just that to an awful lot of women.

I find it difficult to understand women who disregard Martha completely. Not your cup of tea? Fine. Not really like her? All right, though I think that is based mostly on a narrative of the press than anything. But I don't get those women who refuse to respect her accomplishments. It's the same type of personality of women that hates Hillary Clinton. Strong women get a bad rap from the public at large for being too "bitchy," and while that says a lot about our society, I would hope other women wouldn't internalize that misogyny.

Just because she comes off as a bitch in the press does not mean that she is not a pioneer. She has created her own opportunities and succeeded in the traditionally male-dominated world of business. She was writing books and publishing her magazine and doily-ing her house on TV well before this currecnt era of home design shows and food how-to's ever existed. She has taken the domestic activities and has made them honorable by building a multi-million dollar industry with them. Martha is a woman in charge of her own destiny, or at least she will be again when this whole prison thing finishes up.