FREE MARTHA!

If I have to hear one more woman tell a "joke" about Martha Stewart going to the big house, I have to warn you, I may just freak out. One more gag about baking files into cakes or making Connecticut license plates more attractive by adhering pine cones to them and I'm going to take my whisk, my spatula and my hot glue gone and beat the jokester upside the head. Hard.

I understand that Martha Stewart is a legend and that people like to see legends fall. I understand that her "perfectionist" persona, her attention to detail and her obvious love of the finer things in life make some women feel inferior. Yes, I get that you're overworked, underpaid and under appreciated. Martha gets on your last nerve because you assume that the high standards she holds up for herself are being held up to you.

I think that's what bothers me so much. It feels somehow that stress cases everywhere are justifying the chaos in their own lives by saying "she thought she was perfect and look at her now".

Ladies, I beg of you, RELAX! Cook yourself something nice, buy yourself some flowers, take a bubble bath and calm the hell down.

Then, when you're nice and serene, pick up a newspaper and try to make some sense out of the fact that those crooks at Enron are walking away with retirement packages and Martha Stewart is facing prison time.

Try to reconcile the fact that it seems she is being punished not so much for her actual crime but for the fact that she is an uncompromising business woman. Men who act and succeed like Martha are idealized and revered. When are we, as women, going to decide that enough is enough?

When I was younger, I used to say things like "I'm not a feminist, but...". You know, because feminists were scary, militant, arm pit hair growing, man haters. It looked like more fun to be Anna Wintour than it was to be Gloria Stienam. I mean, we already had the vote, right? Then, a friend of mine put it to me this way:

"Feminism is the radical notion that women are people"

Martha Stewart may very well have had what is coming to her. But in light of the double standards at work all over the world and the fact that she is a woman, a person, one of us...I for one, think it would be nice if we rallied behind her instead of taking pleasure in her downfall.