Arnold Turner/Getty Images for Netflix(LOS ANGELES) — Like many other trailblazing women, Martha Stewart has faced her share of misogyny along the way, but she says the #MeToo movement has been a complicated issue for her.
The 79-year-old lifestyle guru, who got her start by modeling in her teens and 20s and working on Wall Street in the 1960s and ’70s, tells Harper’s Bazaar that getting ahead in the business back then meant she had to tolerate a certain amount of bad behavior.
“You had to keep your cool and just do your thing, and brush them away,” she explains.
“It has been really painful for me,” she continues. “I’ve known almost every single one of the famous guys that has been accused and set aside. Some were certainly guilty of a lot of what was accused.”
However, some of the bad behavior, she suggests, was “just their awful personalities.”
“I am not going to mention their names, but I know those people very, very well, and you know the man just talks about sex during dinner,” she says, adding, “That doesn’t mean anything to me.”
The full interview appears in the March 2021 edition of Harper’s Bazaar, available March 2.
Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.