Standing by your man suddenly seems to be going out of fashion for some American women in the public eye.

Ruth Madoff, reacting to her husband Bernard being sentenced to 150 years in prison for bilking investors with a massive Ponzi scheme, said she felt "embarrassed," "ashamed" and "betrayed" by a man she had known for half a century.

"The man who committed this horrible fraud is not the man whom I have known for all these years," she said in a statement shortly after her husband's sentencing on Monday.

Last week, after South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford tearfully admitted to an affair with a woman in Argentina, his wife Jenny -- who was not by his side at his public confession -- left little doubt about her feelings

The image of the tearful wife, hiding behind sunglasses, next to her husband while he unloaded his sins to the world, was "intensely embarrassing" and some women are deciding they do not have to follow that path, she said.