Man up, woman!

Rising to the A-list from the middle of the pack requires extreme cunning, good hair and laser-focused determination.

Or, if you’re Megyn Kelly, all you need to fixate the world’s attention on your brains or your boobs and butt — the kind of fame-whoredom practiced by dames from Hillary Clinton to Kim Kardashian — is to metaphorically crush the naughty bits of Donald Trump.

At the first Republican candidates’ debate in August, Kelly staged a microaggression, driving The Donald to seek a safe space. The Fox News Channel blonde, a debate co-moderator, unloaded on the GOP front-runner with a “question’’ that amounted to an oral spanking.

“You’ve called women you don’t like fat pigs, dogs, slobs and disgusting animals,” Kelly charged in her now-infamous assault.

Trump tried to laugh it off by interjecting, “Only Rosie O’Donnell.” But Kelly was relentless.

“Does that sound to you like the temperament of a man we should elect as president?’’

Later, the candidate proclaimed on CNN, “There was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever,” which Kelly’s fans interpreted as a reference to menstruation. (Trump, 69, insisted that “only a deviant’’ would take his words that way.)

I’m no Trump apologist. But I detest tough women who dissolve into shrinking victims, as Kelly has done, when it suits them. Kelly’s attack was as unfair as it was sexist.

It was also . . . wildly effective.

A funny thing happened on the way to the feminist consciousness-raising session. Megyn Kelly became a star!

With a sporty new short haircut that clashes with Trump’s gnarly corn-colored ’do, Kelly began bragging publicly about riding Trump’s coattails into the stratosphere.

“Yes. I mean, listen, I would be lying if I said it wasn’t cool to see myself on the cover of Vanity Fair, right?’’ she crowed to Charlie Rose on “CBS Sunday Morning.’’ She continued boasting about her good fortune in a chick-forum chat with Katie Couric Wednesday night.

The newly minted pop-culture icon actually told Rose, “One of our baby sitters is from Peru. And she came home one day and told us that she saw my name in the Peruvian papers. I don’t think that ever happened before this particular dustup. So I’m gonna have to give him [Trump] that point!” Yikes.

I’ll assume that Kelly’s household helpers, at least one of them an immigrant, are in this country legally. But Kelly, 45, a married mother of three and a former lawyer, raises a burning question about her ability to connect with the average woman who can’t afford to hire multiple servants.

The kind of woman who, she said condescendingly, watches her show, “The Kelly File,’’ after a long day spent minding kids, working or both.

“She sits down, she gets her glass of Chardonnay, she wants to consume the news effortlessly, enjoy it, and not have to work too hard for it,” Kelly told Rose.

I guess women who work at thinking for themselves (and reject white wine) are not her target audience.

She told Rose, “I perceived it as a veiled threat’’ when Trump said during the debate that he might stop being nice to her after her ill treatment of him.

It seemed no accident that she cynically selected a phrase evoking images of physical or psychological violence at a time when Trump’s campaign manager is facing a misdemeanor charge of battery after allegedly roughly grabbing the arm of a female reporter. Kelly also whined that her Fox colleague Bill O’Reilly, whose “The O’Reilly Factor’’ draws higher ratings than her show does, has not defended her sufficiently.

Is Megyn Kelly taking audiences on a public search for a new job? (She teased during an interview blitz this week that she hasn’t decided if she’ll stay at Fox after her contract expires next year.)

I think that a lady who wants the public to see her as being as capable as the guys has to stop the bubblehead act and grow a pair.

After all the drama, Kelly said she’d be delighted to welcome back Trump as her TV guest! I guess he’s not that threatening after all. The man can give a real boost to a gal’s career.

Stop with this O.J. revisionism

I lived and breathed O.J. Simpson’s 1995 double-murder trial, shuttling back and forth from New York to Los Angeles to write about it for The Post.

The entire mess was riddled with incompetent prosecutors, shark-like “Dream Team’’ defense lawyers and a judge more concerned with his own image than justice.

I predicted that O.J. would be acquitted. Of course, he was.

Still, watching a guilty man walk free again in FX’s 10-part series, “American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson,” which ended Tuesday, brought back the pain I felt more than two decades ago.

Now, crackpot Martin Sheen, former star of “The West Wing,’’ is toying with our collective sanity by narrating and executive-producing a six-part TV series, “Hard Evidence: O.J. Is Innocent,’’ set to air early next year on the Investigation Discovery channel. Sheen was among showbiz types who once voiced the insane conspiracy theory that the United States government was complicit in the terror attacks of 9/11 — an idea he got from his loopy son, Charlie.

Don’t watch this rubbish! Don’t encourage Martin Sheen’s hurtful lunacy.

Prez race is ‘Dead’ to me

I see AMC’s postapocalyptic romp “The Walking Dead’’ as an allegory of this year’s presidential election, pitting destructive, brain-munching zombies (Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton) against ruthless survivors (Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, the other guy).

But Season 6 of TV’s best show ended with an annoying cliff-hanger.

Viewers have to wait until fall to learn who got dispatched into premature undead-ness by a barbed-wire-covered bat wielded by the sadistic and charismatic character Negan.

Does Negan represent the corrupt, dumb or scary chuckleheads now seeking the White House?

This is fiction. Reality is scarier.

Just another celeb splitstorm

Cutie-pie star Drew Barrymore, 41, who has a couple of drive-by marriages under her belt, is getting divorced from her megarich husband, “art consultant’’ (whatever that is) Will Kopelman, 38, after more than three years of wedded ambivalence and two little daughters, Page Six’s Emily Smith first reported.

Barrymore might have bestowed the kiss of death, telling InStyle magazine last year:

“It was never really love at first sight. Will struck a lot of my pragmatic sides. He was someone who was always reachable on the phone.’’ Horrors!

Barrymore, said to be more free-spirited than her buttoned-up mate, looked upset and unshowered when spotted in Los Angeles last week, Page Six reported. It’s sad. The institution of celebrity marriage is doomed.

Watch: Trump is terrified of Fox bombshell Megyn Kelly