Moms from hell

There are great mothers. You know the ones who send their kids with really chic lunch box lunches, buy them the coolest clothes, nurturing their children with attention and care, addressing their delilahs and when the time comes don’t put the chastity belt on and when puberty hits their daughters. They are mothers who grow along with you, always being the strong arm in the relationship. She is the first one you tell when you’re getting married, or if she gets a divorce.

In la-la land things get a bit more dramatic. Is it the constant glare of the paparazzi cams, the cocktails of drugs or the never-ending supply of good-looking shit heads that lead these women to be terrors of the home?

Most famous deadbeat moms would perhaps be hand-down Joan Crawfords. Thanks to Christina Crawford’s tell-all book Mommie Dearest, Joan is equally known for her magestic talent onscreen and her horrible maternal ways.

For Joan the world was a stage, whether the cameras were off or on, struggling to create a seamless picture of having the perfect life. From the spectacular birthday parties that she threw for her adopted and later disinherited daughter Christina, to forcing Christina to give away her toys in TV for orphans (a bit bratty of Christina but she was four after all), to witnessing her mother’s forays with different gentlemen, to being forced to eat raw meat ("It’s rare not raw," Joan hisses to her tot) –Christina shows us what dysfunctional is.

Though Joan is outed by her estranged daughter by illustrating her manic and evil antics one by one – none is more memorable than the wire hanger episode that became the anthem of evil mothers worldwide.

From Mommie Dearest the movie: (Joan Crawford) "No wire hangers! What’s wire hangers doing in this closet when I told you no wire hangers?! EVER!!!! I work till I’m half dead and I hear people say she’s getting old! What do I get? A daughter who cares as much about a beautiful dress I give her as she cares about me. What are wire hangers doing in this closet?! Answer me! I buy you beautiful dresses and you treat ‘em like some dishrag! You threw a $300 dress on a wire hanger! We’ll see how many you got hidden in here, we’ll see! All of this is coming out! Out! Out! Out! Out! We’re gonna see how many wire hangers you got in your closet! Wire hangers. Why? Why? Christina, get out of that bed! Get out of that bed! (picks up hanger and begins to beat Christina) You live in the most beautiful house in Brentwood and you don’t care about crease marks from wire hangers, and your room looks like some two-dollar unfurnished room in some two-bit backstreet town in Oklahoma! Get up! Clean up this mess! Did you scrub the bathroom floor today? Did you?"

Isn’t that so Delilah? Runners up may be Judy Garland (she locked her kids during a drug spell in a room or closet for days and was joned for most of the time – look at Lisa now with her freaky wedding photo), Lucille Ball (famous for again being shit-faced and balling out at her kids and turning into Dr. Jekyll once the cameras were on). In more contemporary times Cher (for balling Chastity for being a lesbian – although they are friends now), Courtney Love (took lots of drugs while pregnant with Frances Bean), Pamela Anderson-Lee (came back to Tommy even after he hurt the kids), Sadie Frost (hello two-year old choking from an E hit at a children’s party), Tatum O’Neal (lost custody of her kids after she was caught shooting in front of them) and just can’t resist since after all he is sexually ambiguous, Jacko for doing everything in the guidebook on how to screw up your kids.

Hollywood kids have a lot of chips to smooth out when it comes to finally leading happy lives. However, in the world in front of the cameras there are also the mothers from hell that serve as the blueprint of really bad parenthood. Take Edina Monsoon of Absolutely Fabulous and her daughter Saffron. Saffy is fated to lead a life without maternal warmth because besides her mother being a blackhole of any emotion–is of course disgustingly unfashionable as she comments to her sidekick Patsy "a dull dishwasher daughter." From forgetting her birthday but not a sale at Harvey Nicols, to forcing Saffy to eat her meals in a concrete kitchen to selling her off in Morrocco – Edina is the funniest mother from hell.

Runner up in the boob tube mom from hell would be Alexis Colby who reinvented the word bitch. As she was described in a website for Dynasty, "When she strutted into the show at the start of its second series, she seemed like Lucretia Borgia, Evita Peron and the Wicked Witch of pantomime rolled into one. She perjured herself at Blake’s trial to see him locked up. She moved into the artist’s studio by the side of his house to murder some canvas and torment the new wife. She fired the gun that made Krystie’s horse bolt and lose her baby. She used her children as weapons, blackmailed, twisted, tied and grabbed. Later she lived on what looked like a lurex-swathed landing. She smoked, drank champagne and scoffed caviare by the tub. She petted pooches on the bed, but the pets she kept in it never lasted as long. Husband Cecil’s heart seized up during sex (he died as he said "I do" the next day). Husband Dex was seduced by daughter Amanda. He was out like a shot. Husband Sean sinned first, but soon paid the price. And lovers between husbands were lucky to leave in one piece. "

She tried in vain to convince her son Steven that he was not gay and participated actively in marrying him off. She did everything she could to ruin Blake, the father of her children, using them as pawns in her game. Except for her daughter played by the Princess of Yugoslavia Catherine Oxenberg (a snob till the end) she was the Jean Patou scented witch to her hapless and confused litter. The only warmth that came from her would probably come from her new ending collection of furs.

In this context, the lack of any maternal acumen becomes colorful fodder for tabloids and is admittedly quite entertaining given its shock factor. Moralists wag their fingers on venerating dysfunctional characters like Edina or Alexis, and finding enjoyment in their vicious ways. Same with the fascination with celebrity deadbeat moms, with all the fame and fortune, we sadistic mortals find pleasure in discovering major bullet holes in their pampered lives. A sorry consolation for our fates in leading ordinary, bling-bling-less lives. In la la land, normal is abnormal. Families break up...sure. Ten years old goes to rehab....saw that a mile away! Married for 10 years?....impossible!

With this light and useless enumeration of Hollywood scandale moms you just have to say that there’s no business like showbusiness!