The Mean, Hot Mom Problem On Screen, Explained

Moms can be many things, but on screen if they’re hot they also often happen to be kind of evil – or, if not outright evil, still pretty bad. From The Graduate's Mrs. Robinson and Mad Men's Betty Draper to The O.C.'s Julie Cooper and Regina's Mom in Mean Girls and beyond, this trope pops up all over film and television. Thankfully this is finally starting to change as more modern shows and films have started tackling this trope head on, but it still hasn’t totally gone away. So let’s take a deeper look at why media was so afraid of hot moms, the problematic sub-trope that often pops up, and the iconic characters like Married with Children's Peggy Bundy and Modern Family's Gloria Delgado-Pritchett that started flipping the script. Click here to watch the video version of this Take! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices