It’s been a rough week for maids. What with that poor hotel maid in New York having to deal with the so very French antics of that moneyed, withered French person, and that poor homely maid who toiled for years tending to the family of The Sperminator (He loves “CAHHMING!”), only to be knocked up the freakishly muscled action star turned governor of California.
When you really stop and think about it, maids get a bad rap in American culture in general. As is the case with other female caretakers — nurses, teachers, babysitters, for example — they’re the subject of all sorts of disgusting male sexual fantasies, which is why nailing the maid is such a common porn narrative. And they do so much — some of them even clean our underwear! THEY DON’T DESERVE THIS!
So I decided to put together a little remembrance of some of America’s favorite maids through the years, all of whom we’ve become familiar with through TV and film. Enjoy…
(Lead pic )
Ah Florence. For years she put up with the antics of New York City dry cleaning mogul George Jefferson, a capitalist’s capitalist, the Donald Trump of dry cleaning moguls, obsessed as he was with movin’ on up to de-luxe apartment in the sky-hi-hi so he could finally have a piece of the pie-hi-hi-hi. No wonder she famously said in one episode, “How come we overcame and nobody told me?”
Would Florence sleep with George Jefferson? No way. However, I always sensed a certain lesbian chemistry between she and Helen Willis, and you just know that bumbling fool Tom Willis wasn’t giving Helen what she needed, so… JUST SAYIN’!
Now, I know that saying this will probably spark some controversy, but if any of the maids in this gallery was a slutbag, it’s Alice. No way, you say? Well I contend that there’s no way Alice didn’t milk one of those handsome, horny young boys, or their widower father at some point. There was so much jerkin’ going on in that house that the bathroom drain could probably qualify as the Auschwitz of sperm. You think Alice never walked in on Greg giving his Leroy a little tug? HELL NO! And do you think Alice would just turn and walk away? ABSOLUTELY NOT. Alice would walk right over and say, “Here, let me give you a hand with that, Greg.” And she’d milk him like he’d never been milked before and when she was finished she’d just walk out like she’d just cleaned the kitchen sink, because Alice was just a service-y Goddamn broad.
Witness…
Oh, what have we here — a sh*tty rom-com about an immigrant hotel maid and a high profile politician having a little fling? Well isn’t that suddenly relevant?! Perhaps Dominique Strauss-Kahn was trying to play out his own “Maid in Manhattan” fantasy, eh? Maybe he, like Senator Christopher Marshall was, is an ass man?!
Oh Rosie. The ample-bottomed robot maid from The Jetsons, one of the first animated prime time television sitcoms. Just looking at her brings back fond memories of the Cogswell Cogs/Spacely Sprockets wars. As Wikipedia notes, “She’s an outdated model but the Jetsons love her and would never trade her for a newer model. Rosie does all the household chores and some of the parenting. She is a strong disciplinarian and occasionally dispenses advice to the family.” What more could you ask for in a robot maid?
Oh yes, Mrs. Garrett. The maid who was so good on Different Strokes that she got spun off into her own show with Facts of Life (Oh how I adored Blair and Jo!). Too bad all the kids on DS turned out so f*cked up in real life, no? And did you know that Mrs. Garrett’s real name was Edna? Probably best that she went by Mrs. Garrett, then. She was always out there dispensing valuable life advice, like the time Dutton was going on about women needing to be skinny and she cold blasted him: “This attitude that whatever sells is okay is wrong, wrong. Women in children’s bodies, children in women’s clothes, children in no clothes. The whole thing is sick.” She could have been a Jezebel editor!
And she always asked the important questions…
A lot of people don’t realize this, but before Florida Evans of Good Times fame was raising J.J. in Chicago, she was a maid for Bea Arthur’s bitchy Maude character in upstate New York. Speaking of Bea Arthur, Gilbert Gottfried had the best joke about her a few years back on one of those Comedy Central roasts. It went: “What’s the difference between Bea Arthur and an old shoe? You could eat an old shoe if you had to.” ZING!
You remember Hazel, right? Probably not. But I bet your mom or grandma does! Anyway, she was a pioneer of sorts — one of the first television maids, AND she was the show’s central character, the live-in maid to a fancy New York City lawyer and his fancy interior decorator wife and their kids. The show was one that started in black and white and eventually transitioned to color.
Here’s the opening of a Thanksgiving episode I can actually remember watching a rerun of on cable when I was a kid. God that makes me feel old…
