That is Jill Zarin on the left and her mother, Gloria Kamen, next to her.
This is a very flattering picture. It appears to me, when you see Gloria in all her glory on the TV screen, that she was enamored of the work of Leona Helmsley's plastic surgeon and so engaged his services. To equally disturbing results.
Most viewers of
The Real Housewives of New York City have been appalled and disgusted by the over the top mean girl behavior of Jill Zarin, who's sense of entitlement is so out of bounds with reality that in many ways she is more of a mentally ill train wreck than that sad case of paranoid hysteria known as Kelly Bensimon.
Jill Zarin managed a reality TV show wonder this season, going from being a fan favorite to being one of the all time despised villains.
Jill's mother also saw her previous positive image reversed, as we saw Jill's real mom, Gloria, for the first time, as the overbearing, mean-spirited, bitter shrew of an old lady, that she actually is.
The idea that Jill, Gloria and sister Lisa thought they had the credentials to write a book of advice is real revealing. It's like Elizabeth Taylor writing a book about how to have a long term marriage. Or Hillary Clinton writing a book about how to keep your husband faithful. Or Rush Limbaugh writing a book about how to be reasonable and fair-minded.
Well, you get the drift.
Jill is so obviously damaged by that a shrew of a mother who raised her. Jill is still seeking Gloria's approval. Like arranging that pathetic glamorous book cover photo shoot, hoping to make mommy happy, instead Gloria complained that "Mother is not HAPPY," and "That fan is making my breasts cold."
I assume, by fan, Gloria meant a device blowing wind and not one of her legion of viewer critics.
It seems clear that the "fan" attention that Jill got from the first 2 seasons of RHONY totally warped her. She convinced herself she was the star of the show. This set her up to be really upset when it became clear who the real star was. As in, Bethenny Frankel.
And then for Jill to see herself greatly eclipsed by Alex and Ramona and Sonja, now all fan favorites, while Jill has been stuck in the TV Doghouse, well, it's quite an appropriate comeuppance.
Jill Zarin has so many firestorm disasters she tries to put out. Her book got slammed on Amazon with bad reviews. So, Jill logged in as Sharon Saunders and wrote a fake positive review. It was quickly obvious due to various identifiers that Sharon was Jill. This brought much followup humiliation.
A non-Jill fan in Chicago, Lynn, has an anti-Jill website where she recently encouraged her readers to flood Jill with snail mail letting Jill know what they think of her. Jill countered by claiming she'd involved the police and post office inspectors to stop this assault.
Jill's Facebook and Twitter pages are flooded with fans giving her the bad girl bitch slapping she so richly deserves. Jill. or a rumored paid lackey, delete the comments as quickly as they can.
I have read various analyses of the bizarre Jill behavior we have witnessed. Some simply say she is a classic case of Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Maybe so.
I think that Alex and others got it right. Jill did not have a good time in high school. She was not one of the popular girls, due to both her mean-spirit selfishness and being a rather homely little plump girl. Jill learned to make mean girl snarky comments to overcompensate for her raging insecurity.
And then Jill becomes a Real New York City Housewife. For the first time ever she is one of the "popular" girls. Or so she thinks. But then Jill sees the real "popular" RHONY girls get that special treatment she has always been denied, Jill flips, and the totally mean, totally wrong, totally pathetic high school version of Jill comes to the foreground.
And that is the Jill Zarin we saw this season. The real Jill.
I really don't think Jill Zarin can recover. I'm thinking it'd likely be best for her to retire from the show, concentrate on Zarin Fabrics and greatly limit contact with her extremely toxic mother, Gloria Kamen.
And say I'm sorry to Bethenny Frankel and Alex McCord every opportunity she gets. Til she learns to mean it.
Tonight, after the Real Housewives of New York City Reunion Show airs its fireworks, Bethenny Frankel's new solo show Bethenny Getting Married? airs its first episode.
