Charmaine Gertrude Hollingsworth

Charmaine Gertrude Hollingsworth is the sister of Blanche, Virginia, Clayton, and Tad Hollingsworth. She was portrayed by Barbara Babcock in the Season 5 episode of The Golden Girls titled "Sisters and Other Strangers".

Charmaine is mentioned in the season one episode, Transplant, where Blanche and her other sister Virginia discuss Charmaine, and how when they were children, she would apparently feign illnesses and other conditions so she could get out of doing chores around the house. Charmaine apparently still did this later in life, for she claimed her kidneys are attached and can't be separated or removed, thus she could not give Virginia a kidney, leaving Blanche.. Later in the same episode, after Rose asks Blanche about Charmaine, Blanche comments that Charmaine made her and Virginia miserable their entire lives. Yet earlier, she said nearly exactly the same thing about Virginia.

In another episode, Blanche discusses how a man made a pass at her, and she told her sister, the only person she could trust, about what happened. This could be either of her two sisters, but due to the animosity between Blanche and Virginia earlier, is more likely to be Charmaine. Charmaine, upon hearing about this man, went over to his house with a gun and threatened to shoot him in the head if he ever tried it again. When Dorothy asks "just because he made a pass at you?", Blanche realizes she forgot to add That the man was Charmaine's husband.

Charmaine appears in the episode Sisters and Other Strangers. She is the author of the (fictional) book Vixen: Story of a Woman. Based on the description of Vixen, the protagonist ("flaxen hair", "proud bosom"), Blanche believes that the story's character is loosely based on her and her sexual escapades. For this reason, she deems the novel "tawdry". It is later revealed that the character Vixen is loosely based on the author herself, Charmaine, and that the two sisters have more in common than they think.

According to her sister Virginia, she has a joint kidney, heart flutters, a tipped uterus and a spastic colon, to which Blanche responded; "That girl is some kind of mutant."