LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: The 'From Not to Hot' star Mama June, defended her daughter Alana "Honey Boo Boo" Thompson's romance with 'older' Dralin Cresswell and blasted fans for criticizing the teen's appearance. The 17-year-old Alana, better known as Honey Boo Boo from her time on 'Toddlers and Tiaras', has been dating Dralin for around 2 years.
Since the young couple announced their relationship online, they have received criticism from followers, some of whom have judged Dralin's appearance while others disapprove of the couple's age difference. However, Mama June, Honey Boo Boo's mother, has defended "good guy" Dralin, insisting that she hasn't seen anything that "throws her off."
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'Dralin is a good guy'
The 43-year-old television personality, who rose to prominence with her daughter Alana on 'Toddlers and Tiaras' and 'Here Comes Honey Boo Boo,' talked about the age gap relationship between Alana and Dralin. Mama June defended the contentious relationship by saying: "Dralin is a good guy. They've been together for nearly two and a half years. I don't have anything that I've noticed like that throws me off," reports Daily Mail.
"He is older than her but honestly for me, Dralin has a very young mentality. He has a very teenage mentality, if that makes sense," Mama June continued, "When people say some boys mature at a later age than women do… He is one of those boys to me."
The actress then emphasized that her other daughter Lauryn "Pumpkin" Efird, 23, and her husband Joshua, 26, have a comparable age gap. "People don't realize that Pumpkin and Josh were the same age when they met," the 'From Not to Hot' actress continued. "Pumpkin is 23 and Josh is fixing to be 27. So they were about the same age when they met years ago and they've been together eight years."
Alana "Honey Boo Boo" Thompson and her boyfriend of two years, Dralin, recently made their relationship official. The 17-year-old star of the popular show 'Mama June: From Hot to Not' shared a photo of herself and her 21-year-old boyfriend on Instagram to announce their relationship online.
'Why do you have a problem?'
Mama June argued that Alana's fans were unfairly rude as she develops her own sense of style as a young woman. "She’ll be 18 in August," said her protective mother. "But a lot of people still look at Alana as that five year old little girl that you all grew up with. So she gets a lot of backlash because she's wearing wigs, fake eyelashes and fake nails. But y'all didn’t have a problem with any of that - the fake wig, fake eyelashes, fake nails in the pageantry when she was five, six, seven years old."
'"But you have a problem now that she's 17?" she stated. "Now that she's old enough to do all that, why do you have a problem now when y’all didn’t have a problem back then? I hate that she's getting the backlash, but I am proud of her that even through everything, she's graduating high school," Mama June added.
'Honey Boo Boo' is headed to college
On a different note, MEAWW earlier reported that Mama June, a grandmother of four, denied having any desire to grow her family, even though her daughter Honey Boo Boo will soon begin a family. Mama June was questioned about Alana's desire to imitate her mother and sister Lauryn "Pumpkin" Efird, who both gave birth to their first child at the age of 17.
"No, certainly not," she answered. "She is not even thinking about that at the moment. She is fixing to graduate high school and she wants to immediately go to college," Mama June continued. The head of the reality-show family admitted that she still longs to be a neonatal nurse.