Consider childhood/early adult struggles, background, appearance, biases, etc

I would say Madonna because you grew up poor and lost her mother, Rihanna because her dad was on crack and Gaga because she isn't "pretty"

Pink

Mariah because she's biracial
and wrote all the songs for her demo tape for the record producer to hear. :cry
and came back even after what happened to Glitter

Britney

Rihanna because of her father and I read somewhere that she was bullied/picked on for being too light-skinned.
Mariah because of her sister being a prostitute (= no longer a role model) and for being biracial (=not fitting in anywhere).
I don't know everyone's story though.

Janet had to live with Joe Jackson.... I say her.

If we are going by Childhood struggles,etc Rihanna and Madonna are the only ones that strike out to me

I definitely think it's Madonna who had to work the hardest. Also voted for Mimi.

K$ should be here too. She grew up hard.

Lol, yea ... but i keep hearing bi -nottrue- ,so it makes me write that accidentally.

Kelly Clarkson because her whole family fell apart when she was six, she was bulimic, her apartment burned down and she almost died in an accident before finally getting a record deal. After that, people didn't take her serious and told her she was not pretty enough and that her songwriting was bad. And then her self written songs turned out to be the most successful.

X Tina

Madonna.

Britney basically came from the middle of nowhere in Louisiana to be the biggest popstar on the planet. Her family lived in poverty, her parents got divorced and she constantly had to witness arguments at home due to her drunken father. Performing was always kind of an escape for her.

Yeah. Her (K$'s) family basically lived in poverty, she never had a dad to look up to, and when she moved out of the house, she was living in her car for a while, and her label that she was signed to wasn't supportive then gave her the boot.