Tag Archives: American culture

Claim: a McMansion might kill you

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I’ve seen lots of critiques of McMansions but I can’t recall seeing one that suggests they are bad for your health:

https://i0.wp.com/homeinsurance.com/images/McMansion.v2.png

Quite the infographic but I think it (perhaps intentionally) invokes McMansions to introduce some negative connotations and avoids the bigger context: these are problems across American society, whether you live in a big house or not. Some of these are tied to sprawl more broadly with its dependence on cars, on a shift toward eating out and more sedentary jobs, building homes in general, and a growing emphasis on media. This could fit with a common critique of McMansions: they are part of larger patterns of excessive consumption.

In the end, your McMansion is not killing you much more than “average” American contexts are.

American middle class worried about downward mobility

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A new poll suggests the American middle class is anxious about falling out of the middle class:

That’s the deeply ambivalent message from the latest Allstate/National Journal Heartland Monitor Poll exploring the public’s perception of what it means to be middle class in America today. Fully 56 percent of those surveyed said they believe they will eventually climb to a higher rung on the economic ladder than they occupy now. But even more said they worry about falling into a lower economic class sometime in the next few years. Reaffirming the results in earlier Heartland Monitor polls, most of those surveyed said the middle class today enjoys less opportunity, job security, and disposable income than earlier generations did. And strikingly small percentages of American adults said they consider it “very realistic” that they can meet such basic financial goals as paying for their children’s college, retiring comfortably, or saving “enough money to … deal with a health emergency or job loss.”

In all, the survey suggests that after years of economic turmoil, most families now believe the most valuable–and elusive–possession in American life isn’t any tangible acquisition, such as a house or a car, but rather economic security. Asked to define what it means to be middle class, a solid 54 percent majority of respondents picked “having the ability to keep up with expenses and hold a steady job while not falling behind or taking on too much debt”; a smaller percentage defined it in terms of getting ahead and accumulating savings. “It seems like that class of the people just live from paycheck to paycheck,” said Dale High, a trucker from near Idaho Falls, Idaho, who responded to the poll. “Everything is going up, but wages are staying the same. And people can’t live like that.”

Several quick thoughts:

1. Is this mainly the result of the current economic conditions? In other words, if the American economy rebounded significantly in the next few years, would the middle class again be more optimistic? I’m wondering if this is a temporary anxiety or is this a longer-term insecurity based on a perception that the world and their position within it is more fragile than before.

2. This seems related to research that suggests people feel losses more deeply than equivalent gains. Moving down is much more influential than moving up.

3. How do these perceptions actually line up with economic realities? Here is one indicator:

People who responded to the Allstate/National Journal poll reported a substantial amount of economic churning in their own lives–showing, again, a close balance between upward and downward mobility in American life. Exactly 30 percent of those surveyed reported they had risen from a lower economic class, and 27 percent said they had slipped down from a higher class. Forty-three percent had seen no movement at all…

This fear of losing ground is rooted in the conviction that, in the past few years, downward mobility has become much more common than upward movement. Asked whether more Americans recently had “earned or worked their way into the middle class” or had “fallen out of the middle class because of the economy,” almost eight times as many respondents took the bleaker view.

So how much “economic churning” is acceptable? Where do these ideas that people are falling behind at larger rates coming from – statistics about stagnant median household incomes, anecdotal evidence from family, friends, and neighbors, media coverage, etc.?

4. I wonder if this is also related to American interest in keeping up with others. Critics have argued that American consumption and life in suburbia has been motivated by “keeping up with the Joneses.” Is this still the case when times are tougher – people don’t want to fall behind relative to others around them? There is also some measure of generational comparison in this poll data – perhaps future generations will have it tougher in living in a “decent life.”

Painting the church of Walmart

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Lots of “normal” activities take place at Walmart so why not spiritual matters as well? Artist Brenden O’Connell has taken up the subject:

For the past decade, O’Connell has been snapping photographs inside dozens of Wal-Marts. The images have served as inspiration for an ongoing series of paintings of everyday life — much of which involves shopping, which O’Connell calls “that great contemporary pastime.”

“Wal-Mart was an obvious place” to look for inspiration, he tells The Salt. “It’s sort of the house that holds all American brands.”…

Wal-Mart stores, he notes, are “probably one of the most trafficked interior spaces in the world.” In the tall, open, cathedral-like ceilings of Wal-Mart’s big-box stores, he sees parallels to church interiors of old.

“There is something in us that aspires to some kind of transcendence,” he told me back in February. “And as we’ve culturally turned from religious things, we’ve turned our transcendence to acquisition and satisfying desires.”

In conversation, O’Connell comes across as thoughtful and urbane. He’s well aware that, as a company, Wal-Mart can be polarizing. But “regardless of your feelings about it,” he told me back then, “it just is. It’s like an irrevocable reality that’s part of our experience.”

On the occasions that we go to church and then Walmart afterward, I have joked that we are visiting America’s two kinds of churches. This may not be too far from reality considering the number of shoppers at Walmart, its yearly sales, and the power of its brand. But, it is really that surprising that a retail store could be the contemporary version of a spiritual space when our country is so devoted to consumption and shopping?

Fathers still play catch with their sons? What about football, video games?

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I recently saw a review of the new Jackie Robinson bio-pic 42 that suggested American fathers still bond with their sons by playing baseball. My first thought: do fathers still do this on a large scale? Here is why I think this may be an outdated sentiment.

Baseball is no longer the most popular sport in the United States. Even with the large number of kids who play baseball or Little League, baseball’s peak has long passed with the NFL taking over the sports lead. The NFL released its 2013 schedule last week and ESPN was breathless for a while looking at the most tantalizing games that have yet to be played. Baseball is no longer the “all-American sport” and surely this must trickle down to the activities of kids and fathers. While it does have the same nostalgic pitch, what about playing catch with a football in the backyard? (This may be impacted today and in the future because of fears of concussions.) Moving in a different direction, as has the racial composition of baseball players, what about kicking around a soccer ball in the backyard?

Here is another possibility for how fathers and sons might now be interacting in the United States: by playing video games together. The generation who grew up with video games has reached adulthood and these video games habits don’t simply disappear. What if fathers and sons don’t play sports together as much as play Madden? What if they enjoy a good session of Call of Duty? This may not be happening on a large scale yet but I imagine this would grow in the future.

All that said, I want to see some data about how exactly fathers are bonding with their kids in 2013. Appeals to playing catch in the backyard might just be nostalgia for a bygone era.

Driving isn’t cheap: average car costs $9,100 a year

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Americans may love driving but it comes with a price. Here is a new cost estimate per car from AAA:

Owning a car will cost the average American driver more than $9,100 this year, the AAA has revealed.

The automotive club unveiled its annual study of driving costs on Tuesday and found that the average sedan owner will rack of $0.61 for every mile on the road. 

SUV drivers are in for even more pain in the wallet – $0.77 per mile or $11,600 a year.

The AAA estimates include nearly all expenses of taking to the road – from the cost of the car itself to gasoline, tires, insurance and repairs.

The data estimates that Americans drive 15,000 miles a year and drive a standard-size sedan like a Toyota Camry or Ford Fusion…

The survey assumes drivers buy a new car and keep it for five years.

So the figures change a bit depending on what kind of car it is and how old the car is but this is still pretty pricey. The common American cost-benefit analysis might look like this: a car gives me freedom, independence, and the ability to live more where I want to live (based on factors like housing prices and desired community) versus it costs a decent amount to drive. Actually, I suspect few people actually think about the total cost of driving as it tends to be experienced in increments: you fill up for gas here, pay insurance here, pay for repairs another time.

Don’t paint your lawn green; use a microsphere colorant!

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Should your grass turn brown this year, don’t paint it green. Instead, use this product with microspheres that will keep your grass green for a year:

GetItGreenFrontGetItGreenFront

I am curious to see how effective this product is – though not curious enough to apply it to my own lawn. But, while I have not heard as much this year of the Scotts versus Pennington seed battle, it is good to know companies continue the arms race of keeping the American lawn green. This is both big business as well as referring to a cultural symbol for many: a verdant lawn (presumably surrounding a well-kept house) where a family or pets can frolic and enjoy their small slice of nature.

Another fun part of the product: scan that QR code!

Argument: the movie “42” ignores Jackie Robinson’s role in the larger Civil Rights Movement

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Peter Drier argues that the new movie 42 fails to properly put Jackie Robinson in a larger context: as part of a larger social movement.

The film portrays baseball’s integration as the tale of two trailblazers—Robinson, the combative athlete and Rickey, the shrewd strategist—battling baseball’s, and society’s, bigotry. But the truth is that it was a political victory brought about by a social protest movement. As an activist himself, Robinson would likely have been disappointed by a film that ignored the centrality of the broader civil rights struggle…

42 is the fourth Hollywood film about Robinson. All of them suffer from what might be called movement myopia. We may prefer our heroes to be rugged individualists, but the reality doesn’t conform to the myth embedded in Hollywood’s version of the Robinson story…

Starting in the 1930s, reporters for African-American papers (especially Wendell Smith of the Pittsburgh Courier, Fay Young of the Chicago Defender, Joe Bostic of the People’s Voice in New York, and Sam Lacy of the Baltimore Afro-American), and Lester Rodney, sports editor of the Communist paper, the Daily Worker, took the lead in pushing baseball’s establishment to hire black players. They published open letters to owners, polled white managers and players (some of whom were threatened by the prospect of losing their jobs to blacks, but most of whom said that they had no objections to playing with African Americans), brought black players to unscheduled tryouts at spring training centers, and kept the issue before the public. Several white journalists for mainstream papers joined the chorus for baseball integration.

Progressive unions and civil rights groups picketed outside Yankee Stadium the Polo Grounds, and Ebbets Field in New York City, and Comiskey Park and Wrigley Field in Chicago. They gathered more than a million signatures on petitions, demanding that baseball tear down the color barrier erected by team owners and Commissioner Kennesaw Mountain Landis. In July 1940, the Trade Union Athletic Association held an “End Jim Crow in Baseball” demonstration at the New York World’s Fair. The next year, liberal unions sent a delegation to meet with Landis to demand that major league baseball recruit black players. In December 1943, Paul Robeson, the prominent black actor, singer, and activist, addressed baseball’s owners at their annual winter meeting in New York, urging them to integrate their teams. Under orders from Landis, they ignored Robeson and didn’t ask him a single question…

Robinson recognized that the dismantling of baseball’s color line was a triumph of both a man and a movement. During and after his playing days, he joined the civil rights crusade, speaking out—in speeches, interviews, and his column—against racial injustice. In 1949, testifying before Congress, he said: “I’m not fooled because I’ve had a chance open to very few Negro Americans.”

Fascinating. Robinson can be applauded for his individual efforts and we can also recognize that he was part of a larger movement – it doesn’t have to be one or the other. But, our narratives, now prominently told in biopic movies, love to emphasize the individual. This is part of a larger American issue regarding an inability to recognize and discuss larger social structures, forces, and movements.

Many Americans might assume the Civil Rights Movement begins in the mid-1950s with Brown vs. Board of Education or the actions of Rosa Parks (this is where the Wikipedia article on the subject starts) but things were stirring in Robinson’s day. While baseball was America’s sport (pro football didn’t start its meteoric rise until a decade or so later) and Robinson’s play was influential, there were other efforts going on. In 1948 the military was integrated via an order from President Truman. After World War II, blacks tried to move into better housing, often found in white neighborhoods, but faced serious (sometimes violent) opposition in a number of locations.

I’ve been conflicted about whether I should see this movie as a big baseball fans. Sports movies are a little too mawkish for me and don’t ever really reflect how the game is played. This argument is not helping the movie’s cause…

American driving culture can lead to some opulent garages

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Curbed highlights eight fun quotes from a recent Wall Street Journal story on some unusual American garages. Here are four of the quotes:

6. “Once seen as a catchall space to store bicycles, trash cans and lawn tools, garages are being rediscovered as the ideal place—who knew?—to park cars.”…

4. “Mr. DesRosiers recently completed a 6,200-square-foot garage in the suburbs of Detroit that has a 1,800-square-foot detail shop on the lower level with a penthouse above, accessible via elevator.”

3. “There are seven flat-screen televisions throughout the three levels. “I can build a motorcycle and watch a football game at the same time, which is pretty sweet,” he says.”

2. “He put a glass door in between the wine cellar and underground parking space so the owner can “walk into the lift and touch and feel the car from the wine cellar,” he adds.”

The original story also highlights some broader trends regarding garages:

Even if an existing home has a garage, one or two bays may not be enough. “Those garages are not suitable for today’s vehicles. They’re just too small,” says Mr. Pekel of the Milwaukee construction and remodeling firm.

Of new homes built in 2011, 29% have a three-car or larger garage, according to Home Innovation Research Labs. These spaces have more bays, taller ceilings and greater square footage, says Ed Hudson, director of the market research division at Home Innovation Research Labs.

By and large, men are the primary users of garages, at 70% overall, Mr. Hudson says. For some purposes, like maintaining vehicles or working on projects,more than 90% of all users are men.

There is still room to discuss why people would want such garages in the first place, particularly if it comes at the expense of other items, such as spending money elsewhere in their houses. I would argue you could make a broader argument about the general love Americans have for driving and vehicles which then leads to a “need” for large spaces devoted to these vehicles. On one hand, vehicles are very functional – they get you where you need to go, particularly in a sprawling American built landscape that often requires driving. On the other hand, people can get attached to such functional objects and see them as much more than tools.

If some recent survey data is correct in showing that the younger generation of Americans don’t care so much about cars, perhaps we are in or have already passed “the golden age of garages.” If New Urbanists and other like-minded architects get their way, the garage would lose some of its prominence by being moved from the front facade of homes to the rear. In several decades, these opulent garages may look even more unusual and unnecessary.

Argument: if you want a Walmart, you have to accept the McMansions and other things that come with it

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Henry Briggs argues that the phenomena of Walmart is related to other phenomena like McMansions:

In any event, the idea of paying less and less and buying more and more is a real driver of our economy. As most economists will tell you: unless the US consumer is spending, the US economy tanks.

That is what’s behind the “You deserve it! ” lines in ads, why having a “McMansion” is part of the “American Dream,” and why the American Dream is no longer a dream: “It’s my right, by God!”

That’s why household debt shot up from $734 billion in 1974 to $13.6 trillion in 2009, from 45 percent of GDP in 1974 to 96 percent of GDP in 2009.

We complain about Walmart wrecking communities, even as we go there for the deals, and then we must go there for the deals because Walmart is all we can afford.

If you walk into a house built in the ’50s or ’60s, you’ll find smaller closets, smaller kitchens and smaller garages. This in a time when people were happier, the country was thriving, and the future glowed with promise.

You want things cheaper? There’s a price.

This is a familiar argument about McMansions: they are linked to larger patterns of consumption. But, if the economy really does depend on such spending, can’t buying McMansions, smartphones, and other items and shopping at Walmart be seen as helping American society? Of course, one can choose to buy “better” items than others – instead of a McMansion, perhaps a passive house or a tiny house. Instead of a regular car that contributes to sprawl, perhaps a membership to Zipcar. While some complain about particular kinds of houses, Briggs and others suggest that consumption comes in bundled packages. If this is the case, then McMansions are just the symptoms of a society that consumes and spends too much and likes sprawl.

 

Supersized McMansions, supersized roses for Valentine’s Day

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I’ve seen McMansions compared to a number of other large consumer items, but until today I had not seen a comparison to flowers:

Leave it to America, land of the Big Gulp, Monster Burger and McMansions, to supersize yet one more thing: the rose.

Make that a six-foot rose, just in time for Valentine’s Day.

This flower-on-steroids — it actually gets this big from special breeding and soils — comes courtesy of several companies, including FTD, The Ultimate Rose and FiftyFlowers.com. Sales are taking off as florists promote the gargantuan blooms, which also come in three-, four- and five-foot varieties. The companies won’t release exact numbers, but FTD says sales have increased 50% year over year since it started selling the roses four years ago…

Skaff says FTD has already sold out of the five-foot variety and had to order more to meet demand ahead of Valentine’s Day. The Ultimate Rose, which supplies the giant roses to FTD and also sells them on its own site, says sales jump this time of year.

The suggestion here is that the presence of McMansions is related to the presence of six-foot tall roses through the desires of Americans for both because they are large. This seems like a bit of a stretch to me; are the same people buying McMansions and large roses? Are both solely about standing out from the crowd? Overall, this seems like a journalistic shortcut of recent years: when an item becomes larger, compare it to McMansions (and perhaps SUVs and Big Gulps might be other apt comparisons). What items if an item becomes smaller – is there a similar go-to comparison?