The poverty of America's deep south - where I grew up - is now imitated by Britain's trendiest. How sick is that?
Carrie Gibson Thursday October 23, 2003 The Guardian
It can be somewhat disconcerting to walk down my high street. Men stroll past wearing US-style gas station attendant shirts with round patches that say Ed, or Bubba. Or some have T-shirts that say "I Love Daytona Beach" or "Eat at Jimbo's BBQ". These guys all seem to have baseball caps on, too, usually advertising something like a fishing tackle shop on the front, with camouflage around the side. And the hats, more often than not, sit on top of mullets that look straight out of 1979.
But it's not just the men. Women totter by on 1980s, brightly coloured high heels, and I hear the clank of chunky, cheap plastic bracelets. It's not unlike finding yourself as an extra for a film set on a trailer park in the US. Except that I'm not in Redneckville, Georgia - I'm in London's trendy Shoreditch.
These fashionable types may look like they've come out of what they imagine a trailer park to be; but I seriously doubt most have even been to one. I have: my grandmother lived in one when I was a child. And, sorry to disappoint, but she wasn't hugely fat, nor did she wear an oversized, bright pink housedress, and she still had all her teeth. No, for her, it was more like permed hair, floral dresses and sensible shoes.
However, it's the trashy side of the trailer park that we should apparently aspire to. Even this newspaper joined in, saying it "is the only way to dress at the moment", but the idea has been floating around other bits of the media. For instance, the Virgin Mobile ad that begins by showing musician Wyclef Jean making an escape from a sex-mad redneck by climbing out of the window of a mobile home that appears to be in the middle of a junkyard. And, of course, we have been watching Jerry Springer for years. And jokes about squealing like a pig have been around, well, since the film Deliverance.
OK, so this tongue-in-cheek, creeping trailerisation of clothes and adverts is only just a trend; a blip on the larger radar of fashion. But it does raise a worrying question: why are we making a joke out of others' misery?
A few years ago, the media were railing against "heroin chic" fashion, with its images of ultra-skinny models and the drugged-out look. In this case, we've taken the lifestyle of America's rural poor and used it to amuse our wealthy, metropolitan selves.
Most of the people wearing this kind of fashion probably aren't giving it much thought, either. Of course, there will be the postmodern few who will claim they are making an ironic act of anti-fashion.
But for most, it's just a look. There's no shortage of trashy threads to buy in the high street, so why not? These dedicated hipsters would probably sport a hairshirt and walk around flogging themselves if the right type of magazine told them to. But that doesn't make the style innocuous.
The landscape of the deep south - where I grew up - is dotted with trailers standing alone or grouped in parks, with painfully optimistic names such as Green Meadows or Happy Valley. In these often tattered, tired rusty boxes you find people who live in the richest nation on earth, but are relegated to living in a tin box, ostracised by their poverty in the land of plenty.
Even in the US there is a smiling contempt for the underclass. There is a whole industry based on being poor, uneducated and naff, with trailer-park spoof websites (jolenestrailerpark.com) and cookery books: try Ruby Ann's Down Home Trailer Park Cook Book. And, of course, country music - how about Sammy Kershaw's She's the Queen of My Doublewide Trailer?
Rather than demand that the US government try to provide a decent welfare state for its poorest people, it is easier for the middle classes to mock them simply because they have failed to attain the American dream of a house, a couple of nice cars and well-dressed children. They are poor, and powerless; hence they are fair game for our contempt. We also inflict this mocking attitude not just on Americans but on ourselves, too. For instance, the scally craze, with its council estate chic - white trainers, gold jewelry and a shell suit - is set for a comeback.
There seems to be some sort of assumption that these unfashionable, poor people have chosen to live in a house on wheels; to drive clapped-out Camaros; to wear tacky clothes; to have out-of-date hairstyles. But here, we choose to don a costume of poverty because we can afford to, and we don't even consider what it must be like for those who can't.
How come that it's socially acceptable to emulate the struggling poor of America, or even Britain? And why stop there? How about even more destitute people? Maybe a warzone look. Or refugee chic? Could be the thing for next spring. Some torn and tattered clothes, with shoes optional. Perhaps a rusty AK-47 as the perfect finishing touch. What next: an ironic dinner party serving up Red Cross rice?
carrie.gibson at guardian.co.uk
==================================== To this day, no one has come up with a set of rules for originality. There aren't any. [Les Paul]