White trash. Would a rose by any other name smell as sweet? Let's try. Hillbilly, Redneck, Cracker?
Trash. The others don't quite work. This is the name for the discarded, or for those who simply got passed on by. It's a mean slur but a slur that our society doesn't seem to mind and in fact perpetuates as a running joke.
White trash fashion is essentially the glamorization of poverty, where trailers suddenly become home to La Vie Boheme, a life of smoking cigarettes on plastic patio furniture in a tube top and push up bra. The girls are blonde, skinny, with big boobs and a look like they just got felt up. And they always always look like they got stuck in the 80s.
The truth of it is, most girls don't look so good in tube tops, that push up bra isn't doing nearly enough, and the cigarette she's smoking is starting to look more sad more than sexy. But by making white trash look good we can brush over what it means to be poor. Because being poor in America, no matter what color you are, now that ain't sexy. And maybe we need to start to think about what that actually means.
Photographs by
Mark Kean for Wonderland Magazine
Jason Lee Parry for Oyster Magazine
Angelo Pannetta for Doing Bird
Hugh Lippe for Russh #42
----------------More Trashy Girls after The Jump----------------
I couldn't agree more. And these photos don't make trailer trash look that appealing either.
ReplyDeleteI can't help but think that the appeal of white trash is that it means you can go slumming without being called a racist.
ReplyDeleteHey njwv, my thoughts exactly.
ReplyDeleteRIGHT ON POINT. I am just doing some research for a blog post with the same sentiment! I am gonna cite you cuz this shit is gooooooooooooooooooood.
ReplyDeletePS- Glad I found this blog!!
Deletei moved into a trailor park with my dad, when i was 12 years old. rebel flags in the windows of most of them, my dad was the manager and us being the only blacks in the place, we didn't seem very welcome, but i loved that it was lots of white girls,and after a few months a white single mom wearing a rebel flag shirt and shorts tellin my dad she got half the rent, and she didnt know how but she get the rest, my dad pulled her in his bedroom, lol i cracked the door open and was lettin it all hang out, bigger than a horse, hangin to his knees, it wasn.t long after that she was back without the rent again, lol
ReplyDeletethose white moms and the white daughters , i never thought of them as trash, lol maybe the racist ones i didn't care for much, like the dude that told me and dad . "NIGGERS DON'T EAT AT MY TABLE" he was trash, to us, his pretty daughter would bring the rent money over sometimes and i was getting out my shower when she came inside, and she lookin right down the hall at me. when i got to my bedroom she still looking. i was 13 and was like a shetland pony, and getting bigger while she watched. i said you can come on in, lol she left , it was 2 day's later when she came back
Delete