Trailer trash
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Please help Wikipedia by adding references. See the talk page for details.
-
For the song "Trailer Trash" by Modest Mouse, see The Lonesome Crowded West
Trailer trash (or trailer park trash) is a derogatory North American English term for people who live in trailers or mobile homes, especially in trailer parks. The term is also applied to lower-class whites in general (hence the occasional "white trailer park trash", or "white trash"), regardless of where they actually live.
Because trailers provide housing at a lower cost than conventional foundation-built houses, and trailers have few amenities, there is a popular cultural conception that those who live in trailer parks are usually only those who are too poor to afford anything else. Although trailer parks have a high density compared to other rural or suburban housing, they are usually created on large tracts of undeveloped land in rural or suburban areas. These factors combine to make "trailer trash" poor, landless and white. Most "trailer trash" live in rented (or owned) unkept, old model eight and ten wide trailers or rundown travel trailers. Park managers, usually portly women, usually reside in the parks' finest double-wide coaches and have their wheels sunk into the earth for a more finished style and may even have their banisters upgraded from the standard metal to real oak wood. On another note, not just whites can be trailer trash: other races that live the stereotype are classified by this term. It is known that only a small percentage of people living in mobile homes own up to the stereotypes, although others like to flaunt their status.
The Canadian television series Trailer Park Boys is an ironic and humorous example of so-called trailer park trash. Done in mockumentary style, the show documents the misadventures of the residents of the Sunnyvale Trailer Park.
