White Trash Chic

There exists a large portion of the population whose discretionary income is inversely proportional to their level of good taste. Yes, reader, there are people out there who earn decent, sometimes affluent livings, and rather than live elegantly, they choose to spend their money on ugly home furnishings and even uglier decor. I've seen it, folks, sometimes in pictures, sometimes in person with my own delicate eyes. We call this tasteless decorating style White Trash Chic, and I present to you my how-to guide to getting the look just right.

You must first be able to foot the bill for your crimes against good taste. One way is simply to earn a high income through a job which doesn't require a great deal of education and study, but is one that few people are willing to do, and not considered prestigious by high society, making it more in demand and therefore commanding a high salary and good benefits. Such occupations include truck driver, general contractor, heat & air repairman, UPS deliveryman, and plumber. At most they require a couple of years at a community college and some apprenticeship. The other way is to work a lower-paying job but live in a rural area with lower costs of living. Low mortgage payments, or renting a house for as much as one would pay for a city apartment half the size, allows for more discretionary income.

Whatever the job situation, once a you find a home, you must furnish it. Well-made, gracefully-styled antique furniture can be found at auctions and consignment shops quite affordably, but this is simply too much bother for white trash, who wouldn't know Chippendale from Chips Ahoy and think Mission style is what you do in bed when your common-law wife passes out after chugging a case of Natural Light. Instead, you can get in your Silverado and head to a mid-range furniture store to pick out overstuffed recliners and sofas, usually covered with corduroy in hideous hues of denim blue or forest green, and matching endtables and coffee tables whose design, if any, is a misguided amalgam of bastardizations of imitations of well-known styles. Sometimes the selection of tacky furniture is too overwhelming, so you may find it easier to choose Wal-Mart or Sam's Club as your exclusive supplier of laminated particle board. Whatever the style or construction, white trash almost exclusively opt for a "natural oak" laminate, which somehow brings to mind rustic cabins, though I personally fail to see the rustic charm in orange-tinted faux woodgrain. Not every trashy person buys all-new furniture, however, and it's perfectly acceptable to take castoffs from other trashy people that come with fabric already torn, stained, and cigarette-burned, busted springs, and cushions with lovingly crafted ass grooves so you won't have to wait as long for your living room to attain that "lived-in" look, and your guests won't worry so much if they spill their coffee from your set of Dale Earnhardt mugs.

Once the house is filled with shiny new laminated particle board and nauseating green corduroy, it's time to decorate those bare walls with some fine art. Some white trash pitifully attempt to be classy by purchasing "real paintings." Technically, they are indeed hand-painted, not by one hand, but rather an assembly line of multiple Indonesian hands assigned to painting one particular element or color over and over, cranking out hundreds of nearly-identical "real paintings" at slave wages, to be mounted in poorly-made frames. These paintings are usually garishly-colored, poorly-composed scenes of provincial Italian villages or bowls of flowers or fruit. You may feel that such "real paintings" are a waste of money that could be better spent on chrome valve covers, so framed "prints"—posters printed on a 4-color press on flimsy paper, placed under glass in a flimsy frame in a "natural oak" stain to match the furniture—are a good substitute. Preferred subject matter typically includes scripture or prayers embellished with religious iconography; reproductions of paintings of Civil War officers or scenes; imagery related to military service or firefighting; illustrations of dogs, horses, wolves, and bald eagles; photo collages of classic muscle cars; and portraits of NASCAR celebrities superimposed over their respective racing cars with facsimile autographs. Tin signs are also great for covering those annoying blank spaces. White trash folks typically go for signage depicting vintage gasoline/petroleum company logos and old advertisements for Ford, Chevrolet, and John Deere tractors. Stamped street signs with messages such as "John Deere Parking Only" are perfectly sized for filling in the empty space above a doorway where that 8x10 portrait of Jesus won't quite fit. White trash sometimes pick up Confederate battleflags at local flea markets or gun & knife shows to use as colorful accent pieces, often embellished with a portrait of Hank Williams, Jr. or emblazoned with the message "The South Will Rise Again," in hopes that someday they will indeed rise again from their corduroy La-Z-Boys.

Paintings and posters (ahem, "prints") aren't quite enough, though. A home just isn't a white trash home without a few appropriate objets d'art. Megastores just off the highway, such as the J.R. Outlet on I-40 in North Carolina, serve as one-stop shops for all your white trash decorating needs. Painted resin figurines are highly popular among white trash, in a wide range of subjects, such as hunting dogs, firefighters, Confederate officers, bald eagles swaddled in American flags, and humorous caricatures of elderly people. Snow globes containing the same figures offer a little variety. Countless mail-order catalogs also offer a wealth of tasteless crap with which white trash can adorn every laminated surface. Especially popular among the mail-order schlock are commemorative plates. These are the size, shape, and composition of dinner plates, but are not intended for serving food; rather, they are meant to be hung on the wall in order to admire their depictions of Civil War officers, George W. Bush, NASCAR personalities, and memorials to the 9/11 attacks. Mail order services and flea markets also provide Japanese swords (made in Pakistan) to hang on the wall. Such accessories often become props in hilarious home movies in which the owner attempts to use them and injures himself. But how can you beat a wall accessory that comes straight from nature? Trashy people love to find beautiful animals, shoot them, and mount their heads on the wall. And by law, every white trash home must have a singing Billy Bass on the living room wall.

While not technically a furnishing or decorative object, the focal point of a white trash living room is always the television. Now you may be harboring some unfounded stereotypes, envisioning an ancient TV-disguised-as-furniture from the late '70s. Far from it, reader; white trash actually dedicate a large portion of their discretionary income to keeping up with entertainment technology. Upon entering a white trash living room, a visitor immediately envies the 55-inch flat-panel TV and Dolby surround sound that make it feel like Larry the Cable Guy is right there in the room. The home computer is rarely more than two years old, and always runs Windows, never, ever Macintosh or Linux. The computer is only used for porn, forwarding chain e-mails, burning mix CDs to play in the Camaro, porn, viewing videos of people lighting each other on fire for fun, ordering commemorative plates online, and porn. Once it gets choked up with viruses from opening too many UPS delivery notice spam mails (for fear that they missed the attempted delivery of Reba seasons 1–6 on Blu-Ray), it's off to Wal-Mart for a new computer, and the old one gets used for target practice out back.

So now that you have your ugly furniture, tasteless "art prints," and complete collection of "Legends in Gray" commemorative plates on the wall, what's missing? A wallpaper border, of course! No white trash home is complete without long strips of wallpaper about 6-8 inches wide which run along the top or middle of a wall, printed with repeating patterns of flowers, grape vines, or classic cars. These are a must for any true white trash home because it's just so much easier than painting or installing moldings.

The gaudiness doesn't stop at the front door, however. You want to display your exquisite tastes to everyone who passes by your house! How do you do that? Yard art, duh! Entire businesses exist solely to fill this need. On lonely stretches of back roads, you'll occasionally find retailers where you can walk through rows and rows of molded concrete and choose from replicas of Greek statues, religious figures, fanciful gnomes, miniature lighthouses, life-size animals, and hilarious urinating children. They come in natural concrete (think about that descriptor for a moment), but you can paint them yourself in full color. That front lawn of yours was so somber before you got the pissing cherub to lighten the mood, and that hand-painted white tail buck is so realistic, people will open fire in your front yard! The miniature lighthouse that really lights up will be your beacon home after a night of pounding back the Natural Lights, just don't plow your Camaro into it.