McMansions

Is there anyone who actually likes McMansions? 

Well, presumably the people who live in them, but they probably just call them “my house.” 

In common usage McMansion is a term of scorn.  It seems to be used to describe any giant house that one thinks is excessive, gaudy, or poorly built. 

I’m not sure it’s really an architectural criticism or just jealousy.  I don’t want to live in that kind of house, but then, I probably never will.

McMansion sometimes refers to those gaudy mass-produced really giant houses, often in a new subdivision at the edge of town, thrown up fast and a little shoddy.  They cover much of the lot, not much yard, crowded one right next to another. 

I see them as I drive around San Jose and in the East Bay, hundreds (thousands?) of them being built at the edges of communities, along the highway and climbing the hills, often on land that had been open space or farm land, but now is ugly giant house right next to ugly giant house.

To my eye they are pretentious and excessive  - who needs that many bedrooms and baths and garages?  And they have a reputation for being poorly and cheaply constructed and with no recognizable architecture style, or several conflicting ones.

Am I just being a snob? 

People also use “McMansion” for the big ugly new house that is built after a smaller “normal” house is torn down.  The new excessive house sticks out next to its older neighbors, and crowds them.  That happened in my old neighborhood in Redwood City.  A block of charming 1920’s California bungalows with little front and back yards is slowly being replaced by massive stucco pink chateaus with not a lawn in sight.

Who am I to judge? People need a place to live and they have the money.  Some of these houses in the McMansion subdivisions are actually cheaper than big houses in gated communities or old money neighborhoods, because land is cheaper outside of town, and the homes are mass produced, giving folks a chance to be first time home owners. 

Or do I sound like a mortgage hawker before 2008, come get your McMansion?

I wrote a couple weeks ago I wrote about how if my house burned down I would rebuild it smaller and more energy efficient.  IE, not a McMansion.  But I went on to report that most victims of the 1991 Oakland Fire built bigger homes after the blaze.  I had a small subtext of disapproval – what was wrong with the old design?  Well, it was cramped, I guess.  Why not add some room, have more bathrooms?   Must we all wait and share as our parents did, haven’t we improved some things?

OK, so I’m conflicted here.  I approve of individual choice and comfort and more people being homeowners.  Live and let live.  I don’t care to hear what people think of my house.  But I object to ugly excessive energy-wasting monstrosities and wish I didn’t have to see them.

Not unlike my feeling about McDonald’s, the fast food chain for which McMansions are named.  Cheap mass-produced food and identical franchises around the world.  I hardly ever go to a MacDonald’s.  But I am aware that they are an inexpensive choice for lots of folks, and I know they are trying to improve their brand (more salad, cage free chickens, etc.)

Wikipedia helped me understand the concept “mcwords” and my feelings about them.  We scorn things like “mcchurches” (megachurches) because, in the words of Wikipedia, they “evoke pejorative associations with the restaurant chain or fast food in general, often for qualities of cheapness, inauthenticity, or the rapidity and ease of manufacture, and for heavily commericialized or globalized things and concepts.” 

But as I sit here typing on my Mac, is it not also a commercialized and globalized product, not really cheap, but affordable, and no less a “mcword?”

No great resolution here.  I think I must just live with my snootiness and judgmentalism re how the other half live, and seek a wee bit more understanding and compassion.  And remember that the world is not perfect nor built to my design.  I could also try every once in a while to weigh in with my elected officials on the next vote to turn that local farm land into a subdivision. 

Progress, not perfection.  I can live with that.  In my house so far superior to that monstrosity down the road.

Copyright © 2016 Deborah Streeter