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McMansion, USA

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"The Hillrose" (Model No. C189) Sears Catalog Home appearing in the 1916 Sears Roebuck Catalog. Sears Roebuck Catalog / Wikimedia “Trumpism,” our issue focusing on the global right, is out now. Subscribe to our print edition at a discounted rate today. Ioften tell interviewers who ask me to define the term “McMansion” that McMansions are like obscenity: you know it when you see it. Like beauty (and obscenity), McMansions seem to be in the eye of the beholder. The simplest way to define a McMansion is: a poorly designed, poorly executed, oversized house. But there’s something more to them than looming entryways, vinyl siding, and mismatched windows that causes the knee-jerk hatred they rouse in so many. In part, the wounds are historical: as the 2008 crash unfolded, McMansions became the symbols of aspirational hubris, of excess, of wanting too much and borrowing too much to get it. Today, McMansions are no longer quite same symbols of economic hubris and loss. (If the McMansion were tr

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