McMansion Hate: Despising the Aspirational Class

McMansions has been a topic that resonates among architectural nerds and the general populace. They are ubiquitous with houses that people “love to hate.”

The subreddit r/McMansionHell has 232.9K+ followers and describes McMansions as “large, cheaply built, suburban homes with design flaws and a lack of architectural integrity.”

The topic is so popular that even an entire website is dedicated to it. The mcmansionhell.com website describes itself as a “bi-weekly blog that aims to educate the masses about architectural concepts… by making examples of the places we love to hate the most: the suburbs.” The blog is so popular that it has been featured in the Huffington Post, Slate, Business Insider, and Paper Magazine.

I want to preface this piece by stating that I am not defending McMansions as products. The point of this article is to analyse the disproportionate amount of hate wedged towards it and why, considering poorly designed products are everywhere. But why the focus on McMansions specifically?

While the McMansion is often criticised for having poor architectural design, lacking taste, and being ostentatious, I argue that the profound hatred goes beyond that they are poorly designed, but that people focus on them as a class item that says something more about the person buying them, and that the dislike is also targeted at the consumers of McMansions, not just the houses themselves.

More specifically, the unanimous repulsion toward McMansion houses is a cringe reaction to the aspirational class. Every critique wedged towards McMansions hedges on the idea that these houses represent “living above one’s means” or portray a lifestyle that one is not truly living.

Critiques of McMansions contrast the opulent front bricks and gates with its cheaper interior, the cost-cutting efforts in areas that are not visible to the public eye, preferring to have a leaky faucet so that one can tick off having a pool.

But the hate towards McMansions is just a subtle way of expressing, “You are not wealthy enough to be one of us; stop trying to be one of us.”

Investopedia described McMansions as houses with “cookie-cutter designs, tiny lawns, closely packed neighbours, and garish designs.” Investopedia, which described itself as “the world’s leading source of financial content”, thought it pertinent enough to write an architecture review. So, why the hatred? It is not an art or design critique but a class critique.

The wealthy despise McMansions for trying too hard to be one of them when they are pointedly not. The less wealthy despise McMansions for trying too hard to distance themselves from their genuine class and trying to ascend their social class, thereby alienating everyone else.

Despising McMansions stems from the discomfort of liminal spaces. Liminal is defined as “of being an intermediate state, phase, or condition.” Historically, things that evoke a liminal quality have always elicited a response of repulsion or discomfort from people.

“Sickness” is reviled for being in the liminal state between life and death. Trans and non-binary people have been discriminated against for being in a liminal state of man and woman. We have historically been repulsed by things that defy precise categorisation.

In this case, the liminality is between being rich and poor. Is it a “Mc” or a “Mansion”? While box homes categorise themselves as “poor” and billionaire homes as “rich,” McMansions, which defy clear categories of “rich” or “poor,” “wealthy” or “not wealthy,” can only ever squeeze themselves in the liminal space between the two.

It should be noted that the same vitriol directed at McMansions’ cheap materials and leaky faucets isn’t directed at government-funded box homes, nor is the same insult targeted at ostentatious and excessive billionaire homes.

The upper-middle aspirational class is always the target of hatred. The wealthy view owners of McMansions as poor, and the less wealthy view owners of McMansions as part of the oppressive class.

Indeed, liminality and defying a precise categorisation make people uncomfortable. The most awkward place to be is in between — or in a McMansion.

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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.

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