Caravanning may be attracting aristocrats in the UK, and with it a whole new posh lingo, but in the USA there’s still a stigma attached to staying in caravan parks because of the perception they're only home to the poor and unemployed, succinctly and unsubtly encapsulated in the term ‘trailer trash’. While ‘trailer trash’ may be derogatory, some self-effacing trailer-dwellers use the term themselves with good humour, going as far as to celebrate the creativity of trailer trash. Sites such as Missouri Trailer Trash, created by 28-year-old factory worker Neil Nesslage (interviewed here by Newsweek), features a trailer with a car hood as an awning! The site also has a quiz you can do to determine if you’re trailer trash, an online store where you can buy trailer trash t-shirts and mugs, and links to trailer trash sites. At Redneck Warehouse you can buy a trailer trash Barbie doll who is pregnant, has curlers in her hair, and a cigarette hanging out her mouth. (On a completely different note, Tin Can Trailer Trash is an enlightening, amusing and often moving blog by a woman who has been living in a trailer provided by FEMA since Hurricane Katrina. Her first posts explain why she started the blog.) It's easy to see then why and how the North American travel media embraced and ran with 'glamping', glamorous camping, with even more gusto than UK travel writers excessive coverage of 'cool camping'.
'Trailer trash' and 'glamping'
Caravanning may be attracting aristocrats in the UK, and with it a whole new posh lingo, but in the USA there’s still a stigma attached to staying in caravan parks because of the perception they're only home to the poor and unemployed, succinctly and unsubtly encapsulated in the term ‘trailer trash’. While ‘trailer trash’ may be derogatory, some self-effacing trailer-dwellers use the term themselves with good humour, going as far as to celebrate the creativity of trailer trash. Sites such as Missouri Trailer Trash, created by 28-year-old factory worker Neil Nesslage (interviewed here by Newsweek), features a trailer with a car hood as an awning! The site also has a quiz you can do to determine if you’re trailer trash, an online store where you can buy trailer trash t-shirts and mugs, and links to trailer trash sites. At Redneck Warehouse you can buy a trailer trash Barbie doll who is pregnant, has curlers in her hair, and a cigarette hanging out her mouth. (On a completely different note, Tin Can Trailer Trash is an enlightening, amusing and often moving blog by a woman who has been living in a trailer provided by FEMA since Hurricane Katrina. Her first posts explain why she started the blog.) It's easy to see then why and how the North American travel media embraced and ran with 'glamping', glamorous camping, with even more gusto than UK travel writers excessive coverage of 'cool camping'.
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