Points To Consider: White Trash or Not?

One can hope this woman is employ­ing irony. Let's look at why women might label them­selves this way:

• They want to get laid, eas­i­ly (but does any woman –white trash or no–need to employ any­thing to do that?)
• They want to show that they are not, in fact, as easy as their cloth­ing might, uh, imply. Note that the mes­sage is repeat­ed, in case you didn't get it, or quite under­stand, the first time you gazed into her chestal area and noticed words.
• Or is it a case of increduli­ty and miss­ing punc­tu­a­tion? As in 'fuck ME, I'm white trash?!?'

I have known women who might describe them­selves as white trash or red­neck, or might believe oth­ers think of them in that way, but not a one of them would have ever worn a shirt such as this. Maybe 'I'm with Stu­pid–>' or 'Baby Down Below' or 'Ewe's Not Fat, Ewe's Fluffy,' but noth­ing so egre­gious as this. In oth­er words, they would think they were too classy, or they actu­al­ly were. And they were right.

Near Mans­field, Penn­syl­va­nia, twen­ty years or so ago, I imbibed at a place called Put­nam Park. Just out­side of town, it had the major dis­ad­van­tage of being a pop­u­lar water­ing hole with locals and stu­dents alike.This led, of course, the the town­ie-stu­dent bat­tle­ground every small-town col­lege expe­ri­ences. It got ugly some­times. When my friends and I came in, hav­ing dri­ven an Econo­line van with no attached seats four or five miles out of town the wrong way down a one-way street –we were already half in the bag drink­ing Miller from a gal­lon milk jug–we met up with some, shall we say, unruly and restive natives glow­er­ing at us from under the brims of their hats. Now, I was a large man, even then, and my com­padres, a tall in shape bass play­er named Mike,and his some­what small­er but fierce girl­friend Leslie, were not par­tic­u­lar­ly wor­ried about a chilly recep­tion. We were mel­low, and we came to hear the band, and kept to our­selves. No problem.

How­ev­er, what I had failed to con­sid­er was this: my sis­ter and broth­er-in-law drank here too, on nights the col­lege stu­dents didn't come. I had heard well-sub­stan­ti­at­ed rumors about my brother-in-law's rep­u­ta­tion in this place, with peo­ple not know­ing who I was or what fam­i­lies I was attached to, who my peo­ple were. He was red-head­ed and occa­sion­al­ly ill-tempered,and more than a lit­tle cocky, which descrip­tion also fit me, though I'm sort of more brown-head­ed. Any­way, I knew some peo­ple there,and nod­ded to them in the way you do to peo­ple you know but don't gen­er­al­ly speak to, drank my rum and cokes, and had a good time. Until I got talk­ing. To a woman, some­what old­er and more well-worn than I was. You can see where this might lead.

We spoke, we got on famous­ly, she pulled me into the small bath­room to neck a lit­tle. I was will­ing to go along, and chewed the spot above her shoulder's rose tat­too for some time. She said, "hon­ey, what's your name?" as she messed around at the front of my jeans. I said my name, and she said "Sweet Jesus, I know your ma and dad,"and pushed me into the sink and left me hang­ing. Now I tried, with all the liquorous pas­sion and rhetoric that drunk and smart-assed 19-year olds can muster to get back to where we had been, her breath a sweet fun­nel of cig­a­rette and vod­ka that I can still taste, but noth­ing doing. She shut me off cold. I under­stood, sort of. I decid­ed to have anoth­er drink.

I sat at the bar for a bit, and some guys play­ing pool began look­ing me over. I think now I'd call it a glow­er. My imag­i­na­tion then was near­ly unbound­ed, and I could see all kinds of dis­as­ter hap­pen­ing, now that my friends had dis­ap­peared. I chose to hit the pay phone and call the fam­i­ly clos­est to me in dis­tance, my sis­ter. I called col­lect, at rough­ly some time in the ear­ly AM, and she came to get me in their blue Fire­bird. I was hap­py to get out. Now, in a dra­mat­ic sto­ry meant to illus­trate how red­neck women oper­ate, she might have tried to kick my dumb ass herself,or those guys in the bar might have been sent by my para­mour-of-the-moment to knock me around a lit­tle, maybe shove me under a truck to loosen my hang­over. But none of that hap­pened. The sit­u­a­tion hinged on maybes and unspo­ken rules and the sheer bril­liance of my trust in the fact that in the world I come from–yes, some red­necks might be involved–people are gen­er­al­ly good to one anoth­er and thought­ful, and don't want to be fuck­ups or to screw the son of their friends, and sis­ters don't want to beat their dumb­fuck broth­ers over the head with their own idiocy–all of this exact­ly oppo­site of the white trash/redneck stereotype.

So let's hope the woman in the pic­ture is cul­ti­vat­ing her sense of irony. Cer­tain­ly, no actu­al white trash woman would wear that shirt. Only the pretenders.