McMansion

This isn’t to say that two Housewives fighting about who stole a McMansion is directly comparable to Trump having a death grip on the White House, only that, despite all the cynics who claim it’s a meritless void, “Housewives” remains a valuable lens for analyzing our culture.

I’m a frequent reader of McMansion Hell, the critic Kate Wagner’s caustic architecture blog, and while GWHs are McMansion-sized, they don’t sport a lot of the fripperies—the cornices, the colonnades—that the ’90s monstrosities on Wagner’s site do.

When I called Wagner to ask about this, she urged me to think of the McMansion not as a style of house but as a type of house, encompassing many possible styles.

As the height of the McMansion offers a barrier against the community around you, the McMansion’s sprawling layout renders the community unnecessary.

Kate Wagner of McMansion Hell argued that this architectural incoherence stems, in fact, from the modern homebuyer’s saturation in Zillow and Redfin.