Bigger: describes how and why Americans was to eat more, drive bigger cars, ect. Culture of excess in America discussed

Essay by jordanasheUniversity, Bachelor'sA, February 2003

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Bigger

It happens every day; some moron cruising at eighty miles per-hour down a residential street, his flashy, raised, big-rimmed SUV "bumping" to the beat of his twenty plus inch speakers, skids into a McDonalds drive threw and orders a super-sized double quarter pounder with cheese meal. Today, Americans want the fastest, the loudest, and the biggest of everything, and the trend only seems to be growing. This phenomenon is discussed in the essay "Living Even Larger: How Wretched Excess Became a Way of Life in Southern California," by Patrick Kiger. In his essay, Kiger shows how food, transportation, homes, and shopping have all become, for lack of a better word, bigger than they were in the past two decades. Furthermore, this need for excess, as Keger states, "has become a truly egalitarian motif, one that cuts across class and cultural lines." Average Americans have made sure that the rich and famous are not the only ones who have the best of everything.

Why has this need for excess become so prevalent in society? After all, was not there once a time when Americans were content with the simple things? The fact is, men are never content with what they have, and they only stop trying to attain more when physical or economic barriers stand in their way. For example, muscle cars were prevalent during the sixties, when gas cost a quarter a gallon, yet this love these fast "gas guzzlers" faded during the gas shortage of the seventies. Recently, however, the economy has been great and people have had more money to spend; therefore, it is logical to assume that the need for excess is associated with a rise in the economy. This assumption would only be half correct, in my opinion, because what Americans view as excessive or...