Opinion

Big, trouble

Americans are obsessed with living large. That doesn’t just mean eating super-sized meals — it means coming home to McMansions, driving Hummers, proposing with two-carat engagement rings, shopping at big box stores, worshipping at mega-churches, and getting the world’s largest breast implants.

The United States is the world’s third-largest country by size (after Russia and Canada) and also by population (after China and India), yet we come in first for innumerable “world’s largest” records. Namely: We have the most billionaires in the world. We also have the world’s largest imprisoned population. We have the most roadside attractions of large things, like Salem Sue, a 12,000-pound fiberglass cow sculpture in New Salem, N.D. We have the world’s largest obese population. We’re the world’s largest consumers of cocaine. We’re home to the world’s largest office building (the Pentagon, which spans 34 acres). We have Walmart, the world’s largest retailer (94% of Americans live within 15 miles of one). We have Philadelphia City Hall, the world’s largest government structure, and the world’s tallest monument, the Gateway Arch in St. Louis. We have the largest gross domestic product and the largest gold reserves, but also the largest national debt ($13 trillion).

We’re home to the Salvation Army, the world’s largest fundraising charity. We have the most Internet users. We spend the most money per person on health care every year, on average $4,500. We have the world’s most Nobel Prize winners. We have the Mall of America, which attracts more visitors every year than Disney World, Graceland and the Grand Canyon combined. We have the biggest food, like the world’s largest burger (made by Mallie’s Sports Bar & Grill in Southgate, Mich., it weighs 134 lbs.) and the world’s tallest cookie tower (made by Columbus, Ohio Girl Scouts).

Not surprisingly, we also coined the term “Go big or go home.”

CLICK HERE TO SEE HOW AMERICANS ARE LIVING LARGE

After all, we’re the nation that took Manifest Destiny, the constant quest for expansion, as a call to action. Any number of quintessential American moments — from the Louisiana Purchase to Neil Armstrong planting the American flag on the moon — can be read as an extension of us claiming more, more, more. So perhaps, without much frontier left, we’re feeding that same old urge by staking out maximum space as individuals — our waistlines, our portion sizes, our houses, our cars.

Sometimes living large is whimsical, like the world’s largest ball of twine, the only tourist attraction in Darwin, Minn. Big America can be efficient, like Puente Hills Sanitary Landfill in Whittier County, Calif., the country’s largest, where scientists have figured out how to turn the gas from our trash into clean power for thousands of homes. Living large can be gluttonous and oddly entertaining, like competitive eating events. It can mean we save money by shopping at a big box store — but it also means that when a big box store opens, the community’s unemployment and infant mortality rates increase. Going big can be sexy (Americans get the largest-size breast implants) and then disturbing (women who get breast implants are four times likelier to commit suicide than those who have any other plastic surgery). Living large can make us feel protected and comforted, which helps explain why Hummer sales soared after 9/11. It can cause us to overreach and strive to live in bigger homes that we can’t necessarily afford, leaving eight times more McMansions in foreclosure than the national average.

Since the recession hit, some Americans have tried to live smaller, mostly as a way to save money. Whether the economy recovers or double-dips, though, Americans will return to living large — mostly because it’s comfortable, it’s easy, it’s flashy, and because we find it annoying when people tell us not to.

But in some ways, we may find that living small is better than living large. The National Association of Home Builders says there’s a budding demand for smaller homes, and McDonald’s has done away with the option to super-size. Sales of gas-electric cars like the Totoya Prius are outpacing those in the general market. Perhaps the only upside of the recession is that it’s allowed us to hit pause on this ever-expanding race to go big. It affords us a moment to consider how we arrived at this place. It also gives us space to evaluate what kind of America we want to be when we come out of this financial mess. Otherwise, it’s hard not to wonder how big we’ll balloon, and whether we’ll ever be sated. At what point in driving a bigger car or living in a bigger house or staying in a bigger hotel or shopping in a bigger mall do we finally say, OK, enough. I think we’re good here?

When the first few corporate giants started their layoffs, they shrewdly banished the word “downsizing” and replaced it with the term “right-sizing.” Of course, the euphemism seemed to gloss over the fact that people’s careers and incomes had been lost in the process, which didn’t seem too “right.” But it’s actually the perfect way to express how we can start thinking about not defaulting to largeness just because it’s easy or obvious. Who says that going smaller — whether it means trading your SUV for a compact or a couple moving from a six-bedroom home to a townhouse — has to be a step down? It could be a way to live a more streamlined life, one where its content and experiences are more greatly appreciated than its sheer size.

Though most of us cringe at the thought of embracing corporate jargon, let’s re-appropriate the term. If we can “right-size” our nation by thinking of scaling back not as hard-times punishment but as a long-overdue readjustment, we can emerge from a difficult experience better off — and that’s something our industrious, super-sized country is all about.

Sarah Z. Wexler is the author of “Living Large: From SUVs to Double Ds — Why Going Bigger Isn’t Going Better” (St. Martin’s Press), out this week.