What about Huntsville, AL

[youbet]

Can we use the term "trashy?"

In my opinion, and in the sense you're using it, yes. You're not using it to describe a group of people but rather a behavior such as smoking or going bare footed into the store.

For example, I'd have no problem with saying that spitting on the floor is trashy.

Hey, I'm not looking at getting into some detailed discussion of PC terminology here. But it does seem like we could stay away from obvious stereotyping and racism and sexism and so on and so forth.........

 

[Dawg52]

Growing up in the south (even deeper south than Dog52) it was my mother's goal in life to prevent us from being "trashy".

I'm 180 miles from the Mississippi coast. You can't get much deeper south than me.

BTW, a trashy girl is not a bad thing from a guys perspective on a Saturday night after a few brew.

 

[shiny]

For example, I'd have no problem with saying that spitting on the floor is trashy.

That why "When you get old and live in a shack, teach your children to spit through a crack" was a common saying!

 

[youbet]

it was my mother's goal in life to prevent us from being "trashy".

Who was that country singer with the song that included the line "I like my women a little on the trashy side?" Was that Hank Williams, Jr.?

 

[Martha]

The wikipedia entry on White Trash: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_trash

The term is rarely used in my part of the country; I didn't even hear the term until I was an adult.

One pejorative term for rural poor you hear on occasion in my part of the country is "jack pine savage." More small towns seem to be embracing this term as a term of pride, as in "jack pine savage days." Some outsiders seem to think it refers to native americans, but that was never the way I understood it.

Growing up I would hear a number of different racial slurs. Calling someone from Finland (Suomi) a "finnlander" was considered a slur. Now people seem to have forgotten that. The most insulting terms were reserved for native americans.