Six Ways Hollywood Stars are Like Trailer Trash

1. Most never went to college. Some of the more elegant Hollywood stars do get a higher education, like Natalie Portman, but there are plenty that have either no higher education or just a little. John Travolta, Angelina Jolie, Ben Affleck, Tom Cruise, Robert De Niro, Johnny Depp, Tom Hanks, and many, many, many others either never started, or at least never graduated, from college. This is perhaps the most important way that many Hollywood stars are like trailer trash, because the lack of formal education can contribute to a lot of the poor decisions that they make that are listed later on here.

2. They give their kids terrible names. While the trailer park is usually a reflection of the names popular on daytime television (I’m not sure which shows Amber, Bree or Crystal were on, but I don’t doubt for a minute they were on one or another), Hollywood stars somehow think their children won’t be picked on when they give them names like the ones on this list: http://www.babynames.com/Names/Celebrities/celebrity-baby-names.php. My personal favorite is probably “Chianna Maria Bono”. They managed to make it sound cheap and trashy and also evoke the French chier, “to shit”, at the same time.

3. Tattoos. Tattoos are a tell-tale sign someone is lower class. While the occasional small butterfly on the ankle may be socially acceptable these days in some grown-up circles, many celebrity tattoos are wonderful ways for their owners to prove that they are emotionally about 10 years old: http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/gossip/worst-celebrity-tattoos-gallery-1.1011838.

4. A public private life. This may not be the same as chasing your cheating husband around the trailer park with a frying pan or becoming a regular on “Jerry Springer”, since much of the media attention is theoretically unwanted (though given the narcissistic personalities of celebrities, I suspect almost all of it is secretly adored, and if it were to stop, the celebrities would be depressed), but celebrities air their private problems in public settings all the time. The concept that something is “none of your business” is just completely foreign to the vast majority of celebrities.

5. Drug, alcohol and domestic disturbance problems. There are plenty of people who have drug and alcohol problems, but for some reason the ones who seem to be the least “functional” are stars and trailer trash. Again, this probably gets back to bad decision-making skills. The same skill set that leads a trailer park resident to get drunk and start a fight with the guy next door is the skill set that leads Lindsay Lohan to decide that it’s time for her to get behind the wheel (yet again) in a state of intoxication, even though she could easily pay to have a driver or a limousine service take her where she needs to go. This really dovetails into a larger issue, which is “problems with the law generally”, including abuse, sexual assault and involvement in prostitution (where, ironically, the stars often have direct interaction with the trailer trash). http://www.thesmokinggun.com/mugshots/celebrity/hollywood

6. Cults. This is an easy one. The trailer parks breed cults of the snake-handler, meth-gang-Satanist, radical Mormon splinter group, Jonestown or holy roller varieties, while Hollywood has Scientology and New Age cults, but it’s very present in both groups to an extent it isn’t in society as a whole. Xenu, anyone?

I would add “poor taste generally”, but that’s a lot more star-specific. However, as a parting thought, a client of mine used a limousine immediately after Beyonce had used it, and said that she had thrown chicken bones from a KFC bucket onto the floor, and they were still there when he got in because the driver threw out the bucket and napkins but didn’t notice (or expect) that someone would be that low class in a limousine. However, that may be more of a “you can take the girl out of the ghetto, but not the ghetto out of the girl” sort of thing.