Suburban Scaries
Reflections on Growing Up Behind The White Picket Fence
Born with an itch to get out, I made my entrance to the world three months ahead of schedule. I like to think this early arrival was a testament to my eagerness to shrug off convention and dive into something bigger than what the confines of the womb would allow. Unfortunately, however, this relentless urge to escape — both literally and metaphorically — collided head-on with the less-than-ideal truth that my premature corporeality found itself stuck in a plastic enclosure in the NICU of a suburban hospital in Maryland. After months in an incubator, my tiny baby feet were then planted on the uninspiring tile floor of one of those quintessential suburban McMansions. Looking back, I don’t think the restraints of the NICU or of the white picket fence were what my spirit had envisioned for itself upon materialization.
The sprawling American McMansion of the late 20th century serves as a stark embodiment of the distortion of the American dream into a collective illusion. While the uniform red bricks of McMansions were laid in their cookie-cutter formations, income inequality rose and intergenerational mobility diminished (source) — all while housing prices skyrocketed (source). Without a foundation in true upward mobility and quality of life, these bloated vestiges of Levittown felt as sterile as the incubator I left behind, leaving me not only crying out for nourishment but also for a more profound sense of purpose.
Throughout my childhood, my family moved frequently due to fluctuating finances. Each time, we settled in suburban neighborhoods which left me uneasy. Although unaware of the multiple studies affirming my feelings, I held a strong intuition that the societal ideal of suburbia lacked a basis in reality. My family lived in the suburbs, after all, and we weren’t anything like the picture-perfect TV families. My parents argued incessantly, infidelity lingered, finances were tight, and my dad was addicted to Demorol. We didn’t go to church, much less have anything resembling a routine. Watching Disney Channel shows about happy suburban nuclear families only heightened my feelings of isolation. We couldn’t be more different than the Stevens from “Even Stevens.”
Some of the only moments of solace I felt growing up occurred when I visited New York City. With its cultural diversity and spontaneous chaos, New York starkly contrasted with the meticulously constructed suburbs I knew, and I reveled in the difference. However, my weekends in New York — spent visiting my grandfather, a Physics professor at Columbia — always felt too brief. Once, in a bid to extend my time in the city, I deliberately left one of my shoes in FAO Schwartz, ensuring a return trip and granting me more time to breathe in the roasted peanut-scented air that permeates midtown. On the Amtrak rides back to Baltimore, I’d cry as I carried back with me a vision of a different life — one that was urban, messy, and free. Imagining life in New York comforted me throughout my turbulent childhood, and for that, I remain eternally grateful to the iconic metropolis.
Eighteen years after breaking out of the NICU, I left the suburbs behind for college in Washington, D.C., before finally settling in New York City, where I’ve spent the last decade. Although I’ve found greater tranquility here, I still find myself reflecting on my time in the suburbs, and I wonder whether it was the place itself that I loathed so deeply or the projections — of meaninglessness, conspicuous consumption, and rigid social norms — I imposed on it. I also wonder whether I should actually be thanking the suburbs for instilling a restlessness in me that saw me through my childhood. I remain uncertain. What I do know now is that my experience of suburban restlessness was not unique. Others felt it too, as evidenced by their cinematic depictions of the setting.
And so, I now present to you my favorite films exploring life in the suburbs:
American Beauty (1999)
Revolutionary Road (2008)
Gone Girl (2014)
We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011)
The Virgin Suicides (1999)
Wow