The popular American idiom “Keeping up with the Joneses” describes a comparison to one’s neighbors as a standard for social status or as a justification for the accumulation of goods. Based on a comic strip from 1913 in which “The Joneses” were talked about but never actually seen, this iconic family (albeit make-believe) has set unrealistic, hypothetical standards in U.S. households for nearly 100 years.

The way I see it, their reputation as the quintessential American family is old hat. Here are a few reasons I say the Joneses are lame…

1. They are a wasteful bunch. Concerned with upward social mobility above all else, these are the nearly-new-appliance-on-the-curb, concrete-watering-during-the-drought, and new-inflatable-Santa-every-winter types.
2. They have no taste. Cookie cutters define the bounds of their creativity, and square hedges the extent of their imaginations.
3. The Joneses are broke. This will not, however, deter them from obsessive spending on whatever non-essentials will help disguise this minor detail.
4. The Joneses love credit lines but despise you for your laundry lines.
5. The only footprint they are concerned with is the one your kid leaves on their lawn.
6. The Joneses don’t make for the friendliest of neighbors. Horrified of drop-in guests lest they be caught with dishes in the sink or the toilet seat up, they call the cops on impromptu BBQs and implement neighborhood ordinances against compost piles, garage sales, lemonade stands and street ball.
7. “Living within their means,” is as foreign a concept to the Joneses as xeriscaping, rainwater harvesting or community supported agriculture.
8. Appalled by parents who don’t live in perpetual fear or worry incessantly over their children, they hawk the local playgrounds for endangered, unattended youth — CPS at the ready on speed dial.
9. Never mind energy efficiency or starry nights, the floodlights must stay on from dusk till dawn at the Joneses house. Better safe than sorry – after all – they’ve not yet managed to rally enough signatures to ensure a new stripmall in the place of the old-growth-forested trailer park two miles down the road.
10. The Joneses are morally opposed to travel trailers, fishing boats and basketball hoops in driveways. Driveways are for suburbans, and weekends for home improvements. Period.

I’m working on an alternative “quintessential family” for the next 100 years. Just give me a minute to mull it over…