When we lived in a more rural area, and I drove my kids to school each morning (in a normal-sized sedan), I taught them to notice the contents of the SUVs they saw. The common pattern, like 90% of the time in the morning, was a lady driver in a spotless SUV with a kid in the very back row of seats.

And the demographics made sense: you’d expect to see more moms dropping off kids, at least in redder parts of the country, and the back row is supposed safest (as long as you only plan on getting into head-on collisions). Still, the common theme of a ridiculous vehicle with exactly 2 occupants sitting in the farthest possible positions from each other came to be funny to us.

Those ludicrous pavement princess pieces of junk are status symbols of conspicuous consumption, and that’s it.

Now, a pickup with tool racks or lumber in the back, or covered with drywall dust, or bearing a ranch sticker? Fine. Those make perfect sense. Anything short of that is just bragging about how much you love donating to Exxon, like an NRA sticker but dumber.