VOA标准英语2011--Supersizing the American Dream Home

（单词翻译）

Supersizing the American Dream Home

This is a story about something called "McMansions," the backlash to McMansions, and the backlash to the backlash about McMansions.
McMansions are homes - new and very big homes. The name is borrowed from the "super-sized" drinks and French fries and sandwiches at McDonald's fast-food restaurants. Build a McMansion, and you've super-sized the American Dream of home ownership.
They're built by people who want all sorts of amenities¹ and can afford them: lots of bedrooms, a spacious² lawn, a three- or four-car garage, maybe even a swimming pool. Throw in a library and a mega-kitchen fit for a king's chef and the result is a home of gargantuan³ proportions.
That's fine and dandy if you have a rolling country field on which to erect⁴ this monster. But squeeze one onto a modest lot in an older community, and you've created, in the eyes of your neighbors, an eyesore that's absurdly out of scale with its surroundings.
For them, a McMansion is not a dream. It's a nightmare.
Citizens who are upset by the super-sized houses going up in their neighborhood have four choices: move, win the lottery⁵ and build their own McMansion, get used to the monolith next door or, if it's not too late, get the city council to pass a regulation to limit the size of new houses in their area.
Increasingly, that last solution seems to be working. Communities across the country are passing stricter building restrictions⁶ to keep out what some have sneeringly⁷ called "starter castles."
So what's the backlash to the backlash? In zoning hearings, courtrooms, and online blogs, we're hearing a lot of sentiments such as this, in response to an MSN Business story online: "It is really no one's business what I decide to build upon my own land or property if I follow the building codes," the writer snorted. "This is the United States of America, and if I want to build a large or small home, it is my right."