Redneck

The term redneck refers to a (typically male) person having a red neck caused by workinging outdoors in the sunlight over the course of their lifetime. The effect of decades of direct sunlight on the exposed skin of the back of the neck not only reddens the skin, but renders the skin leathery and tough, and typically very wrinkled by late middle age.

Redneck is often used to refer to the stereotype of a southern U.S rural lower-class person. A stereotypical redneck has a beer belly, lives in a trailer, drives a pickup truck, enjoys hunting, and votes Republican.

Comedian Jeff Foxworthy, himself a southerner native to the Atlanta area, has written several best-selling books about the stereotype, including Games Rednecks Play and the You Might Be a Redneck If series.

The term is often but not always pejorative, in the same sense as hayseed. However, many have taken this term as a point of pride.