Lately I’ve publicly been called a “karen.” I didn’t see that coming.
And let me start off with an apology to all legitimate Karens of the world. My own aunt Karen is the most delightful, kind and compassionate lady I’ve ever known. Last year, I asked her how she felt about her name being used in a derogatory manner to refer to a complainy middle-aged woman making demands which show an unearned since of entitlement, and Aunt Karen was surprised. She said she had not realized her name was being used in that manner, though it had been in common usage that way since 2018. A few weeks later, now that she been aware of it, she told me that she did come across her name used in that context.
My being called a “karen” came about because I made a public stance against something that affects our community. All of the neighbors spoke up publicly, but the name-callers chose me to pick on.
No one is challenging any of the men who spoke publicly. It could be that they are singling me out because a woman seems like an easy target, or it could be because I am the one person who backed up our claims with documentation and photographs; I am the only one of us neighbors with a background in research and reporting, so everyone expected me to give the most detailed defense of our position.
Initially being targeted in that way made me feel uneasy, but I calmed down once I talked with my childhood best friend about it.
“They called me a ‘karen with karen hair!'” I told her. I was particularly incensed about the “karen hair” part, because I had just gotten my hair cut earlier that day and liked the cut. It had gotten too long lately to look good.
“You don’t have karen hair!” my best friend chuckled. “I have karen hair. You have more of ‘mom hair.'”
I didn’t think I had mom hair but do realize I’m sort of stuck in the 1970s or 1980s, with layered middle-length hair I use a curling iron on. Kim has had the “karen haircut” – real short in the back, longer in the front, for more than 20 years, when it first came into style and she was a renegade for having it. Now we’re both just behind the times, but we don’t care.
Kim pointed out that most of the people calling me a “karen” “look like young people commenting. They don’t care, because they’ve never worked 40 years to have anything!
“But I think the negativity toward ‘a karen’ is ridiculous. I mean, a woman who believes in something and is willing to stand up for it is not someone we should bash.
“Maybe today karen is talking to the manager of the local grocery trying to get her 2-day expired coupon validated. Tomorrow, she’s standing in front of the school board protecting her child from being bullied. Next week, she’s standing up for the whole community” against a serious problem that affects many people, which she said I had done.
Kim pointed out, “Women are easy targets. Call them names, make them self-conscious, set their brains on their looks and they get ‘irrational,’ ‘moody’ and ’emotional’ … Put the focus on the appearance of the woman and take it off the issue. Such a man move!”
Good point, Kim. After she said that, I ran my mind back over those who had called me that. They were all young men. Not one of them addressed the actual issue. They just called names.
The insult “karen” when used to describe a woman actually standing up for a valid point is just a modern-day version of “bitch,” which in the 1980s and 1990s people used specifically to call women who had begun working in the careers that formerly were a man’s arena. If a man insisted upon a point, he was a businessman; if a woman did, she was a bitch.
The term “karen’ originally referred to women being frivolous with unfounded accusations, but now it’s being used as an insult against women in general senses. I guess we females are all just supposed to keep our mouths shut and accept injustices.
I told Kim that her pep talk did me good and she said, “Because I’m a karen and I believe in you, so I stand up for you. I think we all need a little karen!”