Karen : So, you have your cousins, and then you have your first cousins, and then you have your second cousins Gretchen : No, honey, uh-uh. Karen : That's not right, is it? Gretchen : That is so not right. Gretchen : Regina, we have to talk to you. Regina : Is butter a carb? Cady : [Rudely] YES. Gretchen : Regina, you're wearing sweatpants. It's Monday.
Regina : So? Karen : So that's against the rules, and you can't sit with us. Regina : Whatever. Those rules aren't real. Karen : They were real that day I wore a vest! Regina : Because that vest was disgusting! Gretchen : You can't sit with us! Regina : [pause] These sweatpants are all that fits me right now. Regina : [after being ignored] Fine! You can walk home, bitches.
Karen : Why are you dressed so scary? Cady : It's Halloween. Regina : I gave him everything! I was half a virgin when I met him. Karen : Do you wanna do something fun? Wanna go to taco bell? Regina : I can't go to taco bell, I'm on an all-carb diet. GOD Karen you're so stupid! Gretchen : Wait, Regina! Talk to me! Regina : No one understands me Gretchen : I understand you! Cady : You're not stupid, Karen.
Karen : No, I am actually. I'm failing almost everything! Cady : Well Karen : I can stick my whole fist in my mouth! Wanna see? Cady : No no no Anything else? Karen : Well I'm kinda psychic. I have a fifth sense. Cady : What do you mean? My breasts can always tell when it's going to rain. Cady : Really? That's amazing. Karen : God. My hips are huge! Gretchen : Oh please. She's middle-aged. She lives in the suburbs. She's definitely conservative and possibly an anti-vaxxer.
She has 38 Twitter followers and the first word on her bio is "mother", but she mostly uses Facebook, where she posts inspirational quotes. Basically, Karen is entitled, ignorant and all-round insufferable to anyone culturally aware and progressive. As with most memes, the origins are a little murky. But Karen has been an evocative name for some time.
In it, he refers to this ubiquitous character as "Karen", saying:. The current iteration of Karen is somewhat removed from this stereotype though.
It is largely used as shorthand for a woman who is privileged, snobby and possibly a bit racist even though "Karen" definitely "has black friends". Tacking "Karen" onto the end of a tweet calling someone out on these behaviours has become a way of not only symbolising an eye-roll, but also a showing of cultural awareness and understanding of the in-joke.
Is it a bit obnoxious? Is it a slur? While there have been murmurings about the use of "Karen" being offensive namely to women who are actually called Karen for some time, the debate around whether or not it's a misogynistic meme has kicked off yet again on Twitter again last night. The original tweet has at the time of writing received 1, likes and even more replies, many of which vehemently disagree with her point of view.
She tweeted in response and received 4, likes. Clearly people disagree,. If all this sounds familiar, it's because a similar debate kicked off on British Twitter a couple of months ago. At the time, it seemed that the "Karen" meme had But it seems something similar is now happening across the Atlantic. While the coronavirus epidemic has brought many communities together, it has also exacerbated divisions fuelled resentment and anger. First, boomers were blaming millennials for going to the pub despite little evidence to suggest doing so was a generational issue , millennials en masse responded "ok boomer" — further infuriating their elders — and started tweeting incessantly about the pain of trying keep their blase parents in the house.
People are raging at each other for sunbathing in parks , while those cooped up in small flats are quick to lash out at the privileged who own a garden. None of this has been helped by a complete lack of clarity from either British or American governments, leaving people anxious, confused and quick to lash out. People who had never used a meme before in their lives began to use the word to essentially just mean "stupid and selfish". Karen was suddenly anyone who was perceived to be social distancing incorrectly, or not taking things seriously enough.
People are dying, Karen. As a result, a lot of the nuance of the real meaning of the meme was lost on the people criticising it, and others were quick to clap back.
This is perhaps the argument that has the most longest? It's true that "Karen" is obviously a gendered name, and used specifically to mock and ridicule women. And while male equivalents have entered the lexicon namely in the form of "Chad" on Twitter and "Kyle" on Reddit they have not gained anywhere near the same level of notoriety.
But does this make the meme inherently sexist, or simply reflect a world in which women are judged so much more harshly than men in almost every way? On social media in particular and Twitter especially , abuse against women is rife.
A study from Amnesty International showed that every 30 seconds a woman receives harassing or abusive messages from men on Twitter. Many of these insults will likely be misogynistic slurs, which stereotype and degrade women based on their gender.
There are undoubtedly people who use Karen in the same way, but it's worth noting that the meme itself doesn't necessarily reflect that. There are countless words which are usurped by trolls as a way to insult women, but that doesn't make the words inherently misogynistic. In fact, as the reclamation of words which have historically been used to debase women "slut", "fat", "bitch" has taught us , words in and of themselves carry no inherent meaning, they simply amplify the intent with which they have been used.
In the case of Karen, we're seeing the opposite phenomenon — a word which was given its current meaning largely by a certain demographic of women has been co-opted to in this case, it seems, largely accidentally and given connotations which could understandably be perceived as being sexist.
The intersection between language and gender is complex. Calling someone "stupid man" doesn't have the same baggage as calling someone a " stupid woman ", for example. And there are countless terms which are used only to refer to women , which are perceived negatively compared to their counterpart used for men bossy vs confident; needy vs sensitive and so on ad nauseam.
Karen is mostly used by women. It's mostly used to refer to other way more privileged women. This of course doesn't insulate it from the sexist undercurrents which permeate pretty much all the ways in which we communicate in the world. But calling it a "misogynistic slur" does feel a bit far. As previously stated, Karen — in her original iteration — is undeniably white. This is important because a lot of the behaviour she manifests is inherently linked to her white privilege.
Author Claire Shrugged explained this in a series of tweets back in April when the argument kicked off in the UK, disputing the claim that Karen is a misogynistic slur. Many instances of entitlement have been catalogued by Instagram pages like karensgoingwilds over the last few months.
They have been collecting footage from people all over the US who identify "Karens" — a term that's been adopted for a white woman, or sometimes a man, who is caught committing acts of racism in public. Some examples include videos of white women calling the police on innocent people , blocking people from leaving parking lots , and screaming beyond sense. The exponential movement for catching this over-the-top behavior on camera seemed to begin with Amy Cooper — the "Central Park Karen" — who threatened a Black man by calling the police on him when he asked her to put a leash on her dog.
Psychologist Perpetua Neo told Insider one reason for the rage we see in people acting incongruously in public could be related to the uncertainty they feel right now. Not only is there an ongoing coronavirus pandemic, but there have also been hundreds of stories of police brutality dominating the news, and there is more necessity than ever for people to face up to their own privileges and prejudices.
Someone who is entitled has their own ideas of where they fit in society and what their rights are, and they are not used to those being challenged. Neo said there's a sense of "How dare you? This can be seen when a simple request of being asked to wear a mask can turn into an intense altercation as defensiveness becomes extreme and the entitled person lashes out. It can be particularly rage-inducing if a white person is criticized by someone younger than them or a person of color if they're used to ignoring the benefit they've received from injustices their entire lives.
Morton said it could also come down to the fact the US is quite an individualistic society. An individualist mindset means your actions are centered around your own rights and needs, with less attention being placed on your community.
In comparison, communitarianism is more about being aware and connected to society, and being mindful about how your choices affect everyone. People in a communitarian society, like in Japan and Taiwan, have worn masks for decades, in part because they have a heightened awareness for one another's health.
Someone who is more individualistic may be less likely to wear a mask even now in the midst of a pandemic for selfish reasons: It's uncomfortable, it makes them look scared and weak, or they don't believe they'll get sick so they don't see the point.
As entitlement videos continue to spread online, there's been an inevitable backlash to the trend of people being called out when they make a scene in public. But Neo said that's an attempt to misdirect from the actual problem.
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