Live Laugh Love, Karen  

Karen- She loves to ruin people's days and belittle those around her. Above all her favorite pass time yelling at employees of Mexican restaurants for charging her for a meal she did not like but seemed to have no problem eating. Karen is an embodiment of the human ethos and a true representation of satire. At first glance “Karen” is a term about people (mostly women), who start arguments with people who are just trying to do their job and live their life. However, Karen truly embodies much more than angry suburban soccer moms, but society as a whole. Nobody likes to spend their days completing mundane tasks in the service of others (who mostly do not appreciate the work being done), in return for little or no compensation of any kind. No young children spend their nights dreaming of a life where they get to serve French fries to screaming children followed by mopping up said French fries in which the previously screaming child has thrown up due to not waiting an appropriate amount of time before going in the ball pit. Alas someone must perform such tasks. But there are more examples in which our society is highlighted as the poster child of a “Karen.” 

In a popular 1970’s magazine article, Judy Brady employs repetition to emphasize her main point, saying “I want a wife...” (Brady). This was used to show how women (and more specifically wives) were treated and how society at that point in time viewed their purpose. This is important because she was writing at a time when women were constantly used as beacons of service, more pointedly service for men and their husbands. Brady talks about all the tasks she would want her wife to perform for her simply because she does not want to do them, many of which included ironing, cooking, going to the dentist, and cleaning; all of these are tasks that no one really wants to do, yet somehow must still get done. In this example, wives represent the population of people who must perform the services that no one has any actual interest in doing, much like the server at Karen's local Mexican restaurant, and husbands, like Karen feel that they are entitled to do as they please for the soul reason of thinking that somehow they hold a superior power over the person who is serving them. 

Karens in society and history have come in many different forms, in addition to husbands we have also seen Karens embodied by the everyday people around us. To be quite honest a person can be a Karen about anything; another definition of a Kren is a person who attempts to put a stop to anything they do not like. And history has supplied us with many examples of topics such as government and civil rights. The 70s were a very vibrant time for our Karen society as well, because author Audre Lorde was so bold as to claim that language or “poetry” was actually “a vital necessity of our existence” (Lorde). This was claimed at a time when people (again mostly women) were subjected to censorship and unable to bring light to or talk about the struggles and discrepancies they faced. Our Karen government and society wanted to keep people down and not allow a voice in which one could have conversations about what their experiences were as an under-represented class of people. This once again highlights the things that truly no one should have to fight for but should just be given based on human existence, however, Karen felt differently and continued to put down women and try to take away their ability to have these conversations. 

Furthermore, history has shed light on how the work industry is also a Karen. Virginia Wolf in both her works Professions for Women and A Room of One’s Own, talks about how the professional industry has intentionally and unintendedly put up walls to stunt the growth of women in their respective professional fields. There are multiple instances in Professions for Women where Wolf references “The Angle in the House” (Wolf), a harsh being that puts her down at every turn; sounds familiar right? This version of Karen was created to cause a person to second-guess themselves and limit their ability to see their potential. In A Room of One’s Own, Wolf again mentions a mythical being that stands in her way of being able to accept her idea as viable or even good, only this time it is different because it is not an angle it’s a Beadle, right? WRONG, it is Karen, stepping on a person's self-confidence and asking to speak to the “manager” of their mind. These roadblocks that are (and have been) living in people's minds rent-free are just another way in which society has forced people that they deem “less-than,” to not believe in themselves and therefore remain “less-than” in their minds. Karen takes another victim by breaking down their confidence. 

You may be waiting for the satire or irony bit of my claim to kick in, well here it is; Karen herself was created with the intent of keeping people down so that there will always be someone there to serve them. She is embodied by an angry woman, which exemplifies irony because most often women are the ones being put down or expected to serve. Furthermore, it is women who are not allowed to excel and then end up being plastered with the Karen stereotype when they attempt to do so. This is a never-ending cycle created by a society that is far more the embodiment of the Karen stereotype than the people whom this harmful stereotype targets. In the end, anyone who has ever fallen down the rabbit hole of Karen TikTok knows that no one ever sides with the ugly beast that is Karen. It can only hope that eventually, society will mirror this example.