KAREN: THE HISTORY, ONTOLOGY, AND ETYMOLOGY OF A MEME THAT WENT VIRAL AND GOBBLED UP A PLANET

The origins of calling someone a “Karen”—roughly, a nervous, divalicious, shrill-voiced, entitled white woman, often said to be sporting a “can-I-speak-to-your-manager haircut” (a blunt, blonde bob: has-been B-list reality “star” Kate Gosselin, of low-level, “Jon & Kate Plus 8” pseudo-fame is thought to possess the prototypical one), maybe driving an oversized SUV, sometimes with kids in tow, who flips out and/or asks to see the manager and/or threatens to call the police and/or actually does call the police, over the slightest perceived or imagined affront to her dignity/personal space aka Zone of Entitlement—are shrouded in mystery, a bit.

​(Actually you don’t even need to invade a Karen’s space to set her off like a string of hysterical blonde-bobbed firecrackers: she might approach you at a barbecue, phone pressed to ear, 9-1-1 on the other end of the line; or at a pool, asking to see your I.D., then calling the cops when you refuse of produce it; or she might attempt to block your ingress to your own building, then follow right to the door of your apartment—about all of which more later)

​Some believe the practice of calling a (probably) mental-health-issue-having, manager-asking-for, 9-1-1-calling kerfuffle-artist a “Karen” originated in Classical Antiquity, i.e. the early 1990s, with the release of Sir Mix-a-Lot’s “Baby’s Got Back,” which begins with two Valley-Girl type dudettes chirping incredulously about the protuberant posteriors so beloved by Mr. Mix-a-Lot: “Oh my God…Look at her butt! It’s so big… It’s just so round, it’s like out there,” etc. 

​Others think it traces back to 1990 movie “Goodfellas,” Ray Liotta’s plaintive wail when his wife Karen flushes all his cocaine down the toilet? “Karen, that’s all the money we had! Why did you do that Karen?” etc. Maybe, these folks say, the endless repetition of “Karen” somehow imprinted itself on our collective unconscious.

​I don’t buy that one, though. For one thing, her name might be “Karen,” but she’s not “a Karen.” Rather the reverse, really: she stoically endures numerous provocations, embarrassments and compromising situations with nary a peep.

​(Until, true, she snaps when she finds out Ray Liotta not only has a mistress but is renting his paramour a little crèche around the way for their “romantic” trysts; and Karen, in somewhat Karenish fashion, wakes Ray Liotta up pointing a giant gun in his face.)

And about Sir Mix-a-Lot, here and elsewhere, perhaps the less said the better.

​No, the consensus seems to be that the first Karen, the ancestor of all subsequent Karens, the ur-Karen, was in fact a “Becky” (not her real name: all these mostly alliterative nicknames were coined for catchiness). 

​“BBQ Becky” was an officious, hall-monitor-ish Oakland, Californian who called 9-1-1 on a Black family for using a charcoal barbecue in the designated barbecue area of a certain park—but not, see, in the designated charcoal barbecue area of the designated barbecue area.

Phone pressed to ear, spewing racial invective, BBQ Becky assured the family they would all be going to jail for their infraction. The episode was caught on cell-phone video, went viral, and became a meme called “BBQing While Black.”

​BBQ Becky begat “Permit Patty,” caught on video (by the child’s mother) crouching behind some sort of stone structure, calling 9-1-1 on an 8-year-old selling bottles of water on a hot day,  from her front yard, without a permit; “Cornerstore Caroline,” who flipped out and called 9-1-1 when a black kid’s backpack brushed against her ass in a crowded store. all caught on video by the child’s mother and the store’s security camera; and among the more egregious, “Apartment Patty,” who blocks a Black man’s entrance to his own apartment building, demanding to see his key, then follows him to the elevator, down the hallway, and finally to the door of his apartment door, which he opens with his key—then, hilariously, when she realizes he actually lives there, says: “Well, then, I’d like to introduce myself as your neighbour.”    

​“Apartment Patty” et al paved the way for “Crosswalk Cathy,” who calls cops when she spots a car parked a few inches into a crosswalk; “Golfcart Gail,” yelling from a golf-cart then calling police after a father at a Florida soccer game told his son to listen to the referees; and countless others. 

​There were many male proto-Karens, before you ask, like “I.D. Adam,” who badgers a woman for identification at a community pool in North Carolina, then calls police when she refuses; and “Coupon Carl,” who accuses a woman at a pharmacy of using forged coupons, calls police—just to name a couple.

​Perhaps most famous of all—the acme, the apotheosis of Karen—is “Central Park Karen” (real name Amy Cooper) who called police when a black bird-watcher (he was and is a member of the Audobon society) approached her in the Bramble, a non-leash-off area of New York City’s Central Park, and asked her to leash her dog. In a shrill, quasi-hysterical voice, like nails dragged across a blackboard, she tells him she’s going to call the cops.  

​“Please call the cops,” he says.

​“I’m gonna tell them there’s an African-American man threatening my life.”

She does. Breathlessly: “There is an African-American man. He is recording me, and threatening myself and my dog…please send the cops immediately!”

​It’s hard to watch, kinda. All Karen-encounters are ipso facto caught on cellphone; go viral; and the Karen or Becky or Carl or whomever, are eventually fired from whatever company they work for, accompanied by the company’s apologetic statement for their employee’s behaviour. 

​Sometimes the Karen in question apologizes on TV. “Central Park Karen” had to surrender her dog to the shelter she adopted it from, because the video, along with other excruciating details, shows her repeatedly lifting up her dog by the collar and choking it as she talks to 9-1-1.

​Those are the roots, the ABCs of the Karen phenomenon. And now, since COVID-19 has burrowed its tentacles deeper and deeper into the collective psyche of our species, we’re all going a little bananas, have you noticed? Walk along the streets, you see more and more people (so it seems to me, at least), flipping out; yelling imprecations at the empty air/the world in general; getting in confrontations; muttering to themselves; etc.

​And Karens proliferate, flipping out, demanding to see the manager, calling police, and all the rest of it—my favourite being a Karen flipping out in a grocery store, I believe from being asked to wear a mask, and chucking the groceries from her cart all over the place, yelling stuff like: “I don’t care! Don’t tell me what to do! It’s a free country!” and so on.

My ultra-conservative friend Liz has an interesting theory: that Karen, and another one who flips out in a plane for being asked to wear a mask, aren’t the true Karens. “The real Karens are the ones asking her to wear a mask.” I’ll leave that to others to debate—but of course, there are two sides to every story. And something set all these Karens off. It should be said that before the “Central Park Karen” video begins, her ornithologically inclined interlocutor, Chris Cooper (no relation) did call to her dog and offered it some treats which he offered the dog, kinda like he—what? Was going to take it from her? 

​As one online commentator points out, he was being a bit of a Karen himself. Why not just ask her to leash her dog, and move on? 

​And this to me is the most striking feature of the Karen phenomenon, in my view: the endless, boundless energy to get all up in other people’s business, to create problems where there was none before.

​And isn’t that the last thing we all need right now? Another problematic aspect of the explosion of Karenification in our culture is: it makes people with legitimate complaints afraid to stand up for themselves for fear of being labeled “a Karen.” 

​Take my wife—please (just kidding, I love her to bits, respect her through the roof, and can’t believe I just trotted out that dusty old Rodney Dangerfield-type joke). Recently, she and I  bought a new dishwasher, to replace our old one, which suddenly went (pardon my French) tits up after many years of fairly good, semi-yeoman-type service. 

​Getting it our house and (mostly) installed was a whole production. It would’ve taken weeks to deliver (“because of Covid”: everything is “because of Covid” these days: I’m gonna get a T-shirt just saying that), so we wound up driving all over hell’s half-acre from one warehouse to another, to be told stuff like: oops, we didn’t realize it was out of stock here, we’ll have it sent, oh no it’s on the truck to the other warehouse, etc.

​(The Kafkaesque “new normal,” in other words. Everything more complex, thorny than you thought. “Battle conditions” all the time, even just going to the grocery store.) 

When we finally get it home, put the old one in the alley, hire a dude (it’s combat these days just to get a handy person to get back to you) to install it—and it’s busted. Some critical little doo-hickey inside had snapped off, or something.

​The runaround continued. It was frustrating. But my wife, despite having long, flowing (I would even go so far as to say “cascading,” and definitely “tousled,” partly thanks to the paucity of hairdressers available “in these difficult times”) brunette tresses and not a short, blonde bob, was nervous about asking “to speak to the manager” for fear of being called a “Karen.” 

​She did, though, and it all worked out, sort of: we received for our efforts a fresh, slightly more expensive dishwasher for the same price, plus $50 store credit for her trouble (which didn’t even cover half the cost lost down the drain for the unsuccessful installation guy visit).

​She complained to the manager. But she did it calmly, reasonable. And that’s the thing, ultimately, isn’t it? My most fervent hope for everything going on right now is: that reason will ultimately prevail. If you find yourself in a potentially fractious, friction-filled situation, just take a deep breath, state your case calmly and coolly, and you might just find yourself on the line with or across the counter (behind plexiglass) from an equally reasonable person.

​Remember: they may be climbing the walls, their kids climbing the walls, marshalling employees like trying to herd cats, company facing bankruptcy, and all the rest of it.  

Don’t freak out. As I say: it’s the last thing anyone needs right now. It’s battle conditions, true. The British World War II poster had it right, when the Luftwaffe was peppering them with bombs, food and gas and chocolate were being rationed, and things looked bleak:

​“Keep calm and carry on.”