Soap Box: I Hate Karen Memes and I Will Judge You If You Post Them

It has been a while since I have gotten real with you all and stirred the pot a little.  I have actually been spending less time on social media in the New Year, well, outside of Instagram (I guess that is social media the same as everything else, right?)  But I wanted to tell you that I hate Karen memes.

If you do not know what I am talking about, then you can take a little time right now to Google it.  I am not going to link to it.  They annoy me.  If you decide not to Google it, let me break them down for you.

They are memes, which are photographs with words above or below them that people post on social media.  The “Karen” memes are pictures with a woman on them who looks to be in her late 30’s or 40’s usually with a Kate Gosselin-like haircut.  She is usually blonde but sometimes she has different hair.  They are not all the same woman.  She usually had an annoyed look on her face and she usually looks severe. 

The words on the memes are all sorts of things like:

Karen: I have a complaint

Manager: Get out

Or

A meme of a picture is of a dog driving and the words read, “Yes Karen, I do know where I am going”.

According to many of the memes, Karen always asks for full-custody of the children during a divorce. Karen also apparently always wants to speak to the manager.

At Christmas time, I was talking to some of my cousins and one of my sisters. My English teacher sister said that her seventh graders are obsessed with memes including Karen memes.  Someone asked what those were and one of my cousins said something like, “Karen is a stay-at-home entitled soccer mom.”

I got annoyed at this comment and secretly held it against my cousin until I looked up the definition of Karen online and saw that she was right.

According to Urban Dictionary.com Karen is:

[A Karen is a kind of person who is unhappy when little things don’t go their way. They are a, “Can I speak to your manager?” kind of gal. The bitchy soccer mom of her friend group that nobody likes.

“Do you see her over there? She’s such a Karen.”

“Hi! You put meat on my son’s turkey sandwich, when he is STRICTLY VEGETARIAN. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll direct your manager over to me right away.”

#karen#housewife#soccermom]

If I could elaborate on exactly why that conversation and all the Karen memes in general irk me, it is because I take it personally. You see:

1. Karen is always a white woman in her late 30’s or 40’s like me.
2. Somewhere in the meme it is usually evident that Karen has kids, like me.
3. She is usually upset because things don’t go her way. And I do have a curmudgeon streak that comes out when I feel that I have been wronged.

It seems like people like to use the name Karen in an insult like the name Becky or even Katie, which I have totally heard as an insult before. I guess these names are all generic white girl names.

But seriously, why the white mom backlash?

Here’s a little story about the first time I really felt the irritation with stay-at-home mom’s from someone that I knew. In the summer of 2016, I went to a get together among old friends and I saw a female friend who I had not seen in a long time, she hadn’t met my baby yet and we had not seen each other since I had become a mom.  At the time, I was not working outside of the home.  She asked me what I was doing with my life. I said that I was a stay-at-home mom to my 9-month-old son.  She said in a certain tone like she has interpreting for the people around us, “So you are unemployed then?”

Another friend who was also a mother cut her off and said, “No, being a stay-at-home mom is not the same as being unemployed.”

Let me tell you, I’ve been unemployed before and it is not the same as caring for a baby day in and day out.

I don’t see that friend very much anymore and we don’t really talk very often. We are still friends but the kind of friends who occasionally comment on each other’s stuff online.

I am not saying that exchange changed the course of our friendship but I did find it illuminating. It is good to know where people stand.

Getting back to my orginal thread, I guess what I wonder is: why is there so much backlash against women, especially stay-at-home mothers.

Does our society agree that it is good for a society to procreate so we can continue our species?  Does our society agree that we need to raise the children in our society?  Can we agree as a society that it is okay for families to have options about how they are going to raise their children?

I am sorry h8ters of stay-at-home mother’s but sometimes families have different needs that don’t fit inside your neat little box.  Not everyone has a Monday-Friday 9-5 job.  Sometimes jobs have weird schedules and it doesn’t benefit a family to have both parents work outside the house.  Sometimes jobs do not pay enough to make it worthwhile emotionally or financially to work full-time and pay for childcare. Sometimes people have always dreamed about staying home with their children when they are young. Sometimes it is a combination of things. People have many reasons.

And getting to the second part of the Karen problem, why is there so much backlash against Karen asking to see a manager? Is it problematic to try to make things in life go your way?

People seem to fault Karen for complaining to the manager.  Sometimes managers need to be complained to. 

Is Karen just supposed to take what she gets?

By posting these Karen memes, are we saying as a society that we should all take what we get and not complain to the manager to fix our problems. Because it seems to me that the main complaint against Karen is that she is a woman who is complaining.

I haven’t seen any man oriented memes that have reached near the popularity that the Karen memes have reached.

I am not even going to conjecture about what that means for the 2020 election, but I do think these thoughts are somewhat connected to the reason why we are currently in the situation that we are in right now, politically speaking. Maybe we could stop using words like shrill or emotional when describing female candidates.

Those are just my two cents.