While scrolling through the comments of one of the big media outlets* during my lunch break, I couldn’t but stop notice the same insult repeated over and over again: stop behaving like a Karen, we have another Karen in this thread, have you contacted your manager, darling, ‘cos you look like a person who does exactly that on a regular basis etc. Not that today was in any way special, but, nevertheless, the flood of those remarks felt overwhelming.
However, those people on social media (after all, not all of them are bots yet, right?) who initiated those attacks more or less chaotically, satisfied their needs completely, because it usually goes as follows: once you mention Karen, if you’re lucky, you can potentially shut down any dispute simply because nobody wants to be one.
Or so you say. See, once the Karen meme was introduced to the public (five, six years ago? earlier? I don’t remember, and, frankly, it doesn’t matter), the idea of an obnoxious, spoiled, bratty middle-aged woman (mostly white, or, as they wrongly call it in the States, “Caucasian,”** since the obsession with race in American media is getting stronger day by day) of a certain class (I suppose, low-middle or middle)—who’s constantly complaining about all services, dissing and humiliating low-paid workers (mostly, in retail) for no apparent reason but simply “because she can” (say, she’s a vile bitch par excellence), has become the epitome of passive aggression and the most repulsive entitlement.
In short, nobody wants to be a Karen. Nobody was born a Karen except those few miserable Karen women who were indeed unlucky enough to be named as such. But let’s look at this phenomenon of a bitter and curmudgeonly old git with an old-fashioned dirty blond bob more closely, shall we?
Let’s start from the very beginning. Public services, and first and foremost, retail in the West for the last century or so*** were exceptionally good; it wouldn’t take me long to say that most of them, if not impeccable, are still quite reasonable. My impression as a post-Soviet person was (and still is) that people on the other side of the Iron Curtain (i.e. Westerners) have been raised to live in a polite society and to interact with each other in a certain—mild, benign, and friendly (albeit slightly superficial, but never mind) way, no matter the class. In this sense, the service sector, and, especially, the hospitality business, has been always the pillar of civility and courteousness.
The thing is, it was different in the USSR. The hospitality service, retail, and other public services functioned in a way that would never give you an idea that you were valued—plus, deficit of basic goods was frustrating. I do remember the long queues for everything, from underwear to groceries to home ware, and how rude and hostile the staff were. Later on, I had a bit of a grasp that not all people who worked in Soviet retail were bad, but the premise “she is a cashier” (usually they were women, bulky with a strong physique) spoke volumes. You didn’t dare to have any discussions with them: you would be shut down immediately and, most likely, shooed away by the crowd of other shoppers who would try their best to get her validation.
After the USSR collapsed and after a few post-Soviet decades there is a new generation of retail staff in many post-Soviet countries that are friendly, and nice, and don’t look any different from their Western counterparts. And also, as a customer, now you know that, unlike in the past, you can defend yourself and can’t so easily be humiliated while shopping for basic goods.
Let me be clear: I am not the best person in the world. I can be very rude and combative. But what I will never do is insult anyone in the public services, simply because I know how exhausting their workload is and I appreciate their efforts. But, sadly, I began noticing some alarming signs here, which evoke not so very pleasant memories from my Soviet past. I am not bragging about mundane trifles: I don’t care if a member of staff in a restaurant confuses my order or something like that—not a big deal, let’s forget and move on. But if at the airport I was yelled at by a female security guard who decided that, as a person with a strong Slavic accent, I must somehow pose a threat being “one of those aliens,” or I was reassured to be called on a serious matter, but the call never came, or I’ve been talked over my head by a member of staff as if I don’t exist—how much of a Karen behaviour should I show in order to fix such a problem? And is it still regarded as a Karen-provoked situation?
What bothers me in the whole Karen spiel (apart from certainly problematic misogynistic, ageist and racial undertones) is that not all claims that middle-aged women make are unreasonable. Not all middle-aged (I skip whiteness for the sake of a reasonable argument) women are pathetic and self-obsessed cows who are eager to start a conflict out of boredom. Not all of them try to inflict havoc out of the blue. And sometimes they—or shall I say we, middle-aged women—indeed need to talk to the manager. Just for the better of everyone.
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* Don’t ask me which one: all of them, despite the existing differences in politics, have finally merged into the one ineligible buzz; also, I know that the comments’ section is always a cesspool, but human curiosity plays lots of tricks anyway, so there.
** To any former Soviet/Eastern European person the term “Caucasian” used like that is laughable.
*** I am mostly talking about modernity, i.e. the times from the mid 20th century until now.
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