My name is Karen Applebart, and, as you can imagine, I’m disturbed by the use of my first name to stereotype supposedly entitled and enraged suburban white women, a subgroup that, in reality, has only helped the world by shaving the heads of all those moms who bring store-bought cupcakes to bake sales. I’ve become so upset by this “Karen” nonsense that yesterday I dressed Koren, my eight-month-old son, as a congressperson, sent him a hundred and twelve obscenity-filled e-mails concerning bike lanes, and left him out on the lawn overnight.
I’m not a “Karen.” Last week, at Target, an elderly woman called me Karen just because I wasn’t wearing a mask (owing to my diagnosed fear of resembling a 1963 Buick Imperial), so I kicked over her walker and took the cash and credit cards from her wallet. I was so incensed, I didn’t realize that she was my mother.
How did this “Karen” libel begin? I’ve heard differing origin stories, but I know it didn’t start with me, and certainly not at my daughter Karenelle’s eighth-birthday party, where I threw all the gifts that cost under a hundred dollars in the pool, and warned the little girls, whom I’d paid to attend, that if they insisted on playing tag they could lose an eye. And when, later, I handed those eyes over to their parents, in baggies with chips of dry ice, those parents thanked me.
I’m an easygoing, accepting person, despite the restraining orders from multiple parties who tried to argue that street parking spaces are “open to everyone.” After the “Karen” stuff started, I wondered if I should change my name. I even consulted a lawyer and discussed the issue, until he looked at his watch and I called 911 to report him for spying on me with his bow-tie camera and attempting to sex-traffic my poodle, Karenelle 2. I try to empathize with my fellow-man, unless of course I’m standing behind him in line, causing me to scream, “But I was in front of you in my dream!”
At one point, I decided to own my Karenhood, with a vanity license plate reading “KARENSKAN,” a “Save the Karens, You Stupid Kayleighs” bumper sticker, and a small assault weapon I only use against salespeople who refuse to let me return underwear just because I’m wearing it. I also held a Karen Konvention, which didn’t go well, since a majority of the Karens in attendance claimed to have a medical condition that caused them to grab five gift bags at once.
A stab at creating a group Karen agenda devolved into the following list of declarations: “Well, no one tips me for being a supermom”; “I don’t need to go up a size, I need to speak to the Secretary of State”; “I’ve been waiting almost twelve seconds”; and “I’m entitled to a discount because of my mother’s inability to praise my gifts as a poet.” A brawl broke out after one Karen called another Karen “such a total Karen, I’m not even kidding,” and three Karens feuded over which one was the first to have been banned from Starbucks for life. I abandoned ship after all the Karens started screeching in unison, “I left the receipt in my other purse, the one that a foreign-born teen-ager must have stolen from my Jeep Cherokee while I was browsing for tie-dyed jeggings and gingham Keds!”
All this Karen discrimination has taken a severe emotional toll. Last night, as I was making love with my husband, I shouted, “I need to start seeing your more attractive brother!” At my job, as a customer-service representative for Verizon, I kept yelling at callers, “And this is my problem why?” And at an outdoor yoga class, when the woman beside me smiled and started stretching, I took her hostage with a machete until a SWAT team found me a bottle of my second-favorite lilac-vanilla bodywash, which was discontinued four years ago.
Fine. I’m not just Karen. I’m a Karen. I want what I want when I want it. I’m under a great deal of stress, just from pulling my hair into a ponytail and putting on a visor stained with self-tanner. I need to be seen and heard and told that I’m not required to follow any store policies on account of my prescription Ace bandage, my three souvenir tote bags from different cruise lines, and the tattoo of Wonder Woman on my ankle that covers the tattoo of my first husband’s name, which turned out to be an alias. But if you call me a Karen while I’m trying to compare diet almond milks, that will trigger me, and I will mangle every Paisley, Addison, and Crishell in my path. ♦
