Karen Slang Meaning Origin

Some point to dane cook s 2005 bit about the lamest gal in a group of friends being named karen while others point to the mean girls character.

Karen slang meaning origin. Depictions by whom also include demanding to speak to the manager being racist being anti vaccination or sporting a particular bob cut hairstyle. The origins of karen are oft debated. The term karen has been cropping up in news frequently these days and has become synonymous with the arrogance of privileged white women.

A karen is typically a woman between the ages of 30 60 who likely has children and has the air of a suburban mother. Karen is a pejorative term for someone as entitled or demanding beyond the scope of what is appropriate or necessary. However people who use the term karen say that it is not simply a catch all for all middle aged white women and is rather dependent on a person s behaviour.

It is most commonly used to describe white middle class women who become confrontational when things do not turn up the way they want. Many associate the use of karen in a pejorative sense with mean girls which came out a year earlier in 2004. Still the karen meme wouldn t become popular until a decade later.

The meme evolved to depict by whom white women who uses her privilege to demand her own way at the expense of others. She s the archetype of the woman who took custody of the kids despite being careless and is so entitled that at the moment of a minor inconvenience in a store she already wishes to talk to the manager. The movie s line oh my god karen you can t just ask people why they re white has been used as a meme over the years.

Middle aged woman typically blonde makes solutions to others problems an inconvenience to her although she isn t even remotely affected. Some even say the term karen is racist because it s targeting a middle aged white woman and imagine the outcry if we gave a basic black woman a popular african american name. A karen is a term used on reddit and in internet slang in general to refer to a specific type of woman.

Karen is a reoccurring slang characterization of the antagonistic woman in memes.