Karen meets Bob
“Be Like Bob” is an essay by Hannah Drake, published in LEO weekly magazine in October 2019. I first met Hannah Drake at a writing conference that year in Louisville, Kentucky where she read the essay on an authors’ panel. Her advice to female writers was to be bold, to say uncomfortable things; that was the way to get the attention of your readers, she claimed. “You have to be like Bob,” she said. I jotted down her advice in my notebook and began to practice it in my own work.
In fact, in this essay right here I am going to be like Bob by saying some uncomfortable things to all the Bobs out there (Mediocre White Men) who have been reveling in the Karen memes on social media.
Recently a MWM friend mocked me because I had never heard of “Karen.” He called me a “Karen” for some reason during a conversation we were having, and when I looked confused and asked him, “Who’s Karen?” he laughed at me, not in a kind way. “You don’t know who Karen is?” He said, as though I was an idiot, like “What rock have you been hiding under?”
Apparently, my friend is a member of the club of social media addicts that spends hours every day watching the Karen channel on YouTube. He found it for me but then didn’t know whose channel it was. “There is a voice narrating all these memes.” I said. That would be the guy who is posting this on his YouTube channel. Someone has an agenda.
Oddly, as soon as I was enlightened on the existence of Karen, I saw her name popping up everywhere. A news story about the current crisis in the House of Representatives as they can’t elect a Speaker of the House contained a thread of Twitter posts calling a woman congresswoman “House Karen” for daring to call out the Democrats for their amusement in the GOP circus. Blaming the Democrats for the behavior of the GOP. That was Karen. (But wasn’t the GOP already doing this?)
But although I agree to a certain extent that the archetype of Karen (Archetype? What’s that? I can hear my MWM asking) has its merits—and I immediately thought of three Karen-types I know all too well—there is something wrong about the male tendency to make fun of others, first of all women.
Because men are still at the top. “Be Like Bob” is a tongue-in-cheek critique of the entitled white male (nepo babies included) that still holds too much power in the world. Don’t mediocre white men do all of the things this Karen archetype is called out for doing? Yes, they do. So my point is: this latest Karen thing is just one more example of white male entitlement. Misogyny disguised as clever humor.
Actually, the Karens of the world aren’t doing themselves any favors, because what they’re actually doing by behaving like tactless men is they’re doing the man’s work for them and getting blamed for it. These cowardly men—the MWMs—are manipulating the Karens into being their fall guys.
So I’m going to let Karen have her say.
What would Karen say to Bob? She would stand up and shake her finger at him: “Your making fun of me is just a ploy to keep strong women down and to stay in power, even though you did not earn it and do not deserve to keep it.”
Let’s put the shoe on the other foot: Who is commanding whom?
This same MWM friend, that same evening, told me that I was “commanding,” because he thought I had behaved like a man by telling him what he needed to do. I responded, “The last time I looked, I was a human being just like you. I have the right to speak. You are certainly a commanding kind of guy. You don’t even ask for what you want: you tell people what you want and expect to get it.”
He was referring to an incident on the dance floor the week before, when I had told him, “You need to put down your arms,” and firmly pulled his arms down to his side to stop him from jerking mine up and down like a puppet on a string. He thought I was “commanding” him to do something? Just because I needed something and asked for it? The alternative would have been to stop dancing. I did not tell him he was a lousy dancer, and I don’t think he got the message.
Over the decades, linguist Deborah Tannen has had a lot to say about this male-female communication snafu. She has studied it, observed it, written books about it. Women are not allowed to speak the way men do. Why not? Because that would make them human beings, equals with men. Which is why, I think, the archetype of the Karen has become so popular. And why so many MWMs buy into it.
Just more tired misogyny, but now dressed up in a form that appeals to women, too.
