This Haunts Me: The Shredded Cheese Wife Guy
One Texas couple became a meme after they went 18 minutes without shredded cheese on their fajitas. What could be worse?
Karens. Even if you don't know them by name, you know who they are.
Karens have been asking to speak to managers all over American suburbia ever since Kate Gosselin debuted her infamous reverse-mullet on Jon and Kate Plus 8 in 2007. "Karens"—the collective nickname for middle-aged entitled white women who love nothing more than being pains in your ass—have been walking among us for quite some time, but as shelter-in-place orders and mask mandates have taken over the world, the presence of Karens has become even more apparent.
Last weekend, a Karen went viral in a since-deleted Tweet for a reason only Karens would empathize with. Jason Vicknair, a 40-year-old man from Allen, Texas, was just trying to enjoy his first date night out in three months with his wife at a Tex-Mex restaurant called Mi Cocina. Things took a turn for the worse.
"My wife, date night after 3+ months locked up on quarantine," Vicknair tweeted, along with a photo of the wife in question staring longingly at a room-temperature skillet of fajita beef. "Waiting for shredded cheese as it's the only way she can eat fajitas. We've asked 4 people, going on 18 minutes now...We gotta quit blaming #COVID19 for crappy service."
Understandably, most of Twitter had no remorse for Vicknair, who has since been dubbed the "Shredded Cheese Wife Guy" of the Internet. This wife of his is a prime example of a Karen, acting with a sense of entitlement. As delightful as shredded cheese is in the world of Tex-Mex food, a lack of it has never killed anybody. You know what has killed people, though? I'll give you a moment to guess.
Unless Karen has some extremely rare medical condition that physically prevents her from eating grilled meats without a dairy topping, she is a whiny child. The instant virality and backlash prompted Vicknair to delete the tweet, but by then, it had already been immortalized in dozens of memes.
Speaking to local Dallas blog Central Track while wearing a tank top and backwards hat emblazoned with an American flag, Vicknair said that he himself is a former food service worker and understands the hardships faced by service workers. He should know, then, that restaurants are very difficult to keep perfectly sanitary, and patronizing a food establishment during a worldwide health crisis is a very bad idea, especially when his state's governor has been quite bad at containing the virus. To each their own, though!
Vicknair claims he primarily uses his Twitter to promote his sports podcast, "Opinionated Much?," because of course he has a sports podcast. He's "still learning how to use Twitter," he told Central Track, but his tweets about poor service are nothing new; if he sees a spill at Target, for example, he'll tweet a photo of it before bringing it to an employee's attention.
As a matter of fact, Vicknair says he doesn't shy away from tweeting his complaints at any brand,—which is also especially Karen-like behavior (he's evidently taking a break from Internet complaining, though, as his account is deactivated at the time of writing). What he doesn't tweet about, though, is politics, because he's "not smart enough to have any political views."
To be that picky about anything as our world faces a health crisis and a social justice revolution is simply pathetic. But what's the main lesson Vicknair, forever the Shredded Cheese Wife Guy, has learned after being publicly shamed?: "I will not be posting anything regarding my wife, obviously." At least he's not throwing fits over having to wear a mask.
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If You Think "Karen" Is a Slur, Then You're Definitely a Karen
A brief history of "Karens" and how to spot them at your local Women's March.
Whether you know someone actually named Karen or not, there's a high possibility that you've met a "Karen."
Not all "Karens" are named Karen, and not everyone named Karen is a "Karen"—but "Karens" are constantly walking (and tweeting) among us. Not too far removed from the "can I speak to your manager?" meme before it, "Karen" has become a catch-all name for the type of white woman with whom we've unfortunately grown all-too familiar. "Karens" live with the idea that their womanhood exonerates them from white privilege, and their day-to-day shenanigans prove they truly don't know how to read the room.
If you're so lucky as to not have dealt with a Karen in real life, then you've probably read about them in stories online. The woman in Oakland who called the police on a black family for barbecuing by the lake? She's a Karen. That time "gun girl" Kaitlyn Bennett said "we don't live in a racist society"? She was being especially Karen-like. Just this week, when Alyssa Milano—starter of the #MeToo movement—said she was continuing to endorse Joe Biden, without acknowledging the sexual assault allegations against him? Peak Karen behavior.
But the most Karen of all Karens is writer Julie Bindel, who tweeted some absolute insanity over the weekend: "Does anyone else think the 'Karen' slur is woman hating and based on class prejudice?" Ah, yes—good ol' class prejudice against upper-middle-class white folks. What could be more nefarious?
As with a lot of slang that's been adopted by the masses over the past decade, this usage of "Karen" was first coined by black people. It's since become canonized in reference to women like Bindel, who are so caught up in their narrow, self-centered view of feminism that they fail to acknowledge their glaring white privilege.
Most of all, Karens don't want to be left out of anything—especially oppression. They will latch onto any inconvenience that gives them the tiniest semblance of systematic oppression, arguing that "Karen" generalizes a specific collection of traits—white, middle-aged, upper-middle-class—as if those aren't the exact traits most frequently found in men of power. What makes Karens so dangerous is that they claim to be feminists but only act on it when that feminism directly benefits them; their racism, homophobia, and transphobia aren't always explicit, but their actions lack all the nuance of intersectionality.
Worst of all, Bindel's tweet seems to liken "Karen" with racial slurs, as if "the K-word" could ever come close to approximating the malicious history of actual derogatory words (plus, FYI, there already is another "k-word").
In summary: Don't be a Karen. "Karen" isn't a slur. If you're innocent and your name just so happens to be Karen, I'm so terribly sorry.