The Rise of the Keffiyeh Karen
16th September 2024
When Black Lives Matter created the figure of the Karen, it was a sign of that movement’s darker, bullying qualities. What exactly was wrong with a white middle-aged woman who asked to speak to the manager when things were unsatisfactory? The answer seemed to be in the white part and the woman part, and perhaps also in the middle-aged part. In short, the Karen was a racist, sexist, ageist construct, and as a middle-aged white woman myself, who makes her dissatisfaction known from time to time, I felt extra defensive.
But if that original Karen caricatured the wrong person, then there are some modern female types that deserve closer scrutiny. There is the person I like to call the Keffiyeh Karen — the female student with a bare midriff and her head wrapped in the black or red and white patterning of Palestinian liberation, yelling anti-Zionist slogans with manic passion on elite college campus quadrangles and lawns.
In her ready and confident fury, her rudeness, her iron-fisted appetite for confrontation over infractions of what she deems political and moral gospel, the Keffiyeh Karen is related to a broader epidemic of the Gen Z Mean Girl. These Mean Girls have graduated from running the schoolyard to terrorizing the workplace. If there is one type to be afraid of in modern offices, it isn’t the lech or the shouty, hungover male middle manager. It’s the twenty-three-year-old gluten-free vegan graduate, wet behind the ears. We know what these misanthropic misses are capable of — we’ve seen the Phoebes and Annas of Just Stop Oil chuck soup on Van Gogh.
I am woman, hear me roar.