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White women try to "reclaim power" through #vanillagirl and #cleangirl beauty posts??
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Anonymous
Chad is a white man. |
Anonymous
Anonymous
I listen to music. |
Anonymous
Anonymous
For a frat boy type, fine. No one is referring to 50 or 60 to business executives as Chad. It's not at all comparable to Karen. |
Anonymous
That just means you agree. It's fine, you are allowed to agree. And others are allowed to roll their eyes at the constant hectoring about how benign things like yellow emojis and shopping at Chico's are literally genocide. |
Anonymous
The assertion was "there is a widely recognized word for white women but not white men." I think I'd agree with your more nuanced statement here. There isn't a widely recognized word for 50 or 60 year old white male business executives. |
Anonymous
I'm *literally* shaking! |
Anonymous
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You can twist these trends into meaning what you want them to mean. So while someone may just see “vanilla girl” as a trend of wearing cream/white/beige others may interpret it as also having white skin. Clean girl, to many, may mean rigorous skincare and fresh makeup but others can interpret as being white or attach it to an idea of a “dirty girl” aesthetic that you imagine includes only women who are not white.
NPR, at the end of the day, is just looking for clicks. They are going to seek out and present on the most offensive interpretation available. |
Anonymous
Anonymous
I've never heard of anyone except for like incels on reddit or 4chan use the term "chad" to refer to a white guy. And I could be wrong, but isn't it used as a sort of compliment? Like doesn't it just mean an alpha male, someone who is successful with women and also professionaly (or at least has money)? I know it's also criticizing these guys but it also seems to be admiring in a jealous way. Like incels hate Chads, but not because they are oppressed by them -- because they want to be them or have what they have. Compare that to use of the term Karen, which has been used by journalists and culture commentators to describe a white woma exploiting her white privilege to endanger black people. I think at first the targets were actually white women doing scary things that did in fact endanger black people (I first became aware of it to describe that woman who called the cops on the black people having a barbecue). And then the Central Park birding incident really pushed it mainstream and I remember all these pieces in like Slate and the Washington Post and on cable news about it. But then something happened, where it was no longer being used to describe a white woman's behavior, it came to describe her appearance, her hair cut, her age, her attractiveness, her job, etc. Karens were ALWAYS middle aged according to the cultural zeitgeist, even though the original definition absolutely wouldn't have been limited to older women (Carolyn Bryant, the woman whose accusation got Emmett Till murdered, was 21 at the time). Karens were also unattractive, and the implication was that the reason they were so unpleasant was out of some jealousy our anger attached to this lack of attractiveness. This is inherent in Steffi Cao's essay as well, which implies that white women are mad that they are no longer seen as desirable and are using TikTok trends to reclaim that. And even the definition of Karen behavior got expanded to encompass essentially any behavior in which a white woman over 35 complained or asked for an accommodation. This might mean a white woman complaining about service at a restaurant (whether the complaint was valid or not -- the idea was that a Karen was entitled and it applied even if the thing she was entitled to was like basic service or edible food), but it could also mean a white woman asking her elementary school to accommodate her child with special needs, or a white woman advocating for better healthcare coverage from her employer, or a white woman upset about gun violence. Eventually a Karen was just a woman over the age of 35 who opened her mouth to express anything other than gratitude or apologies. And the people leveling accusations of Karen-hood stopped being restricted to POC and or people in the service industry who'd been treated poorly. Suddenly, men in their 20s and 30s were using Karen as an epithet to describe any older woman who annoyed them, who spoke too loudly, or who dared to have an unflattering haircut or to lack of body they desired. I remember the day an acquaintance I follow on Twitter, a white guy in his late 30s or early 40s who is a corporate lawyer, a father, and theoretically a progressive and feminist (he voted for Obama AND Hilary), posted a photo of Kate Gosselin (look her up if you are too young to remember) with something like "When are we going to talk about the the Original Karen and her Original Karen haircut???" Now, I don't have positive associations with Kate Gosselin, who was a reality star I never paid much attention to. But that was when I realized that privileged white men had decided Karen just meant "middle aged white woman I don't want to have sex with." It's just another way to tell women that their only purpose in our culture is to look hot and be quiet and convenient. So no, Karen and Chad are not equivalent stereotypes, sorry. |
Anonymous
The only crazy here is you. “The whole slavery argument”? |
Anonymous
Same here, the links I followed seemed reasonable to me. In general, if it doesn't apply to you, maybe move on to another article instead of seeing it as an attack on all white women? Do y'all feel the same way about "not all men?" |
Anonymous
I agree that Karen and Chad aren't equivalent, so you don't need to apologize. But maybe part of the reason for this is that white men and white women don't necessarily act in equivalent ways. And I don't think "Karen" is solely used to describe a white woman speaking up. It's not pure misogyny, though there is surely some of that mixed in with the term. There's an element of class and privilege tied into the term as well. "Karen" isn't a poor or a lower class woman. She's at least middle or upper class. There is a whole vibe that took off because it accurately captured something in the zeitgeist. Often enough the term is thrown around unfairly, but it's capturing something real. And maybe middle and upper class men simply don't act out in ways that are as off-putting in the same way. Which is not to say they are above scorn - white men are routinely trashed as creeps and bros; privileged, lame, and uncool. But they haven't been "named" yet. |
Anonymous
Disagree re: class. Karen stereotypically has that terrible hair, dye job, is a bit fat, and is wearing cheap and unflattering clothes. She does not have tasteful highlights, little diamond studs, and neutral high end clothes! |