KALAMAZOO, Michigan. Yesterday was Jenny Banazak’s first day of fourth grade, but an observer of the little girl as she walked into classroom might be forgiven for thinking it was her mother Chloe who was the more nervous of the two. “Jenny isn’t athletic, so she didn’t want to do Kinderkick,” the introductory soccer program, Chloe says. “And she isn’t very studious, so the Little Scholars After-School Enrichment Program didn’t appeal to her either.”
Founding Karen
Trying to find an extracurricular activity that would interest Jenny, a guidance counselor asked Chloe what the little girl excelled at. “The one thing she mastered at a very early age,” her mother replied, “was whining,” so it was suggested that she sign up for Future Karens of America, a youth organization that prepares girls to lead productive and fulfilling lives complaining about others.
“Inverted bob” haircut often chosen by Karens.
In common parlance, a “Karen” is a woman who by special pleading or causing a scene demands favorable treatment out of a sense of entitlement or privilege. “A Karen will hold up a line trying to use an expired coupon and claim it’s still valid because the store was closed on the last day it was valid,” says Pete Wozniak, manager of a local grocery store. “Then she’ll go to the express lane with twenty items and claim that she’s under the limit because her eight lemon yogurts count as one because they’re the same thing.”
Future Karens of America was organized in 2018 by Karen LePage, a mother of two in suburban Portage who found the Girl Scouts and volleyball to be inadequate training for her daughters, Therese and Genevieve. “It’s a dog-eat-dog world out there,” she explains. “I want my girls to learn how to throw an elbow–figuratively, of course–when some butt-ugly shift manager at McDonald’s gives them the wrong Happy Meal toy.”
The first item on the agenda of the local chapter of Future Karens is to demand equal treatment in funding with other student activities. “We need $229.99 to buy a toy grocery store our girls can learn how to complain properly,” Joyce Wenderholdt says to assistant principal Byron Morris, who says that won’t be possible since the group didn’t exist when the school’s budget was put together last spring.
“Oh really,” Wenderholdt says drily. “Then I’ll need to speak to the real principal.”