Millennials have finally found their own villain: Meet Jessica

Opinion

January 29, 2026 — 7:46pm

Breathe easy, Karen. Your private hell is almost over. We know it’s been unfair, having all these memes claim your name means a middle-class whiner. Sexist and ageist too. But the fact remains that Karen has denoted a privileged grumbler ever since Karen from Brighton begrudged Melbourne’s lockdown laws in 2020.

Before then also. In 2004, Mean Girls saw Amanda Seyfried (as Karen) ask Lindsay Lohan’s Cady, “So if you’re from Africa, why are you white?” The canteen circle erupts: “Oh my god Karen you can’t just ask people why they’re white!” A year later, US comic Dane Cook chose Karen as the “friend nobody likes”.

Then came the Central Park incident, in sync with Brighton Karen’s illicit loops of the gardens. Despite New York regulations, a white Canadian woman unleashed her dog, prompting a black twitcher to ask that she obey the rules. A quarrel ensued. Video footage. Police calls. Tellingly the episode was tagged as Central Park Karen, despite the scofflaw’s name being Amy.

Fast-track to 2026, and a new successor is copping the heat via TikTok lore. Where Karen was lazy shorthand for a rankled citizen, now the stain lies on Jessica’s linen blouse. Food and travel editor for Mamma Mia, Jessica Clark wrote, “Somehow my name is the one being dragged through the algorithm … ”

Once upon a meme, Karen was a bob-haired 40-something demanding to see the manager. Now a Jessica-heavy generation has hijacked the narrative. Clark again: “Millennials (aka my beloved peers) are the ones doing this. The call is coming from inside the house. We are turning on ourselves, hungry for a scapegoat, a symbol of everything we find cringey, overly earnest, or aggressively almond-milk-coded about our own kind.”

To forestall your gripes, I find such name-stereotypes both cruel and crass. I’m not fanning the flames but rather filing a field report about how English behaves. Since humans have long been prone to using names as tokens of cultural meaning. Just ask Adonis. Or Mentor, the tutor of Odysseus. Or Nemesis, the goddess of revenge.

Sexism has long blighted the custom, where the “negative Nellies” tend to be female, from wanton Jezebel to happy-clappy Pollyanna. Not that blokes escape the mud, going by Judas and Nigel No-Friends. Yet for every sloppy Joe, or water-using Wally, there are umpteen Debbie Downers, lazy Susans, chatty Cathies, gun Molls and general Patsies.

Sexism has long blighted the custom, where the “negative Nellies” tend to be female, from wanton Jezebel to happy-clappy Pollyanna.

Overseas, most nations have their own toxic eponyms. A Dutch Karen is a Gerda, at least owning a male counterpart in Henk. Similar in Poland, Grazyna is a rural Karen – or Jessica we should say – married to Janusz, her redneck bloke in socks and sandals.

In Japan, Yuta is a man with everything. In Greece, Katina is the nosy Parker – the latter besmirching Matthew Parker (Archbishop of Canterbury in the 1560s), a moral version of Coventry’s peeping Tom. Meanwhile, France’s Tanguy identifies a grown man who still lives with his parents, after a 2001 black comedy by that name.

Racism is the other subgroup, of course, from Jock to Paddy, Jose to Guido. Speaking as a classic vanilla boomer in David, here’s hoping that every Tom, Dick, Harry (and Sheila) can put Karen to rest, and resist this whole Jessica sequel.

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