![]() ![]() Beyoncé’s 2016 album “Lemonade,” employs the term too, with the lines “He only want me when I’m not there / He better call Becky with the good hair.” After much initial fevered speculation about just who this Becky is or was, common pop wisdom now asserts that “Becky” is a stand-in for any woman-especially a white woman-a man sees on the side. The latter of these is tied to a song by the rapper Plies and dates to 2009 the former appears to be a product of the second half of the second decade of the century, and is of obscure origin. The users of Urban Dictionary have submitted a number of entries for Becky, with the top-rated ones asserting the word’s referent as either (in our simplified paraphrasing) a materialistic white girl of annoying and predictable tastes, or (in our intentionally vague paraphrasing) a particular sexual act as performed by an enthusiastic white woman. In the time between Sir Mix-a-Lot’s Becky and BBQ Becky, Becky was mostly simply a nickname for Rebecca (anecdotally used primarily of white girls and women), but that’s been changing. The gazing pair do not gaze admiringly, though Sir Mix-a-Lot certainly does. The modern epithet may have a bit of Becky Sharp in it, but Damon Young of The Root is among those who trace the probable origin of the modern Becky to the opening lines of Sir Mix-a-Lot’s video for the 1992 song “Baby Got Back,” which begins with one white woman’s injunction to her white friend, Becky, to cast an eye on a callipygian woman’s posterior: “Oh my God, Becky, look at her butt.” (By the way, we saw what you did there with Cosmopygian, Sir Mix-a-Lot.) The posterior upon which Becky is directed to gaze belongs to a black woman. William Makepeace Thackeray’s 1848 novel Vanity Fair (and its subsequent Hollywood versions) gave us Becky Sharp, a cunning social climber of questionable morals, and Mark Twain gave us the far more innocent Becky Thatcher, object of Tom Sawyer’s affections both are white. Writers created these characters, and readers recognized their living, breathing counterparts in the world around them. Don Juan as a term for a particularly skilled seducer of women comes from the name of a legendary Spanish nobleman featured in multiple works of literature and art over the past four centuries. Pollyanna as a term for a relentlessly optimistic person hellbent on finding silver linings comes from the name of the eponymous heroine in Eleanor Porter’s 1913 novel Pollyanna. ![]() Historically and typically, when names have taken on generic use in the English language, it’s been because of an especially memorable fictional character. The post ‘Karen’ called out for approaching Black neighbor over ‘Tigger’ flag: ‘We have rules’ appeared first on TheGrio.You can probably thank Sir Mix-a-Lot (yet again). Becky vs karen download#Have you subscribed to theGrio’s new podcast “Dear Culture”? Download our newest episodes now! TheGrio is now on Apple TV, Amazon Fire, and Roku. This is a stark contrast to 1965, when Karen was at its peak popularity, with almost 33,000 given that name. Only a measly 439 babies were named Karen in 2019 and in 2020 that number dropped to 325. “It’s almost like they have an entitlement, where they’re kind of lording their privilege over another.” “It’s usually used as a pejorative for middle-aged white women,” explained Matt Schimkowitz, a senior editor at Know Your Meme, an online meme encyclopedia, said. This is the lowest ranking the previously popular ‘Karen’ has ever had on the list since 1932. 831 in popularity in the United States for female baby names last year. To #greenscreensticker ♬ original sound – AmbrosiaĪccording to the HuffPost, new data from the Social Security Administration suggests ‘Karen’ has fallen from grace with new parents in 2020, ranking No. ![]()
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