Was Goldilocks Really the Original Karen?
Two new Redfin ads unintentionally recast a children’s fairytale as the ultimate White privilege parable.
It should have been obvious from the beginning: A little White girl with golden hair walks into someone else’s house and proceeds to make herself right at home. She didn’t knock, and she didn’t pause to consider the potential danger that might have been lurking in the unknown.
She has no idea who lives there, and nobody is home, so she decides to traipse around the house like it’s her own. She helps herself to the breakfast on the kitchen table, takes a time-out in the living room (breaking a chair in the process), and then falls asleep in the bedroom (trespassing is, after all, exhausting). Along the way, she complains about the porridge, the chairs, and finally, the beds. If the story had been set in a Holiday Inn, the uninvited, non-paying guest probably would have asked to speak to the manager!
When I was a kid, Goldilocks and the Three Bears was one of my favorite fairy tales, and it’s probably the only one I still can remember in detail from beginning to end. Although the story was all about the young, Blonde protagonist, I honestly didn’t pay that much attention to her or to her brazen antics.
