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Karen Sirko aka Karen Karen is an unconventional woman, dedicated to living life on her own terms. Karen is often observant of gender roles and describes how she has departed from them, such as dressing less provocatively, in order to be taken seriously as a musician. She and Daisy form an instant allyship, advocating for each other’s autonomy and creative expression. Karen sees in Daisy another model for defying gender expectations, since Daisy, rather than changing herself to beat the system, refuses to yield to gendered expectations about how she should dress or carry herself. Karen, in some ways, learns from Daisy’s example and begins to speak out against Billy and the other male band members’ creative stranglehold over the band. But while Camila defies conventions of what it means to be a wife, Karen rejects the tenets of compulsory wifehood and motherhood entirely. When she gets pregnant, she knows that she does not want to be a mother. Graham’s inability to hear what she wants, and his disbelief that she doesn’t want to be a mother, illustrate how difficult it is for Karen to carve a different path. In the end, though, she creates the life for herself that she wants: living alone in the mountains, without a husband or children.
