The outrage machine needs to get itself together. Seriously.
The internet is harassing a poor 18-year-old gal because she wore a traditional Chinese dress to prom. Keziah Daum is accused of committing the heinous crime of cultural appropriation (which only exists in the minds of those without intellectual or cultural depth of any kind).
It all started with this tweet:
Daum is beautiful. Red is a great color on her and she wore the hell outta that dress.
Anyway, the internet’s best and brightest feverishly pounded away on their keyboards informing her that her thrift store prom purchase was heresy to the progressive gospel.
To her credit, she told them all to pound sand:
Do any of these people remember the 90s? Because these exact same dresses were all the rage not more than 20ish years ago during the late 90s and early 00s. Hell, I wore a navy blue Chinese dress to a school dance and through college, my favorite shoes were the fabulously comfortable cotton Chinese baby doll shoes. Also popular? Plastic chopstick things to keep long hair tied up in a bun.
I wasn’t the only one jump on the Chinese fashion train (pics from this post).
Etsy, the popular craft site, is full of listings for 90s Chinese dresses because they’re gorgeous and classic.
Cultural appropriation is one of the more ignorant spawns of the social justice movement.
I grew up overseas. Lived and studied in Europe as an adult. It is not detrimental to a culture to enjoy aspects, items, dress, customs, or food unique to said culture. Quite the opposite, actually. If you’ve spent a substantial amount of time in a culture, not your own, with which you’ve fallen deeply in love with, you know this to be true.
The world is a far more hostile place than it was just 20 years ago.
But, as parents always advise, you can’t please anyone (these days, especially), so there’s really no sense in trying. In today’s brave new world, you are truly damned if you do and damned if you don’t.
CLICK HERE FOR FULL VERSION OF THIS STORY
