"Keziah Daum and the insidiousness of the online cultural-appropriation police
I’m going to tell you perhaps the dumbest story you’ve ever heard — a story that is stupid with a heaping helping of malice on the side.
On Sunday morning, a teenage girl named Keziah Daum posted pictures taken on her prom night to Twitter.
Daum isn’t a public figure; she’s a student at a Utah high school.
Her message simply said, “PROM,” and it had four pictures:
If you’re a normal human being, like the majority of Americans who saw their Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter feeds fill up with prom pictures last weekend, you thought that was a pretty girl in a pretty dress.
Nothing more.
But if you’re a toxic social-justice warrior, you saw something else. You saw oppression.
You saw exploitation.
You saw bigotry.
You saw — gasp — “cultural appropriation.”
The dress, you see, had obvious Asian influences, and Daum isn’t Asian:
...It sparked so much attention and controversy that Twitter then created one of its “moments” to chronicle the controversy and chart the most salient responses.
Daum, to her immense credit, has weathered the shamestorm without backing down.
She says simply that she bought the dress because she thought it was “beautiful” and she “admired the beauty of the culture.”...
Daum, to her immense credit, has weathered the shamestorm without backing down.
She says simply that she bought the dress because she thought it was “beautiful” and she “admired the beauty of the culture.”...
Read it all!
