The Utah high school student who wore a Chinese dress for her senior prom has a message for those who attacked her for “cultural appropriation” on Twitter: “I would wear the dress again.”
Keziah Daum, 18, wanted to find a dress for her prom that would stand out while also being classy, saying that she wanted a dress that “didn’t reveal too much of the chest and neck area [or] too much legs and shoulders.”
Speaking to The Daily Wire, Daum said that if she had to do it all over again, she’d still wear that dress. Daum also indicated that the overwhelming majority of the negative feedback she has received has been online and that in real life people have been very kind and supportive of her.
“I’ve had people who used to not like me want to be my friend now,” Daum said. “I’ve even had teachers bring it up in class.”
Speaking about the dress, Daum told The Washington Post, “I thought it was absolutely beautiful,” adding that it “really gave me a sense of appreciation and admiration for other cultures and their beauty.”
The drama started shortly after her prom when she tweeted pictures of herself in the dress and wrote: “PROM”
Daum said that a short time later she started getting notifications on Twitter and when she checked one of them it was someone who was defending her for wearing the dress.
Daum quickly found the tweet that was directing harassment at her, which came from a man named Jeremy Lam, who wrote: “My culture is NOT your g*****n prom dress.”
The vulgar tweet, which gained over 40,000 retweets, quickly made Daum the target of social justice warriors who attacked her and even threatened her as one person reportedly told her she “should be executed.”
“I was accused of racism and cultural appropriation,” Daum said. “I had so many people telling me I need to delete my post, it’s going to get worse and worse.”
“I’m not going to lie, I did cry one of the nights, I was pretty stressed; I was really hurt but my mom helped me through that and told me to toughen up or she’d take away my social media,” Daum continued.
Despite the negative attacks she received online, many high profile accounts came to her defense and blasted Lam’s tweet: