My Take | Go ahead, appropriate my culture
Social media fuss over a teenage American girl wearing a cheongsam to her high school prom is so ridiculous that I just have to chime in
In the immortal words of Keziah Daum, “It’s a f***ing dress”. And let me just say this about the 18-year-old from Utah in the United States, who has inadvertently started a media storm after she wore a cheongsam to her high school prom and posted photos of it on Twitter: You rock, girl!
If anyone thinks social media is harmless, this incident should prove otherwise. A person called Jeremy Lam apparently first tweeted about her transgression, which is now being called “cultural appropriation”. “My culture is NOT your goddamn prom dress,” he posted.
And that started an avalanche of retweets, followed by media commentaries like this one from yours truly. I apologise in advance for contributing to the silliness, but just needed to get it off my chest.
A publication as esteemed as The Independent of London ran a column supportive of the criticism.
“The debate her prom pictures have prompted is justified,” the columnist wrote. “Cultural appropriation is about power, and to many she is the embodiment of a system that empowers white people to take whatever they want, go wherever they want and be able to fall back on: ‘Well, I didn’t mean any harm’.”