YouTuber Nikita Dragun facing backlash for taking three men on leashes, one of whom is black, to the VMAs
YouTuber Nikita Dragun tried to step up her game at the MTV VMAs this year with her very daring and extreme outfit where she used three men in chains as accessories. However, Dragun received a lot of backlash from angry fans who called her out for her act, which they termed inappropriate.
In fact, the backlash had begun even before she stepped onto the red carpet as she had shared pictures of her outfit on Instagram in the hope of getting her 5.4 million fans excited.The 23-year-old transgender star captioned the picture, "Hiring one boyfriend didn't exactly work out the first time... so this time I hired three."
However, things backfired as soon as she posted the teaser picture, with many telling her that she was being extremely "sexist".
One fan commented, "The three men in a leash were unnecessary. If it was the other way around the media would be outraged and it’s disgusting how people are praising her for it."
While another wrote that making the men actually crawl at the VMAs was "humiliating and dehumanizing". Another iterated the point that if the three were women, there would have been a massive outrage, before adding, "Humans are not accessories and animals are not accessories."
A fan whose comment received over 3000 likes shared that even though they love her, this was definitely not the right move. "I know you based it off Snoop Dogg and many other artists, but that was not right to chain people up, even if it was a joke," the fan wrote.
However, there were some who defended her. She also responded to the backlash on Instagram saying that it was inspired by Snoop Dogg's controversial 2003 MTV VMAs outing which saw him walking with two black women on a leash.
She added, "I wanted to make a statement on the power of the woman. It makes people uncomfortable and some might say reverse sexism... but sexism is prejudice and power." She concluded her defense by saying that it was time that women took back some power.
Dragun took to Twitter to explain that her walking the red carpet was a dream come true and that she had grown up as a little boy in Springfield Virginia into a big girl living the Hollywood dream. Some fans began to question why she had been invited to the VMAs in the first place to which she responded saying, "Because I'm a bad b***h that's why."