When 23-year-old Arianna Quan was crowned Miss Michigan in June, the last thing she expected was to be attacked for being ‘ugly’.
The Asian-American beauty queen told People magazine that online hate, from her native China and from America, escalated once she won the title.
“All this negativity came out,” she said. “Especially about my appearance and how I’m apparently unfit to represent the Chinese population because I’m ‘ugly.'”
Quan was born in Beijing, but moved to America when she was a child, becoming a citizen at 14. She says that while she felt like an outsider as the only Asian-American in her Detroit school, it taught her to embrace and value her uniqueness.