Streeter: You might think Black and Baltimore proms are extra. You’re right.

The antidote to hatred is joy and sequins, holding your head high and in the direction of your detractors, because they hate that and it’s fun.

It’s very Baltimore.

“We go bigger‚” said Tiffani Brown. She was waiting for daughter Kashmere Oliver, 17, a student at Loch Raven High School, to come out of the dressing room at Towson’s Ransom’s Boutique to model a potential prom dress.

‘Tis the season of high school sartorial splendor, with students taking the opportunity to strut like they’re going to their own personal Met Gala. You’d think that in the relative dumpster fire we’re living in, this would be cause for celebration. Nah. Recently, nasty social media trolls responded to strangers’ prom photos online by attacking the kids’ weight, outfits and personal taste.

The worst of them accused them of vulgar overspending because they, especially the Black girls, were never going to get married, so this is the best they could do. One even called them “hood proms.”

The way that boutique owner Byron Ransom has combatted that kind of ignorance in his 30 years making kids beautiful for prom is to smile and add more sparkles.

“We’re the opposite of what you see online,” he said, draping a glittering appliqué to the velvet-clad shoulder of William Rose, a junior at Cristo Rey Jesuit High School in Baltimore. “It comes out in positive ways. This is a good thing, and we make a big deal about it.”

We were in the crowded showroom of the boutique, nestled on the fourth floor of Towson Town Center. Shaken by all that negative energy from the trolls, I wanted to meet bold Baltimore kids and their families who are aware of the stupid reflexive venom radiated their way and nevertheless persist as their shiny, sparkly real selves.

“Who cares about what those people think?” Perry Hall High School senior Eden Eberhart told me as she an her friend Ava Bair tried on dresses.

“Baltimore doesn’t just represent what’s negative,” said William Rose’s mother, Nydra Williams, as Ransom adjusted his jacket. “Just look at this store! I worked hard for this, and at the same time, he deserves it.”

Honestly, I think that’s partly why so many social media looky-loos have such an issue with the kids, particularly Black ones, all dolled up and having a good time. Everything and everyone is miserable right now, and it’s extra irritating when people seem to be happy, because you don’t think they deserve it. It’s like when the Grinch was so mad that the Whos were still celebrating after he stole all their presents.

Ransom told me that other store owners with a predominately Black or urban clientele have their own stories of all of this being extra. “It’s ‘Why do they spend all that? Why are they going all out?’” he said. “Nothing is too extravagant.”

One of the things I love about Gen Z is that they really don’t care what others think they should be wearing. When I was in high school a million years ago, the girls were all done up in their Gunne Sax big-shouldered finery “and the boys just matched the cummerbund, and that was it,” Ransom remembers.

But now, guys like Rose, or Brandon Bailey, a senior at New Town High School in Owings Mills, are proudly getting in on the fashion, being individuals, because they can, no matter what anyone else thinks.

“It’s elegant,” he said of his tuxedo. “I wanted something fancy.”

Why is this important when there are much bigger issues? Because with everything these kids are facing in the world they’re going into, they get to have one moment where things are huge, over-the-top and all about them. Seeing them come out of the dressing rooms smiling is the perfect repellant for whatever the hate the trolls are selling.

And that seems big to me.

“To me, it’s a privilege to watch them,” Ransom said. “That’s the joy, seeing them come into their own.”