LISTEN: Miss SA Organisation to take City Press to court
The Miss South Africa organisation is set to take the City Press newspaper to court for body shaming the current reigning Miss South Africa, Sasha-Lee Olivier.
This comes after the paper published an article with the headline "Is Miss SA pregnant? The official comment is no."
The organization says the particular journalist emailed questions about Olivier's alleged pregnancy and in the reply it was stated that Miss South Africa is not pregnant.
"It was left at that. We did not condone entering into any salacious debate about Sasha-Lee’s body given the degrading and discriminatory intentions of this article," the organization says in a statement.
Olivier took to Instagram on Sunday evening to express her feelings about the article.
"Of all the things you could have written about, you chose to write about my weight. I wasn't sad, it is disappointing. My disappointment doesn't necessarily stem from me, because I am not here for me, I'm here for everyone that I represent.
"So it was disappointing to know that there is a woman out there who, as I said it is the biggest betrayal when a woman chooses to put you down," says Oliver.
The organisation says Olivier is a real person and is deeply hurt by what appeared.
"As part of the 2019 campaign, Sasha Lee stood as an advocate for fuller figure women and expanded on the organisation’s prior representations of beauty.
"We as an organisation stand strong with Sasha Lee with this understanding of beauty and do not take lightly to any form of body shaming and discrimination which is intended to disempower and humiliate her," says Miss South Africa Organisation.