‘Ridiculous’: Twitter users and media pilloried over portrayal of viral Miss South Africa image

The social media outrage over pictures showing Miss South Africa wearing latex gloves while serving food to orphan children with HIV has been branded “ridiculous”.

Demi-Leigh Nel-Peters, 22, was pictured volunteering at an orphanage in Soweto on July 5. After she sharing the images online, a Twitter storm erupted with users questioning why she felt the need to wear protective clothing.

The hashtag #MissSAChallenge, in which users posted pictures of themselves wearing gloves in clearly unnecessary situations, quickly gathered momentum.

One Twitter user, @PatsiPhala, uploaded pictures of her at the event juxtaposed with pictures of Nel-Peters petting a dog and greeting white children without gloves. He wrote: “can anyone explain why is she feeding BLACK kids with latex gloves?”

‘We were told it was the right thing to do’

On July 5, Nel-Peters responded by posting a video explaining why she was wearing the gloves.

“I just want to clear something up. All the volunteers on site wore gloves because we were told it was the right thing to do while working with food and we were handing out food to young kids,” she said.

Orphanage staff also released a statement, telling the BBC that the racism claims levelled at Nel-Peters were “ridiculous”.

“Of course it wasn’t because she didn’t want to touch black children,” said Carol Dyantyi, a spokesperson for the Orlando West Community Centre Ikageng.

“We told her, and all other volunteers, to wear them while they were handling food around the children. It was purely to protect the children from the risk of contaminated food. This social media reaction is ridiculous.”

Others posted pictures on Twitter showing more volunteers at the event wearing gloves, and pictures of Miss South Africa interacting with black children at past events without gloves.

‘We told her (Nel-Peters), and all other volunteers, to wear them’

However, despite Nel-Peters’ attempts to explain the misunderstanding, numerous media outlets continued to focus on the initial social media outrage.

In the UK, Metro.co.uk and MailOnline were among those to publish stories.

The Metro.co.uk even implied Ms Nel-Peters wore the gloves because she was afraid of contracting HIV, including this “fact box” (below) midway through the article.

Metro.co.uk has since updated its headline to: “Miss South Africa defends wearing gloves to meet orphans with HIV at soup kitchen.”

‘It was purely to protect the children’

Gloves are usually worn when serving food to large groups – not to protect the servers but to protect those being served.

For the children at Orlando West Community Centre Ikageng – some of whom are HIV-positive and may have vulnerable immune systems – those gloves are an important defence against picking up any infections Miss SA may be carrying on her hands.

Update: This article was updated on 12 July.