I have no idea why anyone would want to enter a Miss or Mr South Africa contest, but more power to those who do.

That being said, the announcement of Mr South Africa 2019’s top 20 finalists went down like a lead balloon on social media, with peeps seemingly less than impressed with the choices.

The backlash was so extreme, in fact, that the Mr South Africa Twitter account eventually deleted their tweet announcing the finalists.

By then, many other accounts had shared this image. Meet your top 20, folks:

At first, the Mr SA account clapped back at a few of the haters with comments like these, before deleting the original tweet and replies:

Best to delete, admin. For me, that’s the biggest trainwreck element of all of this, because you have to be ready for some sort of backlash. If you’re trying to run a professional pageant, snarky replies on social media aren’t a great call.

A common refrain was that the finalists looked like…

This tweet also proved popular:

In the face of the increased media attention, Channel24 spoke to the CEO of Mr South Africa, JP Robberts, previously crowned as the second prince in the Mr South Africa 2016 pageant, and Mr Photogenic the following year.

He seemed keen to stress that the men don’t have to be models.

Side note – JP himself is a model, with this from his Instagram account:

He also lists himself as a ‘recording artist’, and we found this:

 

View this post on Instagram

 

CARE ABOUT ME ————————————————— Full song available on iTunes. Link in my bio… —————————————————- Vocals: @jprobberts Written, Recorded & Produced by: @heproducedit_ & @cosherstudios . Cover Art by: @dionnejordaan @dionnejordaanphotography @ryno_meyer @advancedsmm . . . . . #singer #music #new #song #songwriter #vocals #singing #sing #itunes #care #about #me #happy #excited #likeit #artist #musically #proud #blessed #tagafriend #self #love #jprobberts #malesinger #getit

A post shared by J P R O B B E R T S (@jprobberts) on Feb 21, 2019 at 7:51am PST

In 2018, JP took over the Mr South Africa brand:

“The Mr South Africa had suffered damage to its reputation in previous years and I wanted to change to country’s attitude toward the pageant…This is one of the things that I tried to change and that is why my perspective on this competition is: ‘You don’t necessarily need to be a male model to be a model male’.”

…About the social media onslaught, JP says: “The question I would like to pose to people commenting on the finalists’ appearance is: ‘How would you feel if someone were to say such things bout you in a public space?'”

He adds that he welcomes constructive criticism with “open arms” but can’t agree with people “attacking someone on a personal level or based on their appearance.”

According to JP,  he has spoken to all the finalists, and told them to prepare themselves for the “media war.”

They say there’s no such thing as bad publicity. Given that I’ve never met a single person who has ever shown even the slightest interest in the Mr South Africa pageant, perhaps the organisers should be happy that people are at least talking about it.

So what exactly is the judging criteria for Mr South Africa? JP to explain:

 “Basically we opened the platform to anybody to enter. So if you feel that you can make a difference in your country, if you are involved in community work, we welcome you with open arms.”

“From there we put our contestants through various challenges which ranged from business acumen to charity challenges. We then looked at how these guys perform. The person that works the hardest, the person that makes the most difference in the community is a person that will be able to go to finals. From there the contestants are whittled down to the top 50, top 30 and top 20,” he explains.

“I do, however, feel that I am a giving more the ‘average guy on the street’ a chance to better himself and to make a difference in the world, rather than focusing on the ‘good looking people’.”

Fair enough. Maybe Derek Zoolander isn’t the only one wondering if there’s more to life than being “really really really ridiculously good looking“.

The eventual winner of Mr SA 2019 has quite a few boxes to tick:

“One of the biggest things that Mr South Africa will focus on is a child welfare organisation based in Cape Town, which also deals with national issues and has branches around the country as well. Then we’ll also be dealing with the SPCA, which is another one of our charities.”

I think Lee “I really feel a connection” Thompson has the animal lover market cornered already, but good luck to the winner.

“Their duties would be to support these charities and drive more awareness around them. Also if there are situations like the floods currently happening in KZN, we would extend our support both as an organisation and our representative.”.

“I think the biggest thing I would like people to take away from this is that we are a fair competition and that we give an equal opportunity to everybody,” he says.

Inclusion for the win, I guess.

Right, that’s a wrap. On with Friday we go…

[source:channel24]