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Sunday, 8 June 2014

The mentality around weight loss/gain

South African rapper KO HIV test results
K.O. 's test results
A few weeks ago Mr Cashtime - K.O. - took to twitter when he posted a picture of his HIV test results after been suspected of having the disease. He then after went on popular media shows such as 'Real Goboza' and 'The Free Way' on YFM to address and kill all speculations, which I have to commend him for.

For a while though, many people have fallen victim to society's stereotypical behavior of claiming people are HIV positive if they lose weight drastically. I fail to see how firstly someone else's status is anyone's concern if you're not a part of their lives and secondly above it all, how losing weight would automatically mean your infected.

Too many people are bothered by other people's statuses instead of paying attention to their own. But it's also a problem if by simply pointing out how someone's weight has changed comes across as a personal attack and assuming that their sick.

I was shocked to realize that a tweet I posted on Twitter about Mika Stefano losing weight and looking really thin compared to his previous look, would paint me as another stereotyped member of society. If anything I did not even assume it would be related to health issues until the man himself replied to me explaining the cause of his weight loss, and tagging Mr Cashtime himself.

*smh* We all put ourselves out there for public scrutiny but I strongly believe that the lowest form of scrutiny would be labeling some one as HIV infected. To me personally, it all comes across as though people with weight ''issues" will constantly find something to fall back on like assuming that the public labels them as HIV Positive.

 @Yoli_Dyantyi
 #TOT