Celebrities including Rihanna and Katy Perry have criticised a former Big Brother contestant who claims to have carried out a hoax campaign promoting anorexia in an attempt to gain worldwide notoriety.
Big Brother Nine contestant Kenneth Tong has spent the past ten days writing positive tweets about the eating disorder, turning the nobody into one of the website’s trending topics – prompting global condemnation.
The irresponsible 25-year-old promoted “managed anorexia” and also tweeted “to be skinny is to be perfect and to be fat is unacceptable.”
His outrageous tweets prompted global superstar Rihanna to hit out.
The Barbados babe told her 2.79 million followers: “Girls are dying all over the world because of ignorant individuals like this@MrKennethTong.
“Young ladies, love yourself! Your skin, your booty, your hair… You’re all beautiful! Keep your hearts pure! Love and laugh, and live life.”
Katy Perry retweeted Rihanna’s words, adding: “Preach!”
One Tree Hill star Sophia Bush also condemned the former Big Brother contestant’s comments with The Saturdays’ Rochelle Wiseman calling Tong “vile”.
Super-chef Gordan Ramsay assured his followers he did not support Tong’s campaign while X Factor winner Alexandra Burke said how much she dislikes the wannabe.
But Tong has now decided to call time on his outbursts – saying the whole episode was an elaborate hoax to demonstrate the power of social networking to a friend.
The Big Brother contestant said he could become a “globally recognised figure” within a week by harnessing Twitter – a claim his friend disagreed with.
Tong said: “To prove him wrong, I decided as a hoax to promote via Twitter something that was universally appalling, I chose managed anorexia.
“I would like to make it clear, I chose the subject as a hoax as I knew it’d be appalling to men and women.
“The campaign has worked; I have been a Trending topic on Twitter for over a week.
“I am scheduled to appear on TV, the Press and Radio shows, over the course of the next week: Grazia, Telegraph, The Sun, The Sunday Times etc. Now it’s time to come clean and stop the bandwagon.”
“My honest personal opinion on managed anorexia is it is an disgusting and illogical idea. It is a mental illness. It cannot be managed.”
Tong added that he is sorry for to those he has offended as part of the “scientific experiment” and that he would be making a “sizeable” donation to beat, the UK charity for people with eating disorders.
More than 1.6 million people suffer from eating disorders in the UK with around 60,000 receiving treatment at any time.
