Speaker 1: All zone media wife guys? What do we do with
Speaker 1: all of the wife guys? This was a question you
Speaker 1: could find floating around the Internet in the late twenty tens,
Speaker 1: And it's kind of weird already to think about how
Speaker 1: novel it seemed at the time. These days, I see
Speaker 1: a wife guy in my feed, I pause, I think, well,
Speaker 1: I hope she's on board with this, and I keep scrolling.
Speaker 1: But there was a time in recent history where the
Speaker 1: question of what do we do with the wife guys
Speaker 1: was one of pressing importance. In the space of a
Speaker 1: few weeks in twenty nineteen, The New Yorker, The New
Speaker 1: York Times, and New York Magazine all wrote their own
Speaker 1: deep dives of the meaning of the term wife guy.
Speaker 1: A lot of people trace the term to Drill, one
Speaker 1: of our greatest living comedy minds, but it quickly evolved
Speaker 1: into something else. A wife guy became someone who didn't
Speaker 1: just love his wife online, but if social media was
Speaker 1: to be believed, telling people how much he loves his
Speaker 1: wife appeared to be a part of his job or something.
Speaker 1: And if said wife guy was rich, handsome, successful, and
Speaker 1: still publicly loved his wife, it could even be considered newsworthy.
Speaker 1: Like many Internet terms, the age of the wife guy
Speaker 1: has come and gone. Twenty nineteen brought a slew of
Speaker 1: listicles of famous wife guys who bravely publicly loved the
Speaker 1: person they married, which just goes to show how gendered
Speaker 1: this concept is. We've talked about it on the show before.
Speaker 1: Because a wife publicly celebrating her husband is nothing treated
Speaker 1: as unremarkable. No one's tossing around the term husband lady,
Speaker 1: not only because it sounds dumb, but because there is
Speaker 1: a tacit expectation that any married woman is a husband lady.
Speaker 1: So many wife guy behavior on social media started to
Speaker 1: read as a pr decision versus an expression of actual love.
Speaker 1: In some cases, a wife seemed to be a prop
Speaker 1: or a signifier that the wife guy is a good
Speaker 1: guy and one you can trust with your vote, your money,
Speaker 1: or your willingness to listen to amateur rap. So by
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two people are over it, and you get
Speaker 1: guardian headlines like the world is done with wife guys.
Speaker 1: Thank God for that. Wife guys are seen now, sometimes
Speaker 1: as less effusively loving and more insecure and wishing to
Speaker 1: signal that they have a wife and to be honest,
Speaker 1: My mileage kind of varies on this concept, because if
Speaker 1: my boyfriend doesn't say something nice about me on the
Speaker 1: computer this weekend for my birthday, I will shit myself
Speaker 1: and stomp around. It's a polarizing genre of post then
Speaker 1: and now, But as long as the wife and the
Speaker 1: wife guy are okay with it, the rest of us
Speaker 1: can mute and speculate in a group chat, as is
Speaker 1: our god given right. But what are the wife guys
Speaker 1: really talk about? The many aspects of wife? Of course,
Speaker 1: their wife's professional accomplishments, their relationship milestones, their hobbies, and
Speaker 1: less commonly, explicitly celebrating their wife's body. If you know
Speaker 1: nothing about today's story, I want you to go in cold,
Speaker 1: and if you're revisiting this story, try to return with me.
Speaker 1: It's the summer of twenty seventeen and you're sweating your
Speaker 1: ass off on a walk as the fiftieth chorus of
Speaker 1: Desposito drifts out of the nearest CBS. You open your
Speaker 1: social media of choice and there's screenshots of this Instagram post.
Speaker 1: It's a picture of a straight white couple on a beach.
Speaker 1: They're embracing and they're about to kiss. The post belongs
Speaker 1: to the husband. It looks like an innocuous picture, and
Speaker 1: you think to yourself, well, this is kind of an
Speaker 1: innocuous picture. Why is everyone? And then you read the caption.
Speaker 2: I love this woman and her curvy body. As a teenager,
Speaker 2: I was often teased by my friends for my attraction
Speaker 2: to girls on the thicker side, ones who were shorter
Speaker 2: and curvier, girls that the average basic bro might refer
Speaker 2: to as chubby or even fat. Then, as I became
Speaker 2: a man and started to educate myself on feminist issues,
Speaker 2: such as how the media marginalizes women by portraying them
Speaker 2: in a very narrow and very specific standard of beauty,
Speaker 2: then tall lean, I realized how many men have bought
Speaker 2: into that lie. For me, there is nothing sexier than
Speaker 2: this woman right here. Thick thighs, big booty, cute little
Speaker 2: side roll, et cetera. Her shape and size won't be
Speaker 2: the one featured on the cover of Cosmopolitan, but it's
Speaker 2: the one featured in my life and in my heart.
Speaker 2: There's nothing sexier to me than a woman who is
Speaker 2: both curvy and confident. This gorgeous girl I married fills
Speaker 2: out every inch of her jeens and is still the
Speaker 2: most beautiful one in the room. Guys, rethink what society
Speaker 2: has told you that you should desire. A real woman
Speaker 2: is not a bikini mannikin or a movie character. She's real.
Speaker 2: She has beautiful stretch marks on her hips and cute
Speaker 2: little dimples on her booty. Girls, don't ever fool yourself
Speaker 2: by thinking you have to fit a certain mold to
Speaker 2: be loved and appreciated. There is a guy out there
Speaker 2: who is going to celebrate you for exactly who you are,
Speaker 2: someone who will love you like I love my Sarah.
Speaker 1: Oh oh, And as you finish reading the post, the
Speaker 1: city begins to crumble around you, buildings collapsing. The earthquake
Speaker 1: has come. It's the big one. Nothing is as it
Speaker 1: was and cannot be again because curvywife Guy and curvywife
Speaker 1: Robbie and Sarah trip.
Speaker 3: Your sixteenth minute starts now.
Speaker 1: Six Welcome back to sixteenth minute, the show, where we
Speaker 1: revisit and check in with the Internet's main characters to
Speaker 1: see what their moment says about the Internet and us.
Speaker 1: And oh boy, I hope you have a glass of
Speaker 1: water nearby, because we're getting into some deeply complicated Trump
Speaker 1: administration era Internet drama. This week some true heterosexual madness.
Speaker 1: We are talking about the saga of the Kruvy wife guy,
Speaker 1: or as he's not shy about letting people know. For
Speaker 1: the last seven years, a guy named Robbie Trip. And
Speaker 1: while Robbie is pretty cleanly the main character in this case,
Speaker 1: he's the one that receives the most criticism and benefit
Speaker 1: from the story. He wrote the caption that everyone is
Speaker 1: reacting to. This story is still a two hander in
Speaker 1: nature because Robbie Tripp can't pull this moment off without
Speaker 1: his wife, not some bechtelcast humor if you're a fan
Speaker 1: of the show. He can't pull this moment off without
Speaker 1: his wife, Sarah Tripp's body being at the center of
Speaker 1: the discussion, whether she likes it or not. And like
Speaker 1: Kelly Dodson in our first episode of Sixteenth Minute, it's
Speaker 1: originally unclear to the public how much Sarah is welcoming
Speaker 1: the discussion or how much this moment presented the risk
Speaker 1: of monetizing and discoursing over a hyperfixation of Sarah's body.
Speaker 1: So before we get into it, I want to say
Speaker 1: at the top, this is going to be a two
Speaker 1: part episode because this is a stunningly complex story for
Speaker 1: what it is, and I want to really take time
Speaker 1: to look at the full breadth of not just the
Speaker 1: subjects of this story, but why it struck the chord
Speaker 1: that it did. Because the discourse around the Curvywife saga
Speaker 1: went on per month, which even in twenty seventeen was
Speaker 1: very unusual. But any story about bodies, and especially bodies
Speaker 1: that haven't been historically accepted or celebrated, is going to
Speaker 1: be received by everyone in a very personal way. And
Speaker 1: I wanted to make sure to speak to fat liberation
Speaker 1: activists about their reflections of this story seven years later.
Speaker 1: So we'll be airing that next week because it really
Speaker 1: does deserve its own episode. This week, we're sorting back
Speaker 1: through the original Curvywife saga and sixteenth minute exclusive having
Speaker 1: a post mortem with the Curvywife guy himself. So buckle in,
Speaker 1: it's a it's a story, Come with me if you
Speaker 1: dare to. July twenty seventeen, a Burundian team of teenage
Speaker 1: robotics students vanish into thin air while traveling in Canada.
Speaker 1: OJ Simpson is granted parole. The US government approves Elon
Speaker 1: Musk's dumbass hyperloop. As we keep using Twitter like he'll
Speaker 1: never run it into the ground. What all. Oh, We're
Speaker 1: less than a year removed from Trump's election, and in
Speaker 1: a few months, the me too movement will begin a
Speaker 1: number of important conversations about gender violence and daily discrimination,
Speaker 1: only to devolve into yet another social movement that centers
Speaker 1: white collar white women but does radicalize many. And On
Speaker 1: instagram dot Com Instagram the Meta property, a man named
Speaker 1: Robbie Tripp posts a photo of him and his wife
Speaker 1: Sarah at the beach with an infamous caption.
Speaker 2: I love this woman and her curvy body as a teenager.
Speaker 1: You know what, we actually don't need to listen to
Speaker 1: the whole thing again. I trust you've retained it. So
Speaker 1: let's talk about who Robbie and Sarah Tripp were at
Speaker 1: the time this was posted. By the summer of twenty seventeen,
Speaker 1: Instagram had been using an algorithmically driven feed for more
Speaker 1: than a year, doing away with the chronological feed that
Speaker 1: their parent company, Facebook had shed over half a decade ago.
Speaker 4: So this puts.
Speaker 1: Robbie and Sarah at a pretty interesting moment in Internet history.
Speaker 1: They're benefiting from a couple different things here. It's a
Speaker 1: post whose high engagement was definitely boosted by this algorithm,
Speaker 1: but the Curvey wife story also got a lot of
Speaker 1: traditional media driven traffic. If memory serves, I first saw
Speaker 1: this story while people were tearing Robbie to shreds over
Speaker 1: on Twitter, and then read an article about it on
Speaker 1: a culture website, and then was linked to the original
Speaker 1: post back on Instagram. It was everywhere, and Instagram looms
Speaker 1: large over this couple's personal history. It's part of how
Speaker 1: they got together in the first place. Robbie was born
Speaker 1: and raised in Utah, and his early passion was basketball.
Speaker 1: He'd play all the way into junior college before hanging
Speaker 1: up the cleats packing in the hoop. After a while
Speaker 1: he stopped playing, and Sarah, who was a year younger,
Speaker 1: had an early fixation on fashion design and is from
Speaker 1: Las Vegas, where the couple lives with their three children today.
Speaker 1: Because yes, these two are still very much together. For
Speaker 1: any rightful criticism of Robbie and eventually of Sarah that exists,
Speaker 1: it's undeniable that they love each other. But here's the wrinkle.
Speaker 1: It's Robbie's post that the algorithm and the press gobbles
Speaker 1: up with the narrative, quickly reducing Sarah Tripp to the
Speaker 1: role of curvy wife, but by twenty seventeen, Sarah had
Speaker 1: been an influencer in the plus size space for over
Speaker 1: four years. It was her who was the more successful
Speaker 1: of the two online, and much of her work was
Speaker 1: entrenched in body positivity and commentary on her own life
Speaker 1: until all of a sudden things changed. Robbie didn't take
Speaker 1: the reins they were kind of given to him. This
Speaker 1: wasn't always the case. Sarah had been regularly posting outfit
Speaker 1: of the day posts and writing blogs for her site,
Speaker 1: Sassy Red Lipstick since twenty thirteen. She'd had the idea
Speaker 1: for the site after a summer fashion internship in New
Speaker 1: York City left her feeling inspired to start something of
Speaker 1: her own that was inclusive of women who looked like her.
Speaker 1: She was a college student who wore what she would
Speaker 1: call in between her sizes. Here's a twenty fifteen post
Speaker 1: from the blog where she explains what that means.
Speaker 5: Since the release of my story on How I've come
Speaker 5: to Love and accept my curves, many women messaged me
Speaker 5: to express their feelings towards the inexplainable reason that fashion
Speaker 5: conscious women are quickly separated into one of two categories
Speaker 5: regular size aka typical skinny and size zero to four,
Speaker 5: or plus size aka heavy and size fourteen plus. But
Speaker 5: what about those in between? What I've been noticing for
Speaker 5: years is that there is no in between, no happy
Speaker 5: medium for girls like me and the countless other women
Speaker 5: I see around me. We do not fit into either category.
Speaker 5: We are what I'll call in betweeners, just average girls
Speaker 5: of varying sizes with some junk in the trunk, but
Speaker 5: not a part of either of the two categories mentioned above.
Speaker 5: Think about it. There is not a term or definition
Speaker 5: or description for those women who don't fit, no pun
Speaker 5: intended into either of these categories. This seemingly no woman's
Speaker 5: land concerning fashion and body type pushes girls like me
Speaker 5: into a gray area that at best creates a feeling
Speaker 5: of ignorance and at worst creates feelings of judgment.
Speaker 1: Sarah would post her outfits updates on her life, and
Speaker 1: did so knowing she was more representative of what the
Speaker 1: average American woman looked like at that time between Asia
Speaker 1: sixteen and eighteen. Looking back at this blog was kind
Speaker 1: of nostalgic. I'd never seen Sarah's work specifically before Kirby Wife,
Speaker 1: but the style of posts is from a bygone era.
Speaker 1: There's a leopard print font heading to the site that's
Speaker 1: reminiscent of Like a Sex and the City fan site.
Speaker 1: There are carefully posed photos of Sarah taken on a
Speaker 1: digital camera. There are pages of Pinterest graphics that read
Speaker 1: things like dress like Jackie, act like Audrey, inspire like Lily,
Speaker 1: party like Gatsby. I don't know who really is so.
Speaker 1: Sarah's site starts in twenty thirteen, which is also the
Speaker 1: year that she and Robbie start seeing each other after
Speaker 1: being introduced by mutual friends in Vegas. They do some
Speaker 1: long distance between New York, where her internship was in California,
Speaker 1: where Robbie was going to school, then got serious and
Speaker 1: quickly became engaged when they both returned to Utah so
Speaker 1: Robbie could be with his family and Sarah could finish
Speaker 1: college at Brigham Young University. And for the record, they
Speaker 1: both appear to be from pretty well off families. Robbie
Speaker 1: describes his father as a construction entrepreneur. And here's Sarah
Speaker 1: talking about what first got her interested in fashion on
Speaker 1: a podcast called Like to Know What Influencer Radio from
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen.
Speaker 6: I feel like My first love for designer came from
Speaker 6: going to a private school, because these are families who
Speaker 6: are very successful in Vegas and have a lot of money.
Speaker 6: And my parents have always been very successful, but they're
Speaker 6: very humble, very hard working, and could care less about
Speaker 6: brand names or status or anything like that. But the
Speaker 6: parents of all these kids I went to school with,
Speaker 6: it was very important to them, and so that's kind
Speaker 6: of where I feel like I first was introduced to.
Speaker 1: It, and from the beginning. Robbie is mentioned on the
Speaker 1: Sassy Red Lipstick website all the time, and he cited
Speaker 1: as a huge source of support for Sarah emotionally and
Speaker 1: by both of their accounts in the day to day
Speaker 1: making of her social media. He was an Instagram boyfriend.
Speaker 1: He was an HTML boyfriend, not yet an influencer himself,
Speaker 1: but a partner who took these carefully staged pictures of
Speaker 1: Sarah to support her virgin and career. This is from
Speaker 1: the Frequently Asked Questions section of Sassy Red Lipstick, shortly
Speaker 1: before they got engaged. Question why did you start a
Speaker 1: fashion blog?
Speaker 5: I've kept a lifestyle blog for the past couple of years,
Speaker 5: but living in the city made me realize that I
Speaker 5: need to chase my dreams. My cute boyfriend Robbie encouraged
Speaker 5: me to finally start one. He's the techie behind everything
Speaker 5: you see here and the rest is history. This blog
Speaker 5: is a great outlet for me to showcase my fashionista
Speaker 5: side to anybody who's interested.
Speaker 1: The two get married at the Las Vegas Church of
Speaker 1: Latter Day Saints in twenty fourteen. In twenty sixteen, the
Speaker 1: couple moved to San Francisco to continue pursuing their respective ambitions.
Speaker 1: As Sarah grew Sassy Red Lipstick and Robbie, well, let's
Speaker 1: talk about what Robbie is up to. His posts start
Speaker 1: as pretty innocuous. On Instagram, Robbie posted a picture of
Speaker 1: himself and Sarah the day that Sassy Red Lipstick was
Speaker 1: launched in twenty thirteen. They're holding hands and.
Speaker 2: It's captioned this morning, Sarah and I officially launched her
Speaker 2: new fashion blog. I designed, photographed, and edited everything and
Speaker 2: am super proud of how it came out. She fancy
Speaker 2: check it out.
Speaker 1: But Robbie also has his own stuff going on, and
Speaker 1: a few themes emerge that are a part of his
Speaker 1: persona to this day. Yes, he loves his wife then girlfriend,
Speaker 1: and by the way, he's not really commenting on her
Speaker 1: body with any frequency in the early years of their marriage,
Speaker 1: But there's wife content. There is a lot of hustle
Speaker 1: mindset posts. I'm talking the kind of memes.
Speaker 2: That say, I have to be successful because WiFi really
Speaker 2: likes shoes in handbags, hashtag tripswag, or it's natural for
Speaker 2: some people to dislike you, not everyone has good taste.
Speaker 2: Or if you're not made making enemies, you're not gaining fans.
Speaker 1: And spoiler alert. These posts really clarify why Robbie's endgame
Speaker 1: is ultimately as a white wrapper. In his content, there
Speaker 1: is a pattern of a wish to prove something to people.
Speaker 1: He very frequently brings up the concept of the haters,
Speaker 1: even though I'm not sure who the haters would have
Speaker 1: been at this time. What's clear in these early posts
Speaker 1: is Robbie feels he's got something to prove, both as
Speaker 1: an individual and with Sarah as a team. Then there's
Speaker 1: his creative output, which included a self published book from
Speaker 1: twenty fifteen called Create Rebellion, which he describes as a
Speaker 1: quote abstract manifesto for disruptive creativity unquote. Here's a twenty
Speaker 1: five year old Robbie talking about it on the local news.
Speaker 4: It's just really its main purpose is just to inspire
Speaker 4: people to create. Don't be afraid to push against the
Speaker 4: status quo, and just really do your own thing, just
Speaker 4: regarding people who don't understand it. You create your art
Speaker 4: for you, not for anybody else. That I'm a born creative.
Speaker 4: I think I'm a creative genius.
Speaker 1: So what I'm hearing here is Robby was very influenced
Speaker 1: by this twenty tens hustle culture that had really taken
Speaker 1: hold in Silicon Valley, and given that the couple would
Speaker 1: soon move to San Francisco, a big tech city, the
Speaker 1: year after this interview, it's not that surprising. It's prosperity gospel,
Speaker 1: and as time goes on, his emphasis on money and
Speaker 1: status will only increase. But around the time that Create
Speaker 1: Rebellion comes out, Robbie's angling to be a writer and
Speaker 1: a motivational speaker. He is interested in music, specifically Macklemore,
Speaker 1: which is foreshadowing, But in twenty sixteen, he's focused on
Speaker 1: doing his book tour and is trying to get a
Speaker 1: Ted talk, which he does. By twenty seventeen, Robbie secures
Speaker 1: a local TED talk in Salinas, California that is called
Speaker 1: why Millennial Narcissists Are Changing the World. Here's a clip.
Speaker 4: This perception that millennials are selfish and defeat is really
Speaker 4: just a skin deep analysis when there's a much deeper
Speaker 4: and much more positive reality at the core. All you've
Speaker 4: got to do is what pass a surface to see
Speaker 4: that will Millennials are actually changing the world for the
Speaker 4: better because our positives are born from our perceived negatives.
Speaker 4: Here's what I mean. For example, when many see in
Speaker 4: US as narcissistic, is also just a supreme confidence in
Speaker 4: our abilities. That kind of confidence that allows us to
Speaker 4: start our own company, become the CEO of that company.
Speaker 4: The kind of confidence that drives us and propels us
Speaker 4: to think we can create an app that will disrupt
Speaker 4: an entire industry. Another one, what many people see in
Speaker 4: US as entitled is also just a natural expectation for success,
Speaker 4: the natural expectation that we don't have to work in
Speaker 4: an office nine to five in order to make a living.
Speaker 4: And if we do, then we expect that office has
Speaker 4: three different lunch menus, video game breakrooms, and nap pods
Speaker 4: for and we need to take a nap. I'm confident
Speaker 4: I could assign each one of the negative characteristics that
Speaker 4: my generation has been given, such as more selfish, more arrogant,
Speaker 4: more entitled, as a direct result of a generation that's
Speaker 4: also more creative, more free thinking, and more in than
Speaker 4: any other generation before us.
Speaker 1: The wild thing is that this was released on YouTube
Speaker 1: just a few months before the Curvywife post, and I
Speaker 1: find it fascinating because Robbie is embracing and embodying what
Speaker 1: millennials are often criticized for and what he would be
Speaker 1: criticized for just months later in the wake of the
Speaker 1: Curvy Wife moment of centering himself, of seeking fame, and look,
Speaker 1: I respectfully refuse to enlist in the generational culture war.
Speaker 1: My response to being a millennial is an acceptance that
Speaker 1: no one will ever like us, and maybe that will
Speaker 1: ultimately be easier than being a part of a generation
Speaker 1: that everyone insisted will save the world and then they
Speaker 1: end up being you know, people. But Robbie Tripp is
Speaker 1: definitely fixated on this idea of being a millennial meaning
Speaker 1: that you are selfish for good. Here's how the talk ends.
Speaker 4: I believe we live at a digital day and age
Speaker 4: where all you need to succeed is Wi Fi and
Speaker 4: a dream. In the words of Grammy Award winning rapper Maclamore,
Speaker 4: we are a generation of kids choosing love over a desk.
Speaker 4: And that is the generation I'm proud to be a
Speaker 4: part of. That is what it means to be a millennial.
Speaker 4: But many times this is all ignored because we're misunderstood,
Speaker 4: and because we're misunderstood by older generations, they vilify us
Speaker 4: to some degree. Oh they're narcissistic, they can't be managed,
Speaker 4: they're entitled, blah blah, blah, blah blah. Their frustration and
Speaker 4: their confusion comes from one solid fact. They are holding
Speaker 4: us to expectations created for a world that no longer exists.
Speaker 4: My name is Robbie Tripp. You may think I'm a narcissist,
Speaker 4: but really I'm a millennial and you're damn right. I'm
Speaker 4: changing the world. Thank you.
Speaker 1: And while I can see his point, any generation that
Speaker 1: asks for more than their predecessors are made out to
Speaker 1: be ungrateful brats for pushing back on traditional, bullshit, bootstrapped narratives.
Speaker 1: And it's never going to be the system that produced
Speaker 1: such uncertainty and discrimination on the chopping block. It will
Speaker 1: always be the individuals and their avocado toast or whatever.
Speaker 1: I'm on board for that. But again, the narrative of
Speaker 1: the haters and viewing himself and Sarah as a united
Speaker 1: front that is at the forefront of the revolution. It's
Speaker 1: familiar and inner world where the Curvywife post had never
Speaker 1: picked up any steam. Maybe Robbie would have continued in
Speaker 1: this direction and tried to do more motivational speaking, but
Speaker 1: we'll never know, because on July thirtieth, twenty seventeen, everything changes.
Speaker 1: Maybe during the mid twenty tens, was jump starting his
Speaker 1: own creative efforts. Sarah had had a lot of success
Speaker 1: building up sassy red lipstick. Her Instagram bio read at
Speaker 1: the time of the.
Speaker 5: Post always overdressed, kissing lips, emoji, confident style and body
Speaker 5: positivity hashtag honor your curves, and.
Speaker 1: She'd recently celebrated reaching one hundred thousand followers on Instagram
Speaker 1: and had pretty consistent sponsored posts right up until the
Speaker 1: moment of the curvywife post. The couple seemed content and
Speaker 1: love and determined to make it together. But if we're
Speaker 1: talking follower numbers wise, and who was posting about the
Speaker 1: spouse and the marriage. More, Sarah Tripp had a significantly
Speaker 1: larger audience and much more narrative control until the post.
Speaker 1: The Curvywife post was made to Instagram and Facebook and
Speaker 1: quickly racked up over eighty thousand shares, and you heard
Speaker 1: the full post at the beginning of the episode, but
Speaker 1: here's a reminder of how it wraps up.
Speaker 2: There's nothing sexier to me than a woman who is
Speaker 2: both curvy and confident. This gorgeous girl I married fills
Speaker 2: out every inch of her genes and is still the
Speaker 2: most beautiful one in the room. Guys, rethink what society
Speaker 2: has told you that you should desire. A real woman
Speaker 2: is not a bikini mannekin or a movie character. She's real.
Speaker 2: She has beautiful stretch on her hips and cute little
Speaker 2: dimples on her booty. Girls, don't ever fool yourself by
Speaker 2: thinking you have to fit a certain mold to be
Speaker 2: loved and appreciated. There is a guy out there who
Speaker 2: is going to celebrate you for exactly who you are,
Speaker 2: someone who will love you like I love my Sarah.
Speaker 1: Almost immediately, the Curvy wife post gets higher engagement than
Speaker 1: Robbie is normally dead at this time, and he says
Speaker 1: that the reception was initially positive and mainly from the
Speaker 1: audience he had already, which was around twenty thousand followers
Speaker 1: on Instagram at the time, comments like this is the
Speaker 1: sweetest thing I've ever read. This gives me hope I'll
Speaker 1: find love someday and you are a real man. This
Speaker 1: is beautiful and inspiring. But something I didn't realize because
Speaker 1: it was rarely, if ever referenced in the stories that
Speaker 1: surrounded the Curvy Wife post is that Sarah Tripp posts
Speaker 1: a blog on Sassy Red Lipstick around that same time
Speaker 1: to compliment Robbie's post. She teases it on Instagram with
Speaker 1: a photo from the same shoot in the same bathing stit,
Speaker 1: only in this picture she's by herself.
Speaker 5: The caption says, talking all about the F word on
Speaker 5: SRL tonight, you know the one I'm talking about fat.
Speaker 5: I'm getting personal about my lifelong journey of being a
Speaker 5: curve or girl, how it affected past relationships, and why
Speaker 5: we need to stop using this terrible word, especially when
Speaker 5: talking about ourselves. I may have fat, but I am
Speaker 5: not fat, and neither are you. This is a post
Speaker 5: you don't want to miss. Click the link in my
Speaker 5: bio to read, and we'll circle.
Speaker 1: Back to some of those ideas next week. But the
Speaker 1: point is that Sarah is actively engaging with the Curvy
Speaker 1: Wife story from the jump, and because she has the
Speaker 1: larger audience, is probably boosting this story in these early days.
Speaker 1: There is never a feeling that she's upset or thinks
Speaker 1: that her husband has overstepped by posting this. But I
Speaker 1: never knew that because Sarah's participation and engagement with this
Speaker 1: story is barely commented on. In both the widespread criticism
Speaker 1: and celebration, people are largely focused on Robbie's words and
Speaker 1: Sarah's body. Sarah's words are rarely considered. But traffic doesn't
Speaker 1: really pick up until a few days later when a
Speaker 1: Leah Fruman at the Today Show found the story writing
Speaker 1: husband Pen's body positive note to Curvy Wife and everyone's swooning,
Speaker 1: and to her credit, she interviews Sarah, who says the following.
Speaker 5: He always makes me feel so loved and appreciated as
Speaker 5: a body positive fashion blogger. I've been very open about
Speaker 5: my body love journey and my goal to help other
Speaker 5: curvy women learn to love their body. I just feel
Speaker 5: so lucky that I have a husband who has loved
Speaker 5: every inch of me since the day we met.
Speaker 1: The next day, a trend reporter at the Huffington Post
Speaker 1: named Dominique Mosbergen picks up on the story and she
Speaker 1: loves it too. The headline is husband's love note to
Speaker 1: his curvy wife should be required reading. Then the Daily
Speaker 1: Mail picks up on it, and if you've used the
Speaker 1: Internet for a single second, you know what is about
Speaker 1: to happen. Backlash, huge swift back toward Robbie specifically. And look,
Speaker 1: I want to be clear, okay Obama vibes, So let
Speaker 1: me be clear that I don't think any one reaction
Speaker 1: to this post is right or wrong. The early reception
Speaker 1: from women who like the post are just as valid
Speaker 1: as the reactions to those who didn't. And with that
Speaker 1: in mind, I don't think there's ever been an Internet
Speaker 1: story I've seen that was more destined to get a
Speaker 1: huge wave of backlash than the curvy Wife's story, because
Speaker 1: just throw on, oh Fortuna, Saying.
Speaker 2: That you like your wife even though she's chubby doesn't
Speaker 2: make you brave, It makes you a jerk. You're still
Speaker 2: objectifying her.
Speaker 5: Dude, strong contender for least fave type of male feminist
Speaker 5: is man who thinks liking a curvy woman is revolutionary.
Speaker 2: My mates think you are fat, but I still like you.
Speaker 2: I know I'm such a feminist. Hashtag I, hashtag love,
Speaker 2: hashtag curvy, hashtag women.
Speaker 1: I love my idiot husband. I don't care what society says.
Speaker 1: I like how dumb he is. I like his very
Speaker 1: smooth brain. I love his hair. He tried to cut himself.
Speaker 5: Has curvy wife written a blog post about why she's
Speaker 5: a martyr for marrying her gawky, narcissist husband?
Speaker 1: Yet, Yeah, it was intense. This is how I learned
Speaker 1: about the story originally, which snowballed into response essays like
Speaker 1: New York magazines. Some people are applauding this man for
Speaker 1: celebrating his wife's curves, but most are dragging him, and
Speaker 1: an essay I really liked from Sam Escobar for Allure
Speaker 1: called aria man thinks he's brave for finding his wife hot.
Speaker 1: These essays do acknowledge that Sarah is on board with
Speaker 1: what her husband is saying, but make the counter argument
Speaker 1: that to fat or curvy women on the whole, Robbie's
Speaker 1: writing fits a condescending pattern that they had experienced in
Speaker 1: the past. I particularly want to share this passage from
Speaker 1: Escobar's essay. As someone who's ranged in size and ben overweight,
Speaker 1: I will anecdotally muse that the compliments become increasingly patronizing
Speaker 1: at larger sizes. You have such a pretty face, a
Speaker 1: family member might lament in a tone halfway between resigned
Speaker 1: and complimentary. A well intentioned yet frustratingly oblivious friend might quip,
Speaker 1: you're lucky you have curves. They're so trendy right now. Well,
Speaker 1: no models with a specific hip to waste a bust
Speaker 1: ratio are who you're referring to. And this does not
Speaker 1: mean our society is suddenly universally respectful towards fat people.
Speaker 1: For anyone skeptical of that word, please know I use
Speaker 1: it as a neutral adjective and never a pejorative, and
Speaker 1: that using the term curvy as a substitute is substantially
Speaker 1: more harmful. And then there are the self congratulatory men.
Speaker 1: Robbie Trips sticks to the path that he had in
Speaker 1: the past. He thanks the supporters, and the haters just
Speaker 1: didn't get it. Throughout this criticism, the Trips were making appearances.
Speaker 1: They went on the Today Show, they went on Good Morning, America.
Speaker 1: But there wasn't much time for them to dwell on
Speaker 1: their overnight fame before the next stage of the fifteen
Speaker 1: Minutes experience pulled into the station, unearthing offensive old tweets
Speaker 1: and with Robby and Sarah. These were posts from the
Speaker 1: early to mid twenty tens that were casually and overtly
Speaker 1: racist and transphobic, and bear no repeating here. But the
Speaker 1: posts were gross and ignorant, and within a few days
Speaker 1: of the story going viral, they resurface and there is
Speaker 1: a sudden intense demand for Robby and Sarah to acknowledge
Speaker 1: and apologize for these posts. This is a phenomenon called
Speaker 1: milkshake ducking, where a newly prominent figure is revealed to
Speaker 1: have shitty or hateful views shortly after becoming relevant. The
Speaker 1: term and I just think this is funny comes from
Speaker 1: an all Timer tweet from twenty sixteen by Ben Ward
Speaker 1: aka pixelated Boat.
Speaker 2: It says, the whole Internet loves milkshake duck, a lovely
Speaker 2: duck that drinks milkshakes. Five seconds later, we regret to
Speaker 2: inform you the duck is racist.
Speaker 1: Robby and Sarah are the ducks, and the posts were
Speaker 1: relatively recent and this demand for accountability escalates. By August seventh,
Speaker 1: just a week after the post had started gathering steam,
Speaker 1: model Test Holiday called bullshit on Robbie, both for his
Speaker 1: original Curvywife post and for a transphobic tweet from twenty fifteen,
Speaker 1: given that Holiday was one of the most prominent body
Speaker 1: positivity advocates of the day. She was and is a
Speaker 1: very popular model who had launched the hashtag f your
Speaker 1: Beauty Standards social media movement and openly embraced the term fat.
Speaker 1: And she had this to say about the curvywife story.
Speaker 1: Stop giving men trophies for doing the bare minimum. Also,
Speaker 1: I'm not here for someone who says transphobic things hashtag
Speaker 1: f your beauty standards hashtag trans women are women And
Speaker 1: apologies come from both trips in pretty short order. They
Speaker 1: both cite their naivete and having done work on themselves.
Speaker 1: Since this is from Sarah's blog.
Speaker 5: Recently old tweets were uncovered from years ago, and what
Speaker 5: was found were some things that we are ashamed of.
Speaker 5: My insensitive words were posted in twenty twelve. Robbie's from
Speaker 5: twenty fifteen. Regardless of when they were said, they were
Speaker 5: never appropriate. Mortified, we quickly deleted these off color, insensitive
Speaker 5: remarks that we had completely forgotten about from so long ago,
Speaker 5: but it was too late. Screenshots were taken and shared online.
Speaker 5: We want to own up to our mistakes. We want
Speaker 5: to express our deep regret and shame at those insensitive words.
Speaker 5: We are so incredibly sorry for them, We are so embarrassed.
Speaker 5: They are not at all representative of who we are.
Speaker 1: But by the time these apologies were released on August twelve,
Speaker 1: most of the Internet had already made their minds up
Speaker 1: about the couple one way or another. Some maintained that
Speaker 1: Robbie's post had been well intentioned and Sarah liked it.
Speaker 1: They're just human. Others were put off, were offended by it,
Speaker 1: and even more so by the tweets. But even with
Speaker 1: the scandal, both of their audiences continued to grow. Sarah's
Speaker 1: accounts remained more or less normal, with the focus being
Speaker 1: the continued growth of Sassy Red Lipstick. Robbie, well, he
Speaker 1: kind of did Tony Robbins motivational speaking era and pivots
Speaker 1: to full time wife guy. So by this time, you know,
Speaker 1: Robbie had posted plenty of supportive things about Sarah in
Speaker 1: the past, but After Curvy Wife, the volume of posts
Speaker 1: about Sarah's body increases significantly, and by the end of
Speaker 1: the year, he's back to thinking about the haters posting
Speaker 1: hustle memes like.
Speaker 2: A hater is someone who sees your success as their
Speaker 2: failure and your failure as their success.
Speaker 1: Robbie trip, and while he's committing to this new direction,
Speaker 1: the wave of negative press from the Curvy Wife post
Speaker 1: seems to still be on his mind, all while continuing
Speaker 1: to share how much money the Trips had made at
Speaker 1: their respective business endeavors. After the post went viral. On
Speaker 1: New Year's Day in twenty eighteen, he posts a picture
Speaker 1: of himself and Sarah in front of one of those
Speaker 1: weird cars where the doors flip up. They scare me. Anyways,
Speaker 1: they're in front of those, and Robbie is bragging about
Speaker 1: how they've made six figures blogging in the Year of
Speaker 1: the Kirby Wife. The couple then leaves San Francisco and
Speaker 1: moves to what Robbie keeps describing as quote our large
Speaker 1: desert home unquote in Arizona, and he starts an LLC
Speaker 1: called Desert Money. By twenty nineteen, Sarah is pregnant with
Speaker 1: their first child, and Robbie takes the next logical step
Speaker 1: into a career as a viral guy.
Speaker 7: My girl Chubby Sexy Collezai nice of Miita, she got
Speaker 7: think not stretch lark.
Speaker 1: Bi You guys. He starts rapping, and yes, the first
Speaker 1: single is called Chubby Sexy. Maybe this seems out of nowhere,
Speaker 1: but it does kind of make sense if you have
Speaker 1: been observing Robbie's posts over a course of years. After all,
Speaker 1: he was Macilmore's number one fan.
Speaker 4: In the words of Grammy Award winning rapper Maclamore, we
Speaker 4: are a generation of kids choosing love over a desk,
Speaker 4: and that is the gen generation I'm proud to be
Speaker 4: a part of. That is what it means to be
Speaker 4: a millennial.
Speaker 1: And Chubby Sexy comes complete with a pretty elaborate music
Speaker 1: video that starred fat and curvy women who reached out
Speaker 1: at the casting call and of course Sarah Trip herself.
Speaker 1: And when Chubby Sexy drops, the launch throws people back
Speaker 1: to the original story from almost two years earlier, and
Speaker 1: while some writers took the opportunity to dunk on Robbie
Speaker 1: a second time, others were kind of into it. If
Speaker 1: nothing else, the song does seem to be pretty self
Speaker 1: aware of its own goofiness. There was an extensive, fascinating
Speaker 1: profile of the couple written The Weekend that the Chubby
Speaker 1: Sexy music video was shot by Rebecca Jennings in box
Speaker 1: that is already reflecting on the original rollout of the
Speaker 1: trips as an influencer couple. Jennings writes that the couple
Speaker 1: seems to love each other very much, and she also
Speaker 1: got a chance to speak with Sarah Tripp about how
Speaker 1: the social media moment had affected her back in twenty seventeen,
Speaker 1: something that most people hadn't really asked. Here's a passage
Speaker 1: from Jennings peace.
Speaker 5: While the hate from the legions of so called Twitter
Speaker 5: feminists and the more private criticisms Robbie has said they
Speaker 5: received from certain Mormon circles. Robbie and Sarah are Mormon,
Speaker 5: but do not discuss their faith on their platforms and
Speaker 5: say they don't engage with the cultural aspect of the
Speaker 5: religion seem to have bolstered Robbie. It was harder for Sarah.
Speaker 5: Her anxiety, which she already struggled with, got worse. It
Speaker 5: makes me scared to do things now in my career
Speaker 5: because of backlash and because how people treat us, She says.
Speaker 5: Robbie's always like, there's no such thing as bad press,
Speaker 5: because it puts us in front of more eyes and
Speaker 5: hopefully those people can make their own opinion. Sarah says,
Speaker 5: I personally wish that people weren't writing articles about us
Speaker 5: all the time. It never feels good to see people
Speaker 5: say hurtful things, and I think people forget we have feelings.
Speaker 5: He's really good about brushing off the hate, but internally,
Speaker 5: I'm like, this is so not fun.
Speaker 1: And so these days Sarah doesn't really go on the
Speaker 1: record about this story anymore. I reached out to her
Speaker 1: for this episode, but she politely declined and said she
Speaker 1: was excited I'd be talking with Robbie and fair enough.
Speaker 1: I'm glad she got the chance to speak about it publicly,
Speaker 1: and Jennings piece is really fantastic. One part that particularly
Speaker 1: stuck with me was her interview with Alex, one of
Speaker 1: the dancers in the Chubby Sexy music video, who identified
Speaker 1: as a curview wife guy super fan. Here's a passage
Speaker 1: I had never seen anyone talk about women the way
Speaker 1: that Robbie talks about Sarah. She says, her eyes beginning
Speaker 1: to water and in that moment full of self doubt
Speaker 1: dating people that were really shitty on Tinder, I felt
Speaker 1: that there was a little bit of hope, a little
Speaker 1: bit of light at the end of this tunnel. And
Speaker 1: Chubby Sexy does well enough for Robbie to be encouraged
Speaker 1: to forge ahead with his music career, and he does
Speaker 1: so with remarkable energy. The things he wraps about are well,
Speaker 1: you won't be surprised big women as a big girl banger.
Speaker 1: Oh it's a big girl beggar beggar telling off the
Speaker 1: haters and getting a lot of money.
Speaker 4: On the ground like a roundness skater maid with this
Speaker 4: bottle to you of this raid.
Speaker 1: And during the month I interviewed him, Sarah specifically.
Speaker 4: Oh got a hot white should be looking.
Speaker 2: So really nice.
Speaker 1: Sarah is very often in these music videos and even
Speaker 1: appears in sketches before and after the music video for
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one's Sickness for Thickness. Okay, fuck it, I
Speaker 1: really need to read you the song titles because uh,
Speaker 1: here they are Chubby Sexy Sickness for Thickness, Hater Raid,
Speaker 1: White Chocolate, big girl banger, Goodie Goodie Baddy Alert Desert Baller,
Speaker 1: Basic Bro, Desert Money, Free Style, Money, Honey, Vanilla Thriller,
Speaker 1: and of course Hot Wife. And again the songs are
Speaker 1: polarizing but not unsuccessful. Big Girl Bang in particular took
Speaker 1: off on TikTok in twenty twenty two in a pretty
Speaker 1: huge way, to the point where many of the writers
Speaker 1: who had criticized Robbie back in twenty seventeen caught on
Speaker 1: Curvywife Guy is thriving on TikTok, and that was true.
Speaker 1: Some people in Robbie's TikTok comments recognize him from the
Speaker 1: original Curvywife Guy scandal, but a lot of other people
Speaker 1: on TikTok just thought it was decent music for a TikTok.
Speaker 1: And there's always going to be questions that surround how
Speaker 1: bodies are discussed in general. Where does the line of
Speaker 1: celebration end and objectification begin? How personal of a journey
Speaker 1: is it to decide when that matters to you? I
Speaker 1: can promise you we'll be talking about that in our
Speaker 1: episode next week, and as long as the streaming numbers
Speaker 1: stay up, I'm pretty sure Robbie will keep rapping about
Speaker 1: them as well. Meanwhile, Sarah has continued to have success
Speaker 1: with Sassy Red lipstick and has collaborated on a few
Speaker 1: different lines of bathing suits that sell out instantly. The
Speaker 1: couple has moved to a different, large desert home in
Speaker 1: Las Vegas. They had twins last year and they were
Speaker 1: very ambitious and active online. And so this past May
Speaker 1: I reached out to Robbie Tripp for an interview. And
Speaker 1: when we come back my interview with Curvy Wife Guy,
Speaker 1: welcome back to sixteenth minute. I tried to get a
Speaker 1: dental cleaning this morning, and it turns out that my
Speaker 1: insurance provider upsold me dental insurance for a child. But
Speaker 1: of course, to escalate the humiliation factor, I was wearing
Speaker 1: overalls and a T shirt with minions on them. And
Speaker 1: this week we are talking with Robbie Tripp, the curvew
Speaker 1: Wife Guy. So I do want to say Robbie was
Speaker 1: a very sweet person to communicate with. I had to
Speaker 1: reschedule our interview at one point because of a family emergency,
Speaker 1: and he was nothing but gracious with his time and
Speaker 1: in the same token, from the time that Robbie agreed
Speaker 1: to the interview, there was an element of to maintain
Speaker 1: his own narrative, so he sent along a few conditions
Speaker 1: within the confines of this interview, which I agreed to,
Speaker 1: but obviously did not agree to not mention these things
Speaker 1: at all in the full episode. But Robbie seemed a
Speaker 1: little concerned, and so he said that as long as
Speaker 1: the interview was fun and entertaining in tone and not snarky,
Speaker 1: he'd do it. You will notice that any time in
Speaker 1: this interview where my brain just shut down, I pause
Speaker 1: and then say, hell yeah. This conversation has been edited
Speaker 1: for length and clarity. Here's my interview with Kirby Wife Guy.
Speaker 1: How are you.
Speaker 4: I'm doing great. Yeah. It's always so interesting and fun.
Speaker 8: To speak on the infamous and famous twenty seventeen Kirby
Speaker 8: Wife moment because it's like the genesis of everything.
Speaker 4: But it's uh for all of us. I'm the pioneer
Speaker 4: of the life guy movement. There it is said it
Speaker 4: a pioneered the wife Guy Online. Oh no, it's it's
Speaker 4: such an interesting, interesting thing a topic to talk about
Speaker 4: because we've since branched into so many different things that
Speaker 4: lived this whole like life Online is whatever you want
Speaker 4: to call us, influencers, creators, artists, you know what I mean.
Speaker 4: And so entrepreneurs, and so it's just like taking on
Speaker 4: so many different forms since then. But yes, this was
Speaker 4: the genesis.
Speaker 1: It's really I mean, I have so many questions. I
Speaker 1: want to go way back, but okay, I want to
Speaker 1: start with you and your wife. Sarah just announced that
Speaker 1: you're continuing the curvew wife saga just the other day.
Speaker 1: Can you walk me through what this continuation is?
Speaker 4: Curry wife post in twenty seventeen was the genesis of
Speaker 4: kind of people's awareness of us online and fast forward?
Speaker 4: Now was it seven years? Seven years in hoget twenty
Speaker 4: twenty four. I mean, it's just been Yeah, it's been
Speaker 4: a whole it's been a whole series of we can
Speaker 4: like it's interesting within our relationship, we traced back moments
Speaker 4: to like corresponding with like what was going like what
Speaker 4: era we were in? You know what I mean? Like
Speaker 4: what was going viral? Like we we've lived and been
Speaker 4: married so long, and and our whole our whole marriage
Speaker 4: and our whole relationship has been posting and creating content.
Speaker 4: And what's crazy is that it was the thing that
Speaker 4: we weren't even creating as content. It was just one
Speaker 4: of my regular heartfelt posts to my wife like people
Speaker 4: could go like that's why it was really i'll say
Speaker 4: disappointing in the aftermath of the viral post that people
Speaker 4: were so distorting this narrative that we had somehow crafted
Speaker 4: a moment to go viral, or as if that's something
Speaker 4: that you could even predict, but it was. It was.
Speaker 4: I would always say, go back on my Instagram since
Speaker 4: the moment Sarah and I were dating in college, like,
Speaker 4: it's just how I am, Like I love to write
Speaker 4: and that Sarah is my curvy muse and my love
Speaker 4: of my life and the woman I share my life with,
Speaker 4: and so I would write these tributes to her on
Speaker 4: my Instagram as someone who you know loves their wife
Speaker 4: and wants to you know, express that online. I would
Speaker 4: do that regularly, post a photo for my wedding or
Speaker 4: post a photo from whatever, and you know, write kind
Speaker 4: of my feelings to her and attribute to her. So
Speaker 4: it was the It would just so happened that it
Speaker 4: was the I love my curvy wife on the beach
Speaker 4: in Miami in her swimsuit. They're really to get people talking.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because I went back to like that era of
Speaker 1: your social media and yeah, it's not out of step
Speaker 1: with what your existing social media is. And so I
Speaker 1: feel like sometimes you have people presented kind of in
Speaker 1: a void and you're like, but no, this is like
Speaker 1: who they've been.
Speaker 4: No, that's a really good point. Yeah, it's a people
Speaker 4: see one piece of viral content that exposes them to
Speaker 4: a brand new audience of people, and a lot of times,
Speaker 4: you know, introduces them to the Internet or the you know,
Speaker 4: the public at large, I guess you could say, and
Speaker 4: that becomes their Yeah, their sole piece of context about
Speaker 4: who the creator or the artist is. And as that's
Speaker 4: why I was that's yeah, that's this has been This
Speaker 4: has been me since day one, and this is this
Speaker 4: has been something that I've been doing since day one.
Speaker 4: And so obviously over the years, I've heard it all, Oh,
Speaker 4: he's this this whole he's just into big girls, is
Speaker 4: like just a gimmick or you know what I mean, Like,
Speaker 4: he's not sincere, he's he's objectify er, he's fetishizing. All
Speaker 4: these distorted narratives that truly all if you were to
Speaker 4: do an ounce of research from day one, through my
Speaker 4: marriage with Sarah, through our relationship, through the content I've
Speaker 4: been creating all the way back to college, it's all
Speaker 4: been within this lane. I'm expressing myself. I'm an artist
Speaker 4: and a creator of the highest order, and I love
Speaker 4: making vibes that people can enjoy and talk about, and
Speaker 4: that encourages people to chase their dreams and then empower.
Speaker 4: Beautiful Kirby plus sized BBW Gordita gang ladies, that's what
Speaker 4: we're all about. They're rocking with me. People are acting
Speaker 4: like people aren't rocking with me. And the fact of
Speaker 4: the matter is, it's like you're focusing on this very
Speaker 4: one specific, distorted narrative of the naysayers and the haters,
Speaker 4: when in reality, there's also a whole following, a whole
Speaker 4: global audience that I, myself and Sarah and then us
Speaker 4: together share and it's like been wrapped into this really
Speaker 4: cool story. You know. I think there was a time
Speaker 4: where people are like, the viral Kirby white post was negative,
Speaker 4: but come on, it was. It was largely positive until
Speaker 4: there was a very like vocal subset of feminist Twitter,
Speaker 4: of white millennial female internet snark blogger writer reporters in
Speaker 4: New York. They got a hold of this viral Kirby
Speaker 4: wife story and started twisting it to like this very
Speaker 4: like dark place that it was like not never meant
Speaker 4: to be. And that's why I always brought it back
Speaker 4: to whatever interview I got, was at the end of
Speaker 4: the day, if you're hating on this, you're just hating
Speaker 4: on a guy who loves his wife and is obsessed
Speaker 4: with her and posted a photo of them on the
Speaker 4: beach and wrote this incredible caption of word smith ory
Speaker 4: that expressed his love for her, his adoration for her,
Speaker 4: and maybe tried to, you know, introduce society to the
Speaker 4: idea that hey, big girls are sexy, Kirby girls are sexy.
Speaker 4: Let's speak outside the box.
Speaker 1: Hell Yeah, so I did want to start with, you
Speaker 1: have a new single called Hot Wife that comes out
Speaker 1: at the time we're recording this next year.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we just teased it. We just teased it the
Speaker 4: other day and said a continuation or a new chapter
Speaker 4: in the Kirby Wife saga. Now it's like because of
Speaker 4: this incredible body positive Gordiica gang, I called my Gordita
Speaker 4: Gang audience that listen to my music and my creative
Speaker 4: projects like Chubby Sexy and Big Girl Banger like viral anthems,
Speaker 4: certified bangers. I was like, Okay, I have an idea
Speaker 4: for a song called Hot Wife, and I was like, babe,
Speaker 4: So Sarah and I haven't been in a project together
Speaker 4: since my first debut single, Chubby Sexy in twenty nineteen, right,
Speaker 4: and that did extremely well on the It was in
Speaker 4: GQ's Moment Men of the Year issue. It was like,
Speaker 4: it went crazy on TikTok. It was like really fun
Speaker 4: to see like people responding to it in a very
Speaker 4: body positive way. And after that, it was like, I
Speaker 4: just kind of kept going on my music and my
Speaker 4: creative endeavors. Sarren continued doing the amazing thing she's doing
Speaker 4: with sassa Red lipstick and her fashion blogging and her platform,
Speaker 4: and it's just now that I had the idea to
Speaker 4: do Hot Wife, and I was like, Babe, I can't
Speaker 4: hire a model for this one. This one can't be
Speaker 4: a stand in, Like, it's got to be you, Like,
Speaker 4: it's got to be the og curvy views You're my
Speaker 4: hot wife. I can't. I can't have another woman in
Speaker 4: the US video. So she was like okay, and we
Speaker 4: had fun. We got all dressed up in pink and
Speaker 4: so yeah, that music video is coming out soon. That
Speaker 4: song is releasing soon, and by the time this comes out,
Speaker 4: maybe able already be out and yeah, out into the world.
Speaker 4: Yeah so uh yeah, Hot Wife is like the next
Speaker 4: chapter in these uh just body positive bops, just confidence
Speaker 4: bangers that we're making. And I'm living the dream. I'm
Speaker 4: having a blast doing it and got some amazing people
Speaker 4: behind me on the music side, some amazing people behind
Speaker 4: me with my team Desert Money. I do my all
Speaker 4: my own creative production, and so it's really just been
Speaker 4: this evolution of like, yeah, the Kirby White viral posts
Speaker 4: may have been the introduction to people, but like I said,
Speaker 4: like I've been doing this, I'm a true I'm a
Speaker 4: true creator.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, so I want to I want to take
Speaker 1: it back. Why I make this show is because characters
Speaker 1: of the day presented. I mean, even if it is
Speaker 1: genuine to who they are, which even that is, you know,
Speaker 1: it gets.
Speaker 4: In the box immediately.
Speaker 1: Yeah right, And so you can you can know the
Speaker 1: same three things out someone that's published in a million places,
Speaker 1: but you don't actually know anything about them. So just curious,
Speaker 1: like what your background is, how did you get interested
Speaker 1: in art? And I want to also talk about when
Speaker 1: you met Sarah and how your relationship started.
Speaker 4: Grew up in Utah, obsessed with my hoop dreams, breed slept,
Speaker 4: lived my basketball dreams, played basketball throughout high school, graduated
Speaker 4: from high school, played basketball in junior college in California.
Speaker 4: At that time, my parents had moved to Las Vegas.
Speaker 4: So chapter I consider my life kind of be like
Speaker 4: a chapter one. And as soon as I graduated from
Speaker 4: high school in Utah, my dad had been working in Vegas,
Speaker 4: so he would commute, and so my parents moved to
Speaker 4: Vegas when I was a teenager, and then from there
Speaker 4: on is like where I met Sarah. She's born and
Speaker 4: raised in Las Vegas. We had mutual friends who went
Speaker 4: to high school together. So that's like kind of my
Speaker 4: chapter where you know, I grew up in Utah, parents
Speaker 4: moved to Las Vegas when I was a teenager when
Speaker 4: played junior college basketball in central California. Sarah was going
Speaker 4: to school in Utah at the time, which is where
Speaker 4: I'm from, and we, yeah, so we met, So we met.
Speaker 4: We had a bunch of mutual friends, from friends who
Speaker 4: went to high school in Vegas to friends who were
Speaker 4: going to school in Utah. We kind of just were
Speaker 4: a part of a similar friend group and so yeah,
Speaker 4: we met and got married in Las Vegas. Then we
Speaker 4: moved to in twenty fourteen. We got married in Las Vegas.
Speaker 1: We started it was recently your ten years old.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we just celebrated ten years. Amazing, we're doing it.
Speaker 4: I know, it's crazy. We got toddler, we have we
Speaker 4: just had newborn twins. Sarah just had twins. So three
Speaker 4: kids now ten years down, Like it's it's amazing. Yeah,
Speaker 4: we're living the dream. Okay. So twenty thirteen we started dating.
Speaker 4: Started Sarah's fashion blog. Sassio had lipstick. I had my
Speaker 4: own brand at the time that was like my online creations.
Speaker 4: It was under trip Swag. So trip Swag was the
Speaker 4: thing that it was like swag. Yeah, yeah, this is
Speaker 4: slag was like the the that early two thousands. It
Speaker 4: defined the era, and I just had this energy online
Speaker 4: of similar that's what I do today, but way just
Speaker 4: you know, crazier and like just insane, you know, doing
Speaker 4: stuff in creating YouTube videos in college and riding my
Speaker 4: bike around town and thrifting and you know, I just
Speaker 4: I've been I've been on this content creation grind forever.
Speaker 4: I was always just very interested in writing and very
Speaker 4: talented at writing. And word smith ry, and I also
Speaker 4: loved making music. I was the kid making garage band
Speaker 4: wraps in high school and selling my mixtape in in
Speaker 4: the school hallway for five dollars and going in Utah
Speaker 4: oh yeah yeah, and then going to and then going
Speaker 4: to college and you know, making garage band wraps in
Speaker 4: the doors with my friends, and so music was kind
Speaker 4: of always intertwined with my creations. And then it was
Speaker 4: just natural that as social media but got more popular,
Speaker 4: I just kind of became a social media content in
Speaker 4: a very early form. So I've got ten plus years
Speaker 4: of I mean, yeah, of doing this eleven eleven if
Speaker 4: you're counting. Twenty thirteen. Twenty twelve is when I joined Instagram.
Speaker 4: That's when Sarah joined Instagram. So we've had this whole again,
Speaker 4: like life online, and it's so it's so fascinating to
Speaker 4: look back at how we've evolved.
Speaker 1: And I'm curious, what was your relationship to the internet,
Speaker 1: like as a kid growing up in Utah, Like prior
Speaker 1: to meeting Sarah, prior to moving to Vegas.
Speaker 4: It was always like a tool for creating and getting
Speaker 4: my art out into the world. So it was always
Speaker 4: something that I was using to edit videos and burn CDs,
Speaker 4: and I mean I made. I remember going with my
Speaker 4: brother to film a sixty second clip of my basketball
Speaker 4: highlights at our local playground when I was thirteen, and
Speaker 4: I said, admitted it to Nesley Crunch for a Shaquille
Speaker 4: O'Neill hot Shots camp, and I was one of ten
Speaker 4: kids selected from across the country. And at thirteen years old,
Speaker 4: I got phone to LA got to go to this
Speaker 4: exclusive Nesting Crunch hot Shots camp with Shaquille O'Neil play
Speaker 4: one on one against him. I scored. My mom has
Speaker 4: the videotape. It's in the books, it's proven, it's amazing.
Speaker 4: I scored on Shaquill O'Neil on one on one when
Speaker 4: I was thirteen years old. And yeah, so I was
Speaker 4: always just using internet and technology and like to just
Speaker 4: create and give my art onto the world. I was
Speaker 4: releasing freestyle wraps they're long since gone, thank goodness, on
Speaker 4: my computer as soon as I, like, you know, joined YouTube.
Speaker 4: So yeah, I mean the Internet. I feel like as
Speaker 4: a millennial kid, yes, I remember those times where we
Speaker 4: you know, it wasn't a huge part of life. But
Speaker 4: also the majority of my of my come up has
Speaker 4: been using the Internet to just create and have fun
Speaker 4: and of so it's only natural that it became, you know,
Speaker 4: more than a life style by like a career you know.
Speaker 1: Amazing. Yeah, it sounds like you both have adapted to
Speaker 1: the changes that have come with the Internet. Every couple
Speaker 1: of years, the platform that everyone's using changes, and creators
Speaker 1: that stick around for a long time have to be
Speaker 1: able to adapt to these algorithms, to these things. So
Speaker 1: at the time of Curvy Wife saga back in twenty seventeen,
Speaker 1: you'd made posts like this before. It just happened to
Speaker 1: be for whatever reason, this post that opt.
Speaker 4: Off, so twenty seventeen.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so can you walk me through that moment a
Speaker 1: little bit? And I'm also curious, you know, because you
Speaker 1: and Sarah are both influencers. Do you run captions by
Speaker 1: her before you post them? Or how did the Curvywife
Speaker 1: post come together? Which sounds so silly, but I am curious.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's one of those moments that, like I said,
Speaker 4: I think I mentioned this earlier, it is like we
Speaker 4: we literally in our in minus Sarah's like relationship and
Speaker 4: life together, we almost have this like funny subconscious way
Speaker 4: of like separating our relationship before the viral post and
Speaker 4: after the viral post, like we'd been married for three
Speaker 4: years at the time got married in twenty fourteen. Kirby
Speaker 4: Wife post was in I love how we just call
Speaker 4: it the Kirby Wife post. Now it's not like, oh yeah,
Speaker 4: my Instagram post, Like it's just like it has its
Speaker 4: own title now, like it.
Speaker 1: Was first child.
Speaker 4: In a way, it was no, really, it was an
Speaker 4: Instagram post and now it has a name. It's just
Speaker 4: it's funny anyway. Twenty seventeen, we're living in San Francisco
Speaker 4: at the time, full time blogging, influencer, content creation. We're
Speaker 4: running Sassa read Lipstick full time doing brand partnerships all
Speaker 4: over the world, and it was still like it'd been
Speaker 4: running for yeah, like since we were dating in college.
Speaker 4: So we were making a living full time content creation,
Speaker 4: but very much like on the grind, and like we
Speaker 4: still had to work other jobs and had part time
Speaker 4: jobs to support us while we were like how do
Speaker 4: we continue building this? You know, early Utah fashion influencer
Speaker 4: mommy blogger like thing, like we were just kind of
Speaker 4: we were early on that way then. Of course, Sarah
Speaker 4: just being the beautiful, like curvy woman that she is
Speaker 4: so stylist just beautiful. Is the body positive aspect of
Speaker 4: her fashion blog of Sasialyptic started to naturally take that tone,
Speaker 4: and that's when we really started to again we moved
Speaker 4: to San Francisco. We really are investing our hustle and
Speaker 4: our time and our energy into her as a fashion blogger.
Speaker 4: It seemed like the body positivity of it really seemed
Speaker 4: to be like striking a chord, like very authentically with
Speaker 4: Sarah sharing, Hey, here's what it's like being a size twelve,
Speaker 4: size fourteen fashion blogger in influence in an industry where
Speaker 4: every blogger conference I go to in Dallas or every
Speaker 4: you know meetup I go to are these size zero,
Speaker 4: size too like women and is like a very particular
Speaker 4: figure that showcased in the fashion industry, but also like
Speaker 4: this subset of like a fashion blogger influencer industry, which
Speaker 4: we were again heavily involved in, right.
Speaker 1: And Sarah is like an average sized American woman. So
Speaker 1: that's like I remember this sort of era of yeah,
Speaker 1: of body positivity and what accord it struck. And also,
Speaker 1: you know, just being a woman on the internet, people
Speaker 1: are looking to drag you for literally anything.
Speaker 4: I'll never forget it. Like I said, we naturally it's
Speaker 4: so funny we catch ourselves doing it. There's like we
Speaker 4: separate our marriage and our life together in between before
Speaker 4: the viral posts and after the Bible post, because it's
Speaker 4: so it was just such everything just changed after that.
Speaker 4: So it was then in July July thirtieth, July thirty first,
Speaker 4: we were like getting ready to go on a beach
Speaker 4: vacation the next morning, which is why I remember this,
Speaker 4: and I posted I had a photosare and I'd been
Speaker 4: to Miami again. We were traveling doing the travel blogging
Speaker 4: fashion blogging ding. We're in Miami. We got we had
Speaker 4: photos on the beach of me holding her. She was
Speaker 4: wearing like this tropical citrus like I think it was
Speaker 4: Oranges swimsuit, and I'm like holding her and then and
Speaker 4: so we got the photos back and I was like, oh,
Speaker 4: this is beautiful, this is great, Like I love, like,
Speaker 4: I just love how she looks like I'm holding her,
Speaker 4: and I just like I feel like it just showed
Speaker 4: like how much I just find her attractive and how
Speaker 4: her sexy Kirby bond really gets me going as her
Speaker 4: husband and soulmate and life partner Okay, So I was
Speaker 4: thinking about that posted it wrote a whole caption I
Speaker 4: loved my Kirby wife.
Speaker 1: And did she see it the post before you posted it?
Speaker 4: I can't remember. I wish I remembered that part because
Speaker 4: I think those tributes I would just write and it
Speaker 4: would be like a fun surprise for her to find
Speaker 4: during the day or the next morning, you know what
Speaker 4: I mean. So I kind of started writing them as
Speaker 4: like little like online love notes that were like a
Speaker 4: tribute to her, and like I didn't want to like
Speaker 4: show like, hey, look what I just wrote about, you
Speaker 4: know what I mean, Like I'm kind of way for
Speaker 4: her to find them as she was scrolling her feet,
Speaker 4: and then she'd like, oh, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: I guess it was like because you guys were already
Speaker 1: doing influencer work, I'm like, would you ask before yeah,
Speaker 1: because it's like if my boyfriend is posting about me,
Speaker 1: he wouldn't be like, let me run this by you.
Speaker 1: Do you want to, like, yeah, way in on.
Speaker 4: This tribute I just wrote for you. Do you want
Speaker 4: to proof read it and write? You know what I mean?
Speaker 4: Like it wasn't like that, it was It truly was
Speaker 4: just one of my regular like since the day we
Speaker 4: started dating, really every so often every week or so.
Speaker 4: I mean, I was posting a cute photo of us
Speaker 4: and just writing how much I love my beautiful wife,
Speaker 4: my beautiful girlfriend, you know what I mean, whatever she
Speaker 4: wants at the time. So posted it. Woke up the
Speaker 4: next morning, rode to southern California beach vacation, and very
Speaker 4: early it seemed like and again, okay, so I had
Speaker 4: twenty thousand followers at the time, Sarah probably had about
Speaker 4: one hundred thousand early early day. So I posted it
Speaker 4: and we drove down to southern California. By the time
Speaker 4: we were the day was done in about twenty four hours.
Speaker 4: It was like maybe five thousand likes or something, and
Speaker 4: like definitely like a few hundred comments, Like it definitely
Speaker 4: like showed that like people, at least the people who
Speaker 4: were following me or I thought were following me at
Speaker 4: the time, was like, Okay, this is doing better than
Speaker 4: like a regular post.
Speaker 1: Did it seem like the algorithm had kind of picked
Speaker 1: it up.
Speaker 4: This was twenty seventeen. That felt that feels like a
Speaker 4: pre algorithm conversation. Like it just felt like I just
Speaker 4: felt like everyone who everyone who saw it, engaged with it,
Speaker 4: commented on it. Right, So yeah, it was still like
Speaker 4: I think it was still explore page days and way
Speaker 4: different than it was now, honestly, like I do this
Speaker 4: for a living now, right, like digital marketing, like content creation.
Speaker 4: So no, it was one of those moments where you
Speaker 4: knew you organically just were connecting with people like it.
Speaker 4: Just it was unmistakable. It wasn't like a lot of
Speaker 4: people were seeing this. That's not how it felt. It
Speaker 4: felt like, oh, whoa people have a lot of love
Speaker 4: for this, entirely positive first twenty four hours, Okay, forty
Speaker 4: eight hours, it's up to like ten thousand likes and
Speaker 4: it's getting hundreds of more comments. So it's like already,
Speaker 4: like in forty eight hours my best performing post. Right,
Speaker 4: it's weird to think about because I don't like, I
Speaker 4: think I'm talking about it in terms of how I
Speaker 4: think about it now. But back then it was still like, oh,
Speaker 4: how people are engaging with this and this is getting
Speaker 4: a lot of like comments and a lot of people
Speaker 4: are liking this photo that I posted. Doesn't feel the
Speaker 4: same as how in twenty twenty four we're talking about
Speaker 4: it where we're like measuring analytics and metrics and insights
Speaker 4: for creators and all these things that we're just so
Speaker 4: naturally talking about now. So I don't want to make
Speaker 4: it sound like it was like again another piece of content,
Speaker 4: because it truly was just like a photo I posted
Speaker 4: to my wife, which, as we mentioned several times, I
Speaker 4: can't stress this enough when people try to spin the
Speaker 4: narrative into some negative, contrived thing. I had been doing
Speaker 4: this as a just a loving boyfriend husband for years
Speaker 4: and then also the society about body positivity and showing
Speaker 4: love to the sexy curvy girls out there that are
Speaker 4: bigger than you see on billboards and magazines, and of
Speaker 4: course like amazing, how times have changed since I posted that,
Speaker 4: but still not even there, And so again I feel
Speaker 4: like I understand that, and of course I'm always learning more,
Speaker 4: But that was just another negative spin on the curvy
Speaker 4: white post. That I really hated was that they just
Speaker 4: started to become like this man hating energy that started
Speaker 4: to come towards me for commenting on body positivity and
Speaker 4: loving my wife, and I just didn't understand how it
Speaker 4: could have been taken so out of context. But I
Speaker 4: guess like you, and I started by saying people see
Speaker 4: one little image and they see one caption, and a
Speaker 4: lot of people don't read into it any further than that,
Speaker 4: and then they form an opinion. And unfortunately there was
Speaker 4: just like a side of it that in the I
Speaker 4: would say in like the week after the viral post,
Speaker 4: because the first week again entirely positive. Then it starts
Speaker 4: to come like all the news articles start coming out,
Speaker 4: the Pop Sugar, the Huffington Post, the E News, and
Speaker 4: you start to get all these internet publications that are
Speaker 4: like man loves Kirby Wife, Curvy Wife post, Heartwarming, couple Goals,
Speaker 4: husband of the Year, They're so cute, this is so nice.
Speaker 4: Everyone's responding how they see their own relationship and how
Speaker 4: their own body confidence issues in their own relationship between
Speaker 4: husbands and wives and boyfriends and girlfriends, and just the
Speaker 4: the universal, like truly global dms and emails were being
Speaker 4: flooded with of this is how I feel in my relationship,
Speaker 4: this how I feel about my wife was so beautiful.
Speaker 4: And then after that first week of positivity it did
Speaker 4: it started to turn into this thing that I didn't
Speaker 4: like because it was never meant to be that.
Speaker 1: So this original run of press because I feel like
Speaker 1: it's a very unique story, and it also sort of
Speaker 1: follows this template for how these Internet stories go, where
Speaker 1: it's like.
Speaker 4: Totally, wait, trust me, I've I've read some of the
Speaker 4: artic They're like, yeah, this is like it truly follows
Speaker 4: the trajectory of a pretty standard like viral moment, which
Speaker 4: is crazy. It's like this, everyone's obsessed with it, and
Speaker 4: everyone's talking about it, and then because so many people
Speaker 4: are talking about it, a very like vocal negative minority
Speaker 4: seems to come out of the woodwork and spin it
Speaker 4: or find something that people just then start to latch
Speaker 4: onto because the negative side of it is the more
Speaker 4: clickbaity and more interesting to post about an inflammatory than
Speaker 4: a positive spin. So people start to talk about that.
Speaker 4: Then it burns out, and then it's like whatever the
Speaker 4: creator or the viral personality or the viral moment chooses
Speaker 4: to do after that is up to them. And there's
Speaker 4: a lot of amazing stories that have been burned out
Speaker 4: of that, and there's been a lot of just like crazy,
Speaker 4: You're like, wow, what happened? You know what I mean?
Speaker 1: Totally, even when it does far well a pattern, it's
Speaker 1: happening to your family, So it is like a very
Speaker 1: little personal.
Speaker 4: Yeah, a little personal. But then gaining a little bit
Speaker 4: of maturity and retrospect and looking back after seven years,
Speaker 4: you start to realize, like, well, when you're creating, when
Speaker 4: you're creating anything and releasing it to be viewed and consumed,
Speaker 4: and you also have to I don't know, it's a
Speaker 4: tough part of what a life online looks like, but
Speaker 4: there's a piece of you asked to remind yourself it's
Speaker 4: not personal. People are just reacting and they're saying what
Speaker 4: they think. And I think a lot of people are
Speaker 4: a little bit too comfortable saying what they think in
Speaker 4: a way that is considered bullying or harassment or trolling, right,
Speaker 4: But I think those are the impulses that people online
Speaker 4: maybe have gotten a little bit too comfortable with. But
Speaker 4: I think as a society we're doing better that and
Speaker 4: in that culture that maybe it's because we've seen it
Speaker 4: so many times now, or maybe it's because we truly
Speaker 4: are growing and evolving with this wonderful gen z. We
Speaker 4: were talking about kind of attitude and philosophy online of
Speaker 4: like live and let live, and we don't need to
Speaker 4: crucify everything, and we can just either let it be
Speaker 4: or we can choose whatever to do with it, but
Speaker 4: we don't need to do that. And it's been a
Speaker 4: very interesting it was a very interesting like it came
Speaker 4: in waves, it came in waves.
Speaker 1: Well how is I know, I mean you can always
Speaker 1: speak for yourself, but how how is Sarah doing throughout
Speaker 1: this time? Because it has to be, you know, a
Speaker 1: uniquely crazy making experience for her as well, So yeah,
Speaker 1: what was going on? How how is she feeling throughout
Speaker 1: that process as well?
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was a whirlwind, I mean in the in
Speaker 4: the days, in the days and weeks following kind of that,
Speaker 4: like I guess you'll call it news cycle, right of,
Speaker 4: like we were kind of a viral hot topic. Like
Speaker 4: it was just you'll it's a surreal, like just funny,
Speaker 4: weird experience when you're like doing your scrolls while you're
Speaker 4: on the toilet and you're just like seeing yourself on
Speaker 4: on all your apps, you know what I mean. It's
Speaker 4: like I would literally just be like at the time
Speaker 4: twenty seventeen, I would scroll Facebook, I think for articles
Speaker 4: from like complex News and high Snubbiety and hype beasts
Speaker 4: and like shoes and sneakers and sports and also just
Speaker 4: like the occasional thing that would come up in the
Speaker 4: Facebook whatever the algorithm was at that time that fed
Speaker 4: you the Huffington Post articles or the you know what
Speaker 4: I mean, the Latin viable or whatever it was at
Speaker 4: the time, right, and I would see I would just
Speaker 4: see myself. I would be like Kirby wife, And so
Speaker 4: it just started to get to be everywhere, and that
Speaker 4: was weird. And so Sarah and I had this weird
Speaker 4: like relationship to it where it's like again it was
Speaker 4: it was tremendously positive in beginning, so it was actually
Speaker 4: kind of fun because it was like we were getting
Speaker 4: a lot of just love and a lot of people
Speaker 4: messaging us to express like a lot of positivity and appreciation,
Speaker 4: and just like we really started to connect with like
Speaker 4: a global online of people who loved it. So Sarah
Speaker 4: was like again being a fashion blogger, being an influencer herself,
Speaker 4: but then also being just being I mean she's spoken
Speaker 4: about this in many interviews, just being my wife who
Speaker 4: appreciated the heartfelt sentiment from her husband and really just
Speaker 4: neither of us really thought more than that it was
Speaker 4: just another post that was like heartfelt. But then it
Speaker 4: was clear and started to connect with people. We started
Speaker 4: to kind of want to foster that community, and it
Speaker 4: was just with open arms we welcomed them into what
Speaker 4: we were doing. Hey, here's Sarah, a body positive fashion
Speaker 4: blogger who's a size twelve in a fashion industry, And
Speaker 4: here's Robbie. I'm writing, I'm giving you presentations, I'm creating,
Speaker 4: I'm doing all these different online projects and sharing my
Speaker 4: creativity and my art with people. And so it just
Speaker 4: started to become a natural evolution that we welcomed everybody
Speaker 4: that connected with this viral curry Wife post with open arms.
Speaker 4: And then, like I said, after that wave kind of
Speaker 4: came in, then it started to get this in the
Speaker 4: periphery of the negativity.
Speaker 1: Kind did you as a couple deal with the negative waves?
Speaker 4: That was hard because then it was just like at
Speaker 4: a certain point we just like, okay, can everybody move on? Right?
Speaker 4: It kind of the positivity had had been poured out,
Speaker 4: and it was like clear that something that was just
Speaker 4: like truly connected with people. And that's why I blew up,
Speaker 4: Like that's another thing that like people forget, like these things.
Speaker 4: There's a reason that people at the end of the day,
Speaker 4: it's like anything that is it is viewed and shared
Speaker 4: and talked about that many times is because it strikes
Speaker 4: a chord with people. So people had true, genuine feelings
Speaker 4: toward it, and that's like just the truth with anything.
Speaker 4: And so the beauty that came from that was like
Speaker 4: this incredible new or i should say larger following of
Speaker 4: people on social media who tuned in to follow me
Speaker 4: in Sarah, and follow our journey and our relationship and
Speaker 4: our marriage and so yeah, then on the side of that,
Speaker 4: when it all got I shouldn't say it all got negative,
Speaker 4: because again there was still that large response, and there
Speaker 4: was also that people that are like, why are they
Speaker 4: even taking offense to that? That's how we felt, But
Speaker 4: then also like this truly negative backlash, I guess to
Speaker 4: the Kirby White posts. There was a time where Sarah
Speaker 4: and I were just like, yeah, can this stop now?
Speaker 4: Like you, we were not interested in like they just
Speaker 4: got a point where we weren't answering, we weren't answering
Speaker 4: the emails or doing the interviews anymore about it, because
Speaker 4: it was just like, let's move on. We've got more
Speaker 4: to say and more to offer than what a lot
Speaker 4: of people online have their distorted narrative of this, you know,
Speaker 4: viral post to my wife.
Speaker 1: Did you ever come across a critical piece or opinion
Speaker 1: that resonated with you or made you think twice? Or
Speaker 1: I mean, was there anything that ever was like, Oh,
Speaker 1: this actually seems like a more reasoned version. I'm sure
Speaker 1: I haven't even seen it all the volume, you know.
Speaker 4: Yeah, totally. It was looking back on it again, seven years,
Speaker 4: seeing the positive, seeing the negative, looking back twenty twenty hindsight,
Speaker 4: you look back and think about it, especially if I
Speaker 4: hope we've all grown, we all grow with maturity and
Speaker 4: wisdom in seven years time. I think I look back
Speaker 4: on it and I'm just like, yeah, it definitely contained
Speaker 4: a lot of touch points of what people feel and
Speaker 4: think and care about. It talked about body positivity. It
Speaker 4: talked about women's bodies, which people seem to be fascinated by.
Speaker 4: I don't think anyone can can disagree with that, right,
Speaker 4: And it touched on But then it started and then
Speaker 4: it contained buzzwords like body positive, like feminism, like marketing
Speaker 4: and advertising billboards, sexy bikinis, society. It started to have
Speaker 4: all these buzzwords wrapped into it, and so looking back
Speaker 4: on at the time, again, you don't post something thinking
Speaker 4: that the entire world, truly globally, internationally in newspapers in
Speaker 4: Hungary and in tropical islands in the Caribbean, where people
Speaker 4: are messaging us saying, oh I saw your you know,
Speaker 4: your your vible Kirby wife post. You don't think it's
Speaker 4: going to reach that far. So looking back on it,
Speaker 4: it's like, yeah, I would have I would have just
Speaker 4: made it a little bit less about society or but
Speaker 4: then again, at the same time, it's like I meant
Speaker 4: everything I said, So you look back on it and
Speaker 4: you're just like, this is how it is feeling. This
Speaker 4: is truly still how I feel about body positivity and
Speaker 4: my wife and and how society should view different body size,
Speaker 4: body types and body size, and so overall, I think,
Speaker 4: I think to answer your question, I've made peace with
Speaker 4: some of the criticisms, thinking that, Okay, everybody is entitled
Speaker 4: to their opinion. But then again, while still like having
Speaker 4: to stand by my truth that it's like it was
Speaker 4: what it was, and what it was was a husband's
Speaker 4: note to his wife on Instagram that was filled with
Speaker 4: my true feelings and emotions and I put it out
Speaker 4: there and people really had something to say about it,
Speaker 4: whether it be positive or negative. And I understand that at.
Speaker 1: The end of the day, I feel like, no matter
Speaker 1: how people feel about curvy wife in retrospect, you guys
Speaker 1: have been happily married for ten years, and most people
Speaker 1: do not pull that off like that, that's really cool.
Speaker 4: Most my friends are divorced, most my parents are divorced. Like,
Speaker 4: it's just like, that's the way I feel like it
Speaker 4: goes a lot of times. But yeah, that's the other thing.
Speaker 4: It's so fun to create these fun creative projects and
Speaker 4: stories that people talk about and share and are kind
Speaker 4: of part of this team Trip Gordta Gang community of
Speaker 4: these viral you know, chubby, sexy, big girl, banger now
Speaker 4: hot wife like music projects. Is like, yeah, it's just
Speaker 4: like easy to get lost caught up in the fact
Speaker 4: in this conversation of like, at the end of the day,
Speaker 4: I pick up, I drop off my son at school
Speaker 4: every morning and I go and I pick him up,
Speaker 4: I come back home. We have two beautiful new twin
Speaker 4: babies and we hang out with them, and in the meantime,
Speaker 4: I'm running to a music video shoe and Sarah's launching
Speaker 4: a new swim suit line. That she's got to do
Speaker 4: a video shoe and we got our grand you know,
Speaker 4: grandparents here to help out, and just a wonderful support
Speaker 4: supp and it's like a huge team of love here
Speaker 4: that just is here to help us thrive. And it's
Speaker 4: just like, I'm really grateful for the fact that, like
Speaker 4: at the end of the day, I can turn it
Speaker 4: off online and I've got this support system in this
Speaker 4: family with me that it's easy to get caught up
Speaker 4: in the fact like we're not we're not just like
Speaker 4: this viral moment. Like we're human beings and we live
Speaker 4: and we love, and we've been married ten years and
Speaker 4: we got three beautiful children and we're living the dream.
Speaker 4: And everything that we do is kind of a ripple
Speaker 4: effect from that, and it comes out in very fun,
Speaker 4: flamboyant ways in my creative projects. But it's all just
Speaker 4: kind of a part of what makes me. Robbie Tripp.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much to Robbie for his time. You
Speaker 1: can stream his music at the link in the description.
Speaker 1: And I'll be honest, big Girl Banger as a hit
Speaker 1: and as you can hear in the interview and going
Speaker 1: back well over a decade, Robbie is still determined to
Speaker 1: prove the hater's wrong through his continued success in music.
Speaker 1: Because it is successful. Several of his tracks in music
Speaker 1: videos have a couple million streams, and he's collaborated with
Speaker 1: increasingly big talent. And as I said before, Sarah turned
Speaker 1: down an interview with this show and wanted the focus
Speaker 1: to be on Robbie's project. They do seem happy together.
Speaker 1: They just celebrated ten years being married. And if there's
Speaker 1: one thing on the Internet I've learned, it's that pathologizing
Speaker 1: someone else's marriage is ten miles of none of your
Speaker 1: fucking business. So all power to Sarah. I didn't get
Speaker 1: to ask Robbi everything I would have liked to because
Speaker 1: of the boundaries put around that conversation, but I hope
Speaker 1: it was helpful to hear from him. Like I said earlier,
Speaker 1: after this interview, I really felt the need to talk
Speaker 1: to other people. I wanted to hear from women and
Speaker 1: fems who had worked within the fat liberation movement and
Speaker 1: have a more political discussion about what stories like the
Speaker 1: curviw Wife saga brought up in these activist communities. So
Speaker 1: there you have it. That's the story of Robbie and
Speaker 1: Sarah Tripp. But next week we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: what this story means, what is the impact it left
Speaker 1: on the Internet. I'll be speaking with Tigris Osborne of
Speaker 1: the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance and Kate Navarett
Speaker 1: of the Body Positive Alliance. So Robby and Sarah Tripp,
Speaker 1: your sixteenth Minute is stretching a little bit longer. We'll
Speaker 1: see you next week.
Speaker 9: Sixteenth Minute is a production of fool Zone Media and iHeartRadio.
Speaker 9: It is written, hosted, and produced by me Jamie Loftus.
Speaker 9: Our executive producers are Sophie Lichtterman and Robert Evans. The
Speaker 9: amazing Ian Johnson is our supervising producer and our editor.
Speaker 9: Our theme song is by Sad thirteen and Pet.
Speaker 3: Shout outs to our dog producer Anderson, my Kat's Flee
Speaker 3: and Casper and by pet Rockbird, who will outlive us all.
Speaker 1: Bye, Beat My Head.