Kelsey Snelling: This episode contains descriptions of disordered eating and diet behavior.
Kelsey Snelling: This language could be sensitive for some listeners, so please
Kelsey Snelling: take care. Camp Shane, like any other summer camp, had
Kelsey Snelling: a set of traditions that kept it afloat. Starting in
Kelsey Snelling: the late nineties, one of those traditions was watching the
Kelsey Snelling: movie Heavyweights, the Disney movie from nineteen ninety five about
Kelsey Snelling: a boy's weight loss camp. In the film, a group
Kelsey Snelling: of campers hold an uprising against the camp's oppressive, militaristic
Kelsey Snelling: leader played by Ben Stiller.
Heavyweights Archival: Attention, campers. Lunch has been canceled today due to lack
Heavyweights Archival: of hustle. Deal with it.
Kelsey Snelling: It's based at least partially on Camp Shane. I actually
Kelsey Snelling: talked to the director of the movie, Steve Brill.
Steve: My name is Steve Brill. I think I was built
Steve: as Steven Brill earlier in my career, but I dropped
Steve: the "N". I thought it was too pretentious.
Kelsey Snelling: Great! Okay, I won't call you Steven then. Steve told
Kelsey Snelling: me that the idea for the movie came from an advertisement.
Kelsey Snelling: When he was a kid, Steve saw the notorious Camp
Kelsey Snelling: Shane ad in the back of the New York Times magazine.
Kelsey Snelling: You know, the one with a skinny kid holding out
Kelsey Snelling: his waistband inches away from his body to show off
Kelsey Snelling: how much weight he'd lost.
Steve: I would always stare at that ad, going Wow, what
Steve: would it be like to go there?
Kelsey Snelling: Years later, Steve was working in Hollywood brainstorming movie ideas
Kelsey Snelling: with then rookie producer Judd Apatow,
Steve: And I told him that about that ad. He said,
Steve: we have to make it that. So that's how it
Steve: became about a weight loss camp, and particularly about Camp Shane,
Steve: because that was the only camp that we knew about.
Kelsey Snelling: If you know anything about Camp Shane, then when you
Kelsey Snelling: watch Heavyweights you can see the parallels. There are kids
Kelsey Snelling: smuggling candy. There are weigh ins, there's a bus driver
Kelsey Snelling: pretending to pull into a fast food drive through before
Kelsey Snelling: course correcting in the direction of camp. There are even
Kelsey Snelling: go karts,
Heavyweights Archival: Go carts! How many times can you go on the go carts?
Heavyweights Archival: As much as you want, Jerry.
Kelsey Snelling: Jerry, if you went to Camp Shane, you'd be sorely disappointed.
Kelsey Snelling: The go carts were always broken. For many kids who
Kelsey Snelling: had not yet been to Camp Shane, Heavyweights was their
Kelsey Snelling: point of reference, and the movie made camp look crazy fun.
Kelsey Snelling: When I was interviewing people for this show. It came
Kelsey Snelling: up again and again.
Stephen: Movies like Heavyweights.
Seth: That movie Heavyweights.
Casey: I think we all saw Heavyweights.
Stephen: All I really had naturally was Heavyweights in my mind.
Nelson: It was like the movie Heavyweights.
Kelsey Snelling: But Camp Shane wasn't quite like Heavyweights, not really. Even
Kelsey Snelling: Steve Brill could see that. During his research, he watched
Kelsey Snelling: several promotional videos from fat camps all over the country.
Steve: The Camp Shane when it was always just something a
Steve: little off about it. I remember being bummed ultimately that
Steve: the camp that I was hoping would be the model
Steve: camp was shady.
Kelsey Snelling: This is Camp Shame. I'm your host, Kelsey Snelling. Today
Kelsey Snelling: we're talking about Camp Shane's new ownership, mother son squabbles
Kelsey Snelling: and an innocent film screening gone awry. Like the camp
Kelsey Snelling: in Heavyweights, Camp Shane passed hands from an older married
Kelsey Snelling: couple to a young man with a fresh perspective. But
Kelsey Snelling: instead of the fitness guru Ben Stiller, Camp Shane had
Kelsey Snelling: David Ettenberg. By nineteen ninety, he had been camp director
Kelsey Snelling: for eight years and business was booming. The proof was
Kelsey Snelling: in the sugar free pudding. Shane's tax returns that year
Kelsey Snelling: showed profits of two hundred and sixty thousand dollars. Adjusted
Kelsey Snelling: for twenty twenty five, that's upwards of six hundred and
Kelsey Snelling: thirty thousand dollars, and that's just from the nine weeks
Kelsey Snelling: that Camp Shane was open each year, and enrollment was rising.
Kelsey Snelling: By nineteen ninety five, four hundred kids had signed up
Kelsey Snelling: to go to Camp Shane. It had come a long
Kelsey Snelling: way since the twenty nine campers of its opening year
Kelsey Snelling: in nineteen sixty nine. Looking back at the nineties, there
Kelsey Snelling: are certain things you might remember, like Friends, Seinfeld and
Kelsey Snelling: the Simpsons dominating television, or Sir Mix A Lot's "Baby
Kelsey Snelling: Got Back" on the radio.
Baby Got Back Archive: I liked big butts and I can not lie. You otha brothas can't deny.
Kelsey Snelling: Maybe you have memories of walking around your hometown mall
Kelsey Snelling: or sitting at home in the computer room exploring the
Kelsey Snelling: World Wide Web. These cultural touchstones might make you sigh
Kelsey Snelling: with happy nostalgia, But there was another cultural undercurrent roaring
Kelsey Snelling: through the nineties, fat phobia. Fat Phobia wasn't new, but
Kelsey Snelling: as pop culture shifted and advertising became all the more pervasive,
Kelsey Snelling: it was taking on fresh tactics to convince Americans that
Kelsey Snelling: being fat was something to fear, something to be mocked,
Kelsey Snelling: and if you were fat you'd better spend serious chunks
Kelsey Snelling: of your hard earned money trying to slim down,
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Special K Archival: diet and exercise plan.
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Workout Archival: Illustrated Super Shape Up program fully sponsored by Diet PEPSI.
Kelsey Snelling: Trim toned, firm, slim, fit and in shape. I think
Kelsey Snelling: we get the point. When you weren't explicitly being sold
Kelsey Snelling: thinness like in those ads, it was still implicitly being
Kelsey Snelling: marketed towards you. Fashion magazines were filled with images of
Kelsey Snelling: emaciated models with pale skin and dark circles under their eyes,
Kelsey Snelling: a look dubbed heroin chic without an ounce of irony.
Kelsey Snelling: These models weren't selling diet pills or exercise plans, but
Kelsey Snelling: they were communicating the idea that thinness equals beauty, even
Kelsey Snelling: if it's a thinness that can only be obtained through
Kelsey Snelling: objectively unhealthy means like drug addiction or disordered eating, and
Kelsey Snelling: in TV and movies, fat people were constantly the butt
Kelsey Snelling: of the jokes, once again sending the message that being
Kelsey Snelling: fat is abnormal and shameful. Take the show Friends, for instance,
Kelsey Snelling: it was filled with jokes about Monica's weight.
Friends Archival: Oh oh, and I'm sorry that I said you were
Friends Archival: a cow in high school. That's okay, I was a cow.
Friends Archival: I know, I'm just sorry I said it.
Kelsey Snelling: All of these signals were affecting people's psyches. For example,
Kelsey Snelling: in nineteen ninety four, Esquire magazine printed an article revealing
Kelsey Snelling: that fifty four percent of women surveyed would rather be
Kelsey Snelling: hit by a truck than be fat. Think about that,
Kelsey Snelling: women would rather be seriously injured or die than be fat.
Kelsey Snelling: This fear of fatness could have stemmed from the fact
Kelsey Snelling: that between nineteen eighty and the late nineties, childhood obesity
Kelsey Snelling: rates in America nearly tripled, hovering around fifteen percent. In
Kelsey Snelling: nineteen ninety seven, the World Health Organization declared obesity as
Kelsey Snelling: a major public health problem and a global epidemic. Around
Kelsey Snelling: the same time, the American Heart Association added obesity to
Kelsey Snelling: its list of major risk factors for heart disease and
Kelsey Snelling: heart attacks. Then, in nineteen ninety eight, the National Institutes
Kelsey Snelling: of Health changed body mass index or BMI categories. For
Kelsey Snelling: those who don't know, BMI is a medical screening tool
Kelsey Snelling: that measures the ratio of your height to your weight.
Kelsey Snelling: The resulting number supposedly indicates how much body fat you
Kelsey Snelling: have. Your number places you into four categories underweight, healthy weight, overweight, or obese.
Kelsey Snelling: Under the new guidelines, a BMI of twenty six or
Kelsey Snelling: higher was considered overweight. With this change, millions of Americans
Kelsey Snelling: went to bed normal sized and then woke up overweight
Kelsey Snelling: without gaining a single pound. The National Institutes of Health
Kelsey Snelling: told reporters at the time that the changes were necessary
Kelsey Snelling: because of studies linking extra weight to health problems. Parents
Kelsey Snelling: and physicians alike now had a medical cause to prescribe
Kelsey Snelling: fat camp to even more children. But here's the thing.
Kelsey Snelling: BMI actually does a crap job of assessing how healthy
Kelsey Snelling: someone is, and it was never meant to assess the
Kelsey Snelling: health of an individual in the first place.
Dr. Erlanger: It was developed by a Belgian mathematician in the eighteen hundreds.
Kelsey Snelling: That's doctor Lisa Erlanger. She's a family physician, educator, activist,
Kelsey Snelling: and speaker who focuses on anti bias weight inclusive trauma
Kelsey Snelling: informed care for patients of all sizes and backgrounds. This mathematician,
Kelsey Snelling: named Adolphe Quetelet, was simply collecting data on averages. He never
Kelsey Snelling: intended for this to be used as a medical prescription. Plus,
Kelsey Snelling: he conducted his measurements only on men, and this was
Kelsey Snelling: nearly two hundred years ago. Clearly, his findings are far
Kelsey Snelling: from applicable in most modern societies.
Dr. Erlanger: Those ideas were adopted by eugenicists people trying to create
Dr. Erlanger: the ideal human. And also later this BMI, which was
Dr. Erlanger: never intended to measure the health of an individual, particularly
Dr. Erlanger: not in our modern community, started to be used as
Dr. Erlanger: a way to assess the health of an individual.
Kelsey Snelling: And here's another thing. BMI does not take into account
Kelsey Snelling: muscle mass, body composition, or really anything other than height
Kelsey Snelling: versus weight.
Dr. Erlanger: BMS is also just an incredibly poor predictor of how
Dr. Erlanger: much body fat a person has. And we know this intuitively, right.
Dr. Erlanger: We know two hundred and fifty pound people who are
Dr. Erlanger: all muscle, and we know one hundred and fifty pound
Dr. Erlanger: people who are all fat. And so the idea that
Dr. Erlanger: just taking these two measurements would tell us how fat
Dr. Erlanger: a person is is intuitively ridiculous.
Kelsey Snelling: Researchers have found that BMI alone is not a good
Kelsey Snelling: indicator of mortality risk. In some studies, people in the
Kelsey Snelling: overweight category actually had the lowest mortality rate of anyone.
Kelsey Snelling: Obese people fare better than any other group when faced
Kelsey Snelling: with congestive heart failure, certain bypass surgeries, and hypertensive heart disease.
Kelsey Snelling: Ironic because doctors often use BMI to determine the types
Kelsey Snelling: of treatment a patient will receive, and a patient's BMI
Kelsey Snelling: can even affect their insurance premiums.
Dr. Erlanger: And so not only was this never intended to be
Dr. Erlanger: a measure of health, the way we use it is
Dr. Erlanger: clearly not a reflection of health.
Kelsey Snelling: Contrary to popular belief, it's extremely possible to be healthy
Kelsey Snelling: and fat at the same time. Yet in nineties America
Kelsey Snelling: and at Camp Shane, that possibility was completely unrecognized. In fact,
Kelsey Snelling: obesity was starting to be viewed as a disease. To
Kelsey Snelling: weight inclusive health experts like doctor Rachel Milner. These attempts
Kelsey Snelling: to turn body size into a disease not only to
Kelsey Snelling: humanize people and put blame where it doesn't belong, it
Kelsey Snelling: also sets people up for ineffective treatment. It's why she
Kelsey Snelling: actually avoids using the words obese or overweight.
Dr. Millner: This language and this attempt to identify body size as
Dr. Millner: a disease is really a way for the pharmaceutical companies
Dr. Millner: and for the diet industry to make money. If we
Dr. Millner: say bodies are a disease and then they come up
Dr. Millner: with these so called interventions. This is a multi multi
Dr. Millner: billion dollar industry.
Kelsey Snelling: A condition can be classified as a disease if it
Kelsey Snelling: impairs the normal functioning of the body, but millions of
Kelsey Snelling: fat people have no negative symptoms at all. In fact,
Kelsey Snelling: fat storage is actually the human body working properly. It's
Kelsey Snelling: a key component of our species survival. With this in mind,
Kelsey Snelling: Doctor Millner doesn't think weight should factor into medical treatment.
Dr. Millner: The only role that body size should play in medical
Dr. Millner: treatment is if the dosage of a medication or anesthesia
Dr. Millner: or a blood pressure cuff needs to be adjusted to
Dr. Millner: make sure that it's safe and effective for the size
Dr. Millner: of the person's body. Outside of that, it is unethical
Dr. Millner: to make body size a part of treatment.
Kelsey Snelling: So yes, Americans were getting fatter throughout the nineties. I mean,
Kelsey Snelling: how could we not when eleven servings of grain were
Kelsey Snelling: at the base of the food pyramid. But BMI was
Kelsey Snelling: also screwing with obesity data, we can now look back
Kelsey Snelling: and realize it wasn't really the health catastrophe the National
Kelsey Snelling: Institutes of Health or the World Health Organization would have
Kelsey Snelling: us believe. But at the time, rising childhood obesity rates
Kelsey Snelling: and rampant fat phobia and popular culture meant more parents
Kelsey Snelling: were concerned about their children's weight and more people were
Kelsey Snelling: interested in Camp Shane than ever. Behind the scenes, Camp
Kelsey Snelling: Shane was going through some major strife. Selma and her
Kelsey Snelling: son David were caught up in a battle for ownership
Kelsey Snelling: and things were about to get nasty. Not yet ready
Kelsey Snelling: to pass the reins to her son, Selma still owned
Kelsey Snelling: the camp, but David was camp director and partial owner.
Kelsey Snelling: He and his wife, Ziporah moved into the house in
Kelsey Snelling: the center of camp and lived there. During the summer season,
Kelsey Snelling: Salma moved into a house across the street from camp.
Kelsey Snelling: That meant David had more power and presence than ever before.
Kelsey Snelling: Under David's reign things were different because his motivation wasn't necessarily
Kelsey Snelling: to help kids lose weight like it was for Selma.
Sue: The biggest change between Selma and David's era is that
Sue: you could tell by lots of little things that it
Sue: had become a business, a for profit business.
Kelsey Snelling: That's Sue Steinberg, who you heard from last episode. By
Kelsey Snelling: the nineties, she was working at Camp Shane as a lifeguard,
Kelsey Snelling: swim instructor, and later on head of the pool. She
Kelsey Snelling: witnessed what she saw as a rocky transition from Selma
Kelsey Snelling: to David.
Sue: I did recognize the signs of the lack of love
Sue: for this community and with that said,um, giving David Ettenberg
Sue: the benefit of the doubt. To him, it was a business,
Sue: you know. Like he never purported to have started a
Sue: camp for fat people to create a bubble of societal
Sue: you know, marginalized people who could explore their identities. You know, like,
Sue: he never would have said that Camp Shane was supposed
Sue: to be that to him, he would. Have said, you know,
Sue: I am running a business, and he ran it as
Sue: such for sure.
Kelsey Snelling: Another person who noticed this was Jenna Hopkins. Jenna was
Kelsey Snelling: a group leader throughout the nineties. She saw David's leadership
Kelsey Snelling: style grow increasingly lax over time.
Jenna: It seemed to be better managed by the owners and
Jenna: staff in the beginning. It just seemed like maybe it
Jenna: was too big for them to properly manage, and maybe
Jenna: weren't even really, we're just taking the money and running,
Jenna: you know. Just it's all right, Well that happens who cares,
Jenna: you know. That was sort of the mentality that it
Jenna: seemed to be as the years went on.
Kelsey Snelling: What happened next was an avalanche. According to reporting from
Kelsey Snelling: Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Selma insisted that David and his wife Ziporah
Kelsey Snelling: live in their house on camp all year long, even
Kelsey Snelling: outside of the summer season. David and Ziporah said no.
Kelsey Snelling: According to David, Selma then sent the sheriff to evict
Kelsey Snelling: them from their on campus house. Selma later claimed that
Kelsey Snelling: David abruptly announced he was quitting during the crucial hiring
Kelsey Snelling: period in April before camp began. We're sure whether or
Kelsey Snelling: not he actually did. Because of this debacle, which may
Kelsey Snelling: or may not have even happened, Selma and her husband, Irving,
Kelsey Snelling: furiously filed a lawsuit to invalidate their previous agreement, the
Kelsey Snelling: one that said David would one day own the Camp.
Kelsey Snelling: David then used his minority shareholder status to dissolve the company.
Kelsey Snelling: An ugly legal battle ensued. In the end, both parties
Kelsey Snelling: agreed that David would.
Kelsey Snelling: Purchase the Camp for one point two million dollars. By
Kelsey Snelling: nineteen ninety three, David was the sole owner of Camp Shane.
Kelsey Snelling: Though David and his mother were often at odds, he
Kelsey Snelling: did continue a few of her business practices, like hiring
Kelsey Snelling: counselors through exchange programs like Camp America, an organization that
Kelsey Snelling: sends camp counselors from other countries across the globe to
Kelsey Snelling: America for summer jobs. This saved David money because Camp
Kelsey Snelling: America counselors generally worked for lower wages than state side
Kelsey Snelling: counselors would, and David loved saving money. Camp America counselors
Kelsey Snelling: are some of the central characters behind the grandest of
Kelsey Snelling: Camp Shane lore, like the supplier of the M and
Kelsey Snelling: M cartel in episode one, Remember Heavyweights. Each year, a
Kelsey Snelling: counselor would drive to the Blockbuster in town to rent
Kelsey Snelling: the VHS tape and host a screening in the gymnasium.
Kelsey Snelling: And yes, I know some of you listening are probably
Kelsey Snelling: googling Blockbuster and VHS tape right about now. But one
Kelsey Snelling: year the screening didn't white go according to plan.
Nelson: There was the operations manager then was from Eastern Europe
Nelson: and he had a heavy accent, and he was told
Nelson: to go to Blockbuster and rent Heavyweights. Well, I don't
Nelson: know why we didn't have it at the camp. We
Nelson: watch it every year. God bless him. He goes to
Nelson: the video store and he asks for Heevy weights. He's like, I want the Heevy weights, the Heevy weights. And they're like, what? Heevy weights? He is like, yeah, Heevy, Heevy weights. And he is like, all right. So he gets what he thinks is Heavyweights the, you know, funny, Ben Stiller comedy Heavyweights.
Kelsey Snelling: That’s Nelson Jancaterino. You heard from him in episode 1. He was a camper at Camp Shane for several years before working as a counselor for several more summers. But back to the story: the counselor rented the tape and brought it back to camp
Nelson: And they put in what they think is Heavyweights, and
Nelson: they turn it off when it wasn't Heavyweights. It was Heevyweights, which
Nelson: was this graphic porno. It only lasted for like a
Nelson: few seconds to like Big Dog, who was like a
Nelson: notorious counselor, jumped in front of the projector. But all
Nelson: the kids whore like five seconds saw this like graphic
Nelson: sex act.
Kelsey Snelling: We're talking around one hundred kids, some as young as
Kelsey Snelling: eight years old being exposed to graphic pornography. Somehow, despite
Kelsey Snelling: this mishap, the Heavyweight screenings continued with the actual movie.
Kelsey Snelling: Of course. Another Camp America counselor was a British former
Kelsey Snelling: race car driver named Simon Greenwood. Merryl Winter, a camper
Kelsey Snelling: and then counselor throughout the eighties, nineties, and two thousands,
Kelsey Snelling: worked closely with Simon.
Merryl: All the girls fell in love with Simon. He had
Merryl: an English accent, he was adorable, and he's meticulous, so
Merryl: he was always good at what he did.
Kelsey Snelling: If this were really like the movie Heavyweights, then Simon
Kelsey Snelling: would be Pat the encouraging counselor that all the kids
Kelsey Snelling: and fellow staffers love, only like the Lady Magnet version.
Kelsey Snelling: David loved Simon too, and soon David made him his
Kelsey Snelling: right hand man, and they were quite the character foils
Kelsey Snelling: to one another. Where David was distant,
Merryl: He never took the time to get to know the kids,
Merryl: he didn't know any of them.
Kelsey Snelling: Simon was invested.
Merryl: He was a hard worker, he loved the kids, he
Merryl: loved the concept of camp, and he was really the
Merryl: backbone of that camp. It wouldn't have survived without him.
Kelsey Snelling: But Selma was still living across the street from camp,
Kelsey Snelling: and she didn't care how many passionate, hard working sidekicks
Kelsey Snelling: David had by his side. She challenged David at every turn.
Kelsey Snelling: She may have no longer been the camp's owner, but
Kelsey Snelling: she was still around, helping out in the office and
Kelsey Snelling: riding her golf cart on the campgrounds to yell at
Kelsey Snelling: kids for chewing gum. Even when she was off campus,
Kelsey Snelling: she never really left. She was known to watch whatever
Kelsey Snelling: she could from her house. If that sounds like I'm exaggerating,
Kelsey Snelling: I'm not. She sometimes sat on her porch with a
Kelsey Snelling: pair of binoculars to peer inside the camp. She even
Kelsey Snelling: contested the sale of the camp, claiming she felt pressure
Kelsey Snelling: to sell at a low price. Everyone could see the
Kelsey Snelling: continuing tension between Selma and David, including Merryl.
Merryl: I saw they were feuding. You couldn't not see they
Merryl: were feuding when they weren't talking. Yet they were sharing
Merryl: an office together, and they were mother and son, so
Merryl: it's really hard to fathom. But she installed a lock
Merryl: on the door so if David walked out of the office,
Merryl: she would just lock it from her seat, which was
Merryl: kind of funny.
Kelsey Snelling: And these were the adults in charge of hundreds of children.
Kelsey Snelling: Janna Hopkins, the group leader you heard from earlier, noticed
Kelsey Snelling: the rivalry between Selma and David as soon as she
Kelsey Snelling: stepped on camp for her first day of work.
Janna: Everybody knew that there was a battle going on. It
Janna: was just it was, you know, it permeated everything.
Kelsey Snelling: Janna was a single mom in Texas when she came
Kelsey Snelling: across an ad for Camp Shane in the back of
Kelsey Snelling: a teacher's magazine. She decided to apply and got a
Kelsey Snelling: job as a group leader.
Jenna: Kind of thought, well, I'm going to make money. I
Jenna: got an opportunity to be in the outdoors and maybe
Jenna: lose some weight. Plus my kid camps for free. This
Jenna: is pretty cool, and you escape the you know, one
Jenna: thousand degree summers in Dallas.
Kelsey Snelling: Jana drove herself and her seven year old all the
Kelsey Snelling: way from Dallas to the Catskills. That's a crazy journey
Kelsey Snelling: for a single mom to make, but she did it.
Kelsey Snelling: After days on the road, Janna arrived in Ferndale and
Kelsey Snelling: drove into the center of Camp Shane.
Janna: So I drive in and I park, and we get out,
Janna: and I walk up to the you know, the window
Janna: of the office and this woman slams the window open
Janna: and she looks at me and she says, what do
Janna: you want? So I'm immediately thinking, oh, no. You know,
Janna: maybe I'm in the wrong place.
Kelsey Snelling: I don't know.
Janna: And I said hi, I said, my name is Janna,
Janna: and I said I'm supposed to be a group leader
Janna: this summer. And she looks at me and she says,
Janna: I didn't hire you. Go home, And I'm just standing
Janna: there with my kid going uh oh, I have to say,
Janna: I mean, so many things are running through my head.
Janna: I'm literally still standing there. And then David Ettenberg comes
Janna: out of the office and he says, Janna, Janna, Janna its David. Don't worry about that. Just ignore her. That's my mother. And that was how I met Selma.
Kelsey Snelling: But Janna couldn't really ignore Selma. She kept making herself
Kelsey Snelling: known and flexing power that she didn't really have anymore.
Kelsey Snelling: One day, Janna took a group of her campers for
Kelsey Snelling: a walk into town. One of the girls fell and
Kelsey Snelling: hurt her leg. It hurt so much she couldn't walk
Kelsey Snelling: back to camp. So Janna ran back to camp to
Kelsey Snelling: get her car and drove the girl to the infirmary
Kelsey Snelling: on campus.
Janna: You know, no cell phones, I couldn't stop and whip my phone out and say, “Hey, I need somebody to come help me”. So I made the choice to go ahead and I ran, well, I didn't really run, but I went back to camp. So I got my keys, I got my car, and I came back and I picked her up - just her! And I took her back, and I took her to the infirmary, and I left my co-counselor with the other girls and said, you know, y'all going back. And the next morning I woke up where, in my cabin thing where I slept, and I heard something, and I opened my eyes and Selma was sitting right next to my bed in a chair. And I just looked at her and I said, Selma. And she said, did you put a camper in your car yesterday? And I mean, you know, I just woke up. I was, I was disoriented and I was just shocked. And I was like, yes, yes, I did. And she said, you're not allowed to do that. And I said, here's what happened, you know? And she said, you should have just walked back and got somebody. And I said, I just felt like I had to get her back as soon as I could. And so she just gave me– she kept saying me, I could get fired. And, and I was breaking rules and, and, and all these things. And I’m thinking to myself, man, She had some balls. And she had to have planned that out. She had to, she had to find out where I was living. She had to know which room was mine. She even brought a chair. I mean, there wasn't a chair in our room.
Kelsey Snelling: Truly horrifying. Remember, at this point, Selma was no longer
Kelsey Snelling: in charge, but that didn't stop her from trying to
Kelsey Snelling: discipline staffers as if she were. Her presence still loomed large.
Janna: And I honestly I was afraid of her. There are
Janna: a lot of people who love her and have a
Janna: lot of respect for her, But I didn't see or
Janna: know that Selma. I just saw the one who was
Janna: overwrought with the desire to get her camp back and
Janna: would do anything she could to do that.
Kelsey Snelling: Jana didn't know just how far Selma was willing to go.
Kelsey Snelling: In nineteen ninety five, a smoke alarm went off in
Kelsey Snelling: Selma's house across the street from Camp, prompting a visit
Kelsey Snelling: from the fire department. The police investigated. Leslie, Selma's daughter
Kelsey Snelling: and David's sister believed Selma started the fire herself, using
Kelsey Snelling: old newspapers and film negatives to frame David. Selma claimed
Kelsey Snelling: she wasn't home that evening. Later that summer, a quote
Kelsey Snelling: "concerned parent" sent an anonymous letter to the New York
Kelsey Snelling: State Department of Health calling attention to overcrowding and poor
Kelsey Snelling: food quality at Shane. The thing is the letter included
Kelsey Snelling: lots of insider details like enrollment figures, bunk square footage,
Kelsey Snelling: and health inspection dates. To David, the letter wasn't anonymous
Kelsey Snelling: at all. With all of this drama and chaos going on,
Kelsey Snelling: no one seemed to be prioritizing the kids. Sometime that August,
Kelsey Snelling: a fourteen year old broke his collarbone while allegedly playing
Kelsey Snelling: unsupervised at the off campus Lake. Nineteen ninety five was
Kelsey Snelling: Janna's last summer. At this point, she'd been at Camp
Kelsey Snelling: Shane for years. She had the sense that something bad
Kelsey Snelling: was going to happen, and she didn't want to be
Kelsey Snelling: there when it did.
Jenna: The biggest problem I had with David, I think was later, as things were getting crazy. And I just kept saying, I said,I don't want this to happen. And he would say, I know, I know, don't worry. I'm handling it, I'm handling it. But clearly he wasn't handling.
Kelsey Snelling: Another thing David wasn't handling well, the food. David didn't
Kelsey Snelling: prioritize nutrition so much as he prioritized cutting calories, so
Kelsey Snelling: kids were served the same junk food they were likely
Kelsey Snelling: eating at home, just much smaller portions, say two French
Kelsey Snelling: toasticks for breakfast instead of four, and then for dinner
Kelsey Snelling: one slice of pizza instead of two or three, served
Kelsey Snelling: with a glass of milk. Not enough food to sustain
Kelsey Snelling: kids doing eight hours of exercise a day. Now, there
Kelsey Snelling: was one workaround, at least for the skinny campers at Shane.
Kelsey Snelling: If kids were deemed an acceptable level of thin, they
Kelsey Snelling: were sometimes awarded a visit to... The Pig Out Room, a
Kelsey Snelling: supply closet off the dining hall filled with all the
Kelsey Snelling: contraband snacks that Shaners weren't allowed to eat, peanut butter
Kelsey Snelling: and jelly sandwiches, candy chips, cakes baked by the camp chefs.
Sue: And then of the people that were like normal weighted people,
Sue: they had the pig out where. You know, I never
Sue: got there, so I'm not really sure, but I think
Sue: there was peanut butter there. You know.
Kelsey Snelling: The Pig Out Room disappeared in the late nineties, but
Kelsey Snelling: while it existed, it was protected like a national treasure.
Kelsey Snelling: Sometimes staff would check bags and backpacks to make sure
Kelsey Snelling: no one was hiding any contraband food that they might
Kelsey Snelling: have smuggled from the room. Campers were almost never allowed
Kelsey Snelling: in there, try as they might, and most counselors weren't either.
Kelsey Snelling: Only the fittest were permitted, those who had reached Camp
Kelsey Snelling: Shane's definition of a goal weight. Usually that meant the
Kelsey Snelling: Camp America counselors who were already thin and weren't at
Kelsey Snelling: Camp Shane to lose anything. So camper's food intake was
Kelsey Snelling: heavily restricted, and then their reward for restriction was to
Kelsey Snelling: eat a bunch of cake and cookies in The Pig
Kelsey Snelling: Out room. It's a confusing message that further fetishized quote
Kelsey Snelling: "bad foods" and not one that in stilled healthy habits.
Kelsey Snelling: Sue remembers a Camp America counselor who was a semi
Kelsey Snelling: professional soccer player. He was one of those straight sized
Kelsey Snelling: counselors who would have been allowed to go to The
Kelsey Snelling: Pig Out Room. He didn't understand this relationship that camp
Kelsey Snelling: was establishing between campers and food.
Sue: For him, food was fuel. He never could compute. And
Sue: I just remember the whole summer of him being like,
Sue: I do not get it. These kids are out there
Sue: running all day and we are feeding them, you know,
Sue: a teaspoon of apple butter and some dried toast and
Sue: some cottage cheese.
Kelsey Snelling: Like her fellow counselors, Sue also had questions about the
Kelsey Snelling: camp's approach to food and how it was all adding up.
Kelsey Snelling: One day, she got a glimpse of the numbers and
Kelsey Snelling: learned just how little these kids were surviving off of
Sue: I was working there with the nutritionist and she was concerned, you know, rightfully so. And she was, somewhat distraught. She was just like, the numbers aren't computing, I remember specifically she was like, oh, on Thursday we got 1400 calories. And that was sort of in the range that we were supposed to be getting per day. And she sort of, you know, showed me the numbers of like four straight days of like 900 or a thousand calories a day. And somehow I got roped into this. And then there was, it, it was a short conversation, um, with David. But I was like she's really concerned that, you know, some days are very low in calories. And he was like, you know, it all averages out in the end. And I was like, I don't think calories really work that way. Like, you need enough calories every day.
Kelsey Snelling: Sue’s right. It doesn’t work that way. And since David had been in this space for over 20 years, the fact that he didn’t understand how calories work isn’t just shocking. It’s irresponsible. Plus, these days we know calorie restriction simply doesn’t work. Researchers have found that more than 95% of all diets fail long term, most within a couple of years. And often, the weight regained puts people at a higher weight than where they started in the first place. And still, year after year, the message campers got was to restrict their food intake. Stacy Toth attended Camp Shane for two summers in the nineties.
Stacy: The understanding was very much… you need to lose weight and by all means necessary while you're at camp. Both the camp is gonna help you and we're gonna turn a blind eye to behaviors that we know are aiding people in weight loss that are actually not healthy and good for them.
Kelsey Snelling: Stacy told me about the shame and embarrassment she felt
Kelsey Snelling: growing up in a bigger body. She hated walking to
Kelsey Snelling: the plus size section to pick out her new swimsuit,
Kelsey Snelling: and she was always comparing herself to her stepsisters, who
Kelsey Snelling: were just naturally smaller than her, while she listened to
Kelsey Snelling: her grandma brag about only drinking water and eating Ritz
Kelsey Snelling: Crackers all day. Stacy used food as a coping mechanism
Kelsey Snelling: after a traumatic experience in her childhood. She felt like
Kelsey Snelling: a black sheep in her family.
Stacy: But looking back at photos, I looked like an Olympic swimmer,
Stacy: Like I looked like a healthy person with a lot
Stacy: of muscle mass. And it wasn't until I was at
Stacy: Camp Shane that I learned how to purge, you know,
Stacy: to binge and purge, how to avoid food right like
Stacy: if we were going to be weighed in the next day,
Stacy: everybody would just not eat.
Kelsey Snelling: This mentality to lose weight by all means necessary was dangerous.
Kelsey Snelling: At Camp Shane, Stacy experienced disordered eating, long hours exercising.
Kelsey Snelling: And little food. After a few weeks of this, she
Kelsey Snelling: got sick and because she was at fat camp. The
Kelsey Snelling: counselors didn't believe her. They thought she was just making
Kelsey Snelling: excuses to get out of exercising.
Stacy: You had multiple activities that you were doing physically all day long. And particularly when I would go to things that were high intensity cardio, like aerobics and circuit training, I basically couldn't breathe. And it wasn't because I was out of shape, it was because I had bronchitis and I probably had just caught a cold or something and then gotten sick. But I remember coming back up from the hill from, the dining hall and feeling like I couldn't make it up the hillI remember asking multiple times like, I, I don't think I can do this. Can I sit this out? And being told no, being very much given the impression that I was lazy I just kept feeling worse and worse until one day when I was trying to make it up the hill. I basically collapsed and they needed to put me on a golf cart and take me up to the nurse's station.
Kelsey Snelling: Stacy had bronchitis, which turned into walking pneumonia. She was
Kelsey Snelling: given broth and tea, but that was it. She kept
Kelsey Snelling: coughing and soon cracked a rib.
Stacy: My body was overwhelmed with the amount of exercise and
Stacy: extreme pressure that it was being put under physically and
Stacy: not supported with nutrition, and that led to my body
Stacy: literally crashing, crumpling to beg for help. I mean, that's
Stacy: what sickness is, right is our body physically telling us
Stacy: to slow down, to rest, to recover.
Kelsey Snelling: Stacy went home early that summer feeling like a failure.
Kelsey Snelling: She didn't accomplish what she went to Camp Shane to
Kelsey Snelling: do to lose weight to become skinny. She tried to
Kelsey Snelling: replicate the weight loss tactics she learned from camp at home.
Stacy: I would starve myself. I would try to restrict my
Stacy: calories the way that had been restricted at camp, and
Stacy: then I would starve. I was just so hungry that
Stacy: then I would binge, and then I would feel badly
Stacy: about having binged, and then I would purge, and that
Stacy: cycle would go over and over and over again. I
Stacy: don't know that I fully understood body shame until I
Stacy: went to a fat camp, and it's why it was
Stacy: called Camp Shame. We didn't call it "Camp Shane". We
Stacy: called it Camp Shame. And the messaging was very much
Stacy: especially for children who had been going for years. It
Stacy: was a focus on you get love, you get attention,
Stacy: you get these sort of things when you perform at camp,
Stacy: and performance in that instance was losing weight.
Kelsey Snelling: Stacy's experience of starting with calorie restriction and developing disordered
Kelsey Snelling: eating from there is a pretty common long term effect
Kelsey Snelling: according to psychologists and certified eating disorder specialist doctor Rachel Millner.
Dr. Millner: So anything that is an attempt to either lose weight
Dr. Millner: or prevent weight gain for kids and adolescents who need
Dr. Millner: to be growing and developing, is going to increase their
Dr. Millner: risk of eating disorders. And if they're not somebody that
Dr. Millner: developed an eating disorder, it's still going to put them
Dr. Millner: in a place where they're constantly weight cycling, so they're
Dr. Millner: trying to lose weight and then regain weight, which we
Dr. Millner: know as a negative impact on health, and where they
Dr. Millner: don't get to feel fully embodied, that they feel like
Dr. Millner: their body is constantly betraying them.
Kelsey Snelling: Of course, this mindset and messaging wasn't only playing out
Kelsey Snelling: at Camp Shane. It was happening at home, at school
Kelsey Snelling: and in the TV and movies kids watched, which brings
Kelsey Snelling: us back to Heavyweights. One interesting thing about the movie is,
Kelsey Snelling: even though it was released in nineteen ninety five, it's
Kelsey Snelling: somehow not filled with outdated fat phobic jokes like you
Kelsey Snelling: might expect. The movie is a comedy, but the jokes
Kelsey Snelling: are rarely at the expense of the fat characters. Director
Kelsey Snelling: Steve Brill said that was intentional.
Steve: I certainly wanted to ennoble and make these characters fun
Steve: and people you could look up to and not make
Steve: fun of, which is obviously what the fat guy or
Steve: the fat kid has always been in movies. By being overweight,
Steve: you know, the shame and self criticism and the doubt
Steve: that it brings into you is is really harmful. And
Steve: that's something that you know, we wanted to address as
Steve: a problem, and that's something that you know, hopefully the
Steve: kids when they watch the movie, they go, oh, it's
Steve: all right, it's all right to be overweight.
Kelsey Snelling: If you've never seen the movie, then spoiler alert, I'm
Kelsey Snelling: about to talk about the ending. The campers have successfully
Kelsey Snelling: ousted their militaristic camp director and they've just won the
Kelsey Snelling: annual competition against their rival. Camp Music swells as the
Kelsey Snelling: campers all cheer and hug each other. The main character
Kelsey Snelling: Jerry turns to Pat the camp counselor, and says.
Heavyweights Archival: Thanks for the best damn summer of my life.
Kelsey Snelling: Unfortunately that's just a movie. At the end of a
Kelsey Snelling: Camp Shane summer, there's no trophy, no music that swells
Kelsey Snelling: as the credits start to roll. No hearts filled with
Kelsey Snelling: new lessons about loving yourself in spite of the bullies
Kelsey Snelling: and naysayers. It is all right to be fat, like
Kelsey Snelling: Steve said, but our culture is often telling us otherwise.
Kelsey Snelling: So even though almost all Shaners had fun at one
Kelsey Snelling: point or another, I don't think any of them walked
Kelsey Snelling: away from camp thinking it's all right to be heavy.
Kelsey Snelling: Another difference between Camp Shane and the fictional Camp Hope.
Kelsey Snelling: The camp owner at Shane hadn't been ousted. In fact,
Kelsey Snelling: in spite of his mother's sabotage, David was about to
Kelsey Snelling: lead Camp Shane into its biggest decade yet. Next week.
Kelsey Snelling: On Camp Shane.
Merryl: He was happy with bodies in camp, whether they be, um, kids or counselors...Didn't matter if they were doing things that were unethical or, or, um, dangerous
Kelsey Snelling: We reached out to David Ettenberg and Ziporah Janowski for comment; at the time of this recording we have not received a reply Camp Shame is a production of iHeartPodcasts. I’m your host, Kelsey Snelling. Camp Shame is produced by Brittany Martinez,Taylor Williamson, Sara Schleede, Luci Jones and Alyia Yates Grau. Our Editor is Courtenay Hameister. with additional Editorial support from Lindsey Kratochwill and Grace Lynch. Our executive producers are Jenny Kaplan, Emily Rudder and me, Kelsey Snelling. For iHeartMedia, our executive producer is Cristina Everett. Fact checking done by Madeline Goore, Luci Jones, Paloma Moreno Jimenez, Lauren Williams and Fiona Pestana. Our theme music is produced by Sean Petell. Special thanks to Loren Moffett, Naomi Harvey, Jenell Manzi, Ben Wong, Travis Prow, and Stephanie Malson. Listen and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts. Follow us on Instagram @CampShame – that's with an M!- If you or anyone you know went to Camp Shane reach out with your camp stories