Kelsey Snelling: This episode contains descriptions of disordered eating and diet behavior. We also mention specific weight and weight loss numbers. This language could be sensitive for some listeners so please take care. If you can believe it, there was a time in American history when thinness was not the goal. People weren’t counting calories and there wasn’t universal shame around being in a bigger body. In fact, a little fat was a sign of prosperity and good fortune. But then, the Industrial Revolution came along and changed how Americans worked, exercised, and ate. Food became more abundant, more processed, and more calorie-dense. A lot of physical labor was replaced by machines or office work. So Americans of all classes and statuses got bigger. Bodies of size were no longer considered an indication of elitism, money, or abundance. Then, in the 1860s the Civil War had an interesting effect on the way we look at body size. Because of industrialization and the need for more uniforms for soldiers, we started mass-producing universally sized clothing with the sizes we know today: small, medium, and large. And it came with consequences: we now had expectations around body size and shape, and it marginalized people who didn’t fit the norms. By the end of World War I, women sought long, thin legs, small waists, and flat stomachs. (Sound familiar?) The 1920s solidified the belief that slimness equaled beauty and health. Think: Great Gatsby and flappers. Influential doctors promoted calorie counting and food restriction. Weight loss advertisements started popping up everywhere. And as mass media promoted weight loss, the fear of fatness spread. This is the moment Selma Ettenberg, the founder of Camp Shane, was born. This is Camp Shame. I’m your host Kelsey Snelling. Today we’re getting in our time machine and going back to the inception of Camp Shane. We’ll track the evolution of America’s obsession with size, hear stories of sting operations involving contraband cookies, and of course, get acquainted with the family at the center of America’s favorite fat camp: the Ettenbergs. To understand the origins of Shane, we have to understand Selma and the world she grew up in. Selma passed away in 2012, so we couldn’t talk to her for this show, but throughout her life, she did various interviews and touched the hearts of many people still with us today. One of those people is former camper, Sue Steinberg.
Sue: Selma has such a near and dear place in my heart.
Sue: She wanted this to be a haven. I think she
Sue: was well ahead of her time in that she recognized
Sue: that creating a society that was positive around weight loss
Sue: somehow made weight loss better or more palatable. If anyone
Sue: had good intentions, it was her.
Kelsey Snelling: Selma was born in 1923 to a Jewish immigrant household in Brooklyn, New York. As she entered her hormonal teenage years — you know, the ones we all know and hate — she started to fill out in less-than-desirable ways. At least, according to the beauty standards of the time. Around the 1930s, people were looking for help in achieving the perfect body. Fat camps were rare, but they were beginning to pop up, specifically in The States. They went by different names — mainly health spas and fat farms — and they were targeted at adult women. One of the earliest forms of a fat camp was founded in 1934 by cosmetic queen, Elizabeth Arden. She opened something called Maine Chance Farm, a health spa for upper-class women who wanted to change their looks through exercise, beauty treatments, and dieting. There were even daily weigh-ins. As the weight loss industry strengthened, fat camps began opening and overtly advertising themselves as such. In 1938, Selma was 15. She weighed 200 pounds. By today’s ridiculous BMI measurement standard, she would’ve been considered obese. This was rare in the 1930s. Statistics on childhood obesity in the 30s are limited because obesity wasn't seen as a major public health issue back then. But one study analyzed the BMIs of a little over 1,000 children in Dayton, Ohio during that time period. The results from the study showed that from the sampled group, obesity rates were less than 3% for young boys and girls. It’s no wonder Selma was insecure about her round frame. She was an outlier. In the 1940s, diet pills were all the rage. Doctors prescribed the “rainbow diet pill” regime — an assortment of colorful capsules for weight loss paired with another handful of colorful pills that suppressed the negative side effects of the weight loss medication. So yeah, that wasn’t great. We don’t know if Selma was on the rainbow diet pill regime specifically, but from an interview she did with the Baltimore Sun, we do know her doctors suggested fad-like diets and diet pills. These recommendations were only a quick fix. She was on all kinds of diets well into her teenage years. When the doctor's recommendations weren’t working sustainably, Selma took matters into her own hands. In her late teens, she lost 60 pounds in two years through strict calorie counting and portion control. This transformation wasn't just physical; it marked the beginning of her absolute obsession with weight loss. Specifically, weight loss for kids. Here’s Sue again.
Sue: She I think had amazingly good, positive intentions, and part
Sue: of that was making kids normal weight, or as close
Sue: to normal weight as you possibly can.
Kelsey Snelling: In her early 20s, Selma married Irving Ettenberg. The couple had three children; Lesley, Diana, and their only boy, David. Throughout early motherhood, Selma kept the weight off. Maybe because of her method or maybe because the pressure to be thin only got worse as the years went on. There were appetite suppressants advertised in the 1940s, then the rise of gyms and fitness TV programs in the 50s,
Jack LaLane fitness show: And now here is the man who will show you how tofeel better, look better, Jack LaLanne.
Kelsey Snelling: There was the birth of weight watchers in the sixties.
Weight watchers: On today's Weight Watches program, you can eat foods like
Weight watchers: this and this and this within limits and learn to
Weight watchers: lose weight.
Kelsey Snelling: And of course the first diet soda marketed specifically for
Kelsey Snelling: weight control.
Diet rite commercial: When you’re watching your weight, too much of agood thing can even be a “no no”. That’s why there’s diet rite cola.
Kelsey Snelling: Society was obsessed with size and weight management — for men and women alike. And the messaging was everywhere.
Coca-cola commercial: Iced cold Coca Cola! There’s no waist line worry with Coca Cola you know. Actually this individual sized bottle has no more calories than half a grapefruit.
Kelsey Snelling: Selma, now thin and fully on board with this sort of messaging, started working as a head counselor at a summer camp in 1955. It was her first camp experience. Selma didn’t come from money, so one of the perks of working at a summer camp was bringing her three children along with her. The kids were able to get the full camp experience of living in a community and spending time in nature. In the mid-60s, she took a job as the camp director at Camp Napanoch, an all-girls weight loss camp in upstate New York. It's believed to be the first weight loss camp for kids in the world. Her time as director inspired her to do something bold. Selma decided to open her own weight loss camp for kids. And in 1968, nestled in the picturesque Catskill Mountains, Selma opened Camp Shane in Ferndale, New York.
Sue: She, I think, you know, had this vision, she called it Shane, you know, it was Shayna Punim, the, like, beautiful face.
Kelsey Snelling: As Sue said, Shane is a Yiddish word for beautiful,
Kelsey Snelling: and Selma's beautiful vision was to create a summer camp
Kelsey Snelling: that bigger children didn't have to shy away from. In
Kelsey Snelling: its first summer nineteen sixty nine, Shane welcomed twenty nine campers.
Kelsey Snelling: That first year, it was only advertised to boys. The
Kelsey Snelling: first summer was a decent success for the camp, and
Kelsey Snelling: the next summer even more kids signed up. This time
Kelsey Snelling: girls were invited to Sue was about ten years old
Kelsey Snelling: when she first went to Camp Shane. She remembers begging
Kelsey Snelling: her parents to send.
Sue: I had been going to sleepaway summer camp since I was five years old. You know, we were New York Jews and New York Jews send their kids to summer camp. So that was sort of the norm. What wasn't the norm was me looking through sort of the back of the New York Times magazine, which is where we got all of our suggestions for camps. And there were, at that time, two or three weight loss camps in operation. And I picked Camp Shane because the advertisement actually had the largest number of weight loss possible. So the other two, you know, guaranteed anywhere from five to maybe 25 pounds in a summer lost. And Camp Shane, I think, you know, had said up to let's say 35 pounds. And since that was a larger number, I picked Camp Shane and I begged my parents to go.
Kelsey Snelling: But not every kid was begging their parents to send them to Shane. In fact, some were begging them not to. Mark Rothenberg was 12 years old when his mom came to him with a proposition.
Mark: My mother said to me, I have a friend whose son has gone to this wonderful camp, and you'll have a great time I think, and would you like to talk to him about it? And they have go-karts and they have computer games, and it's wonderful and you’re gonna go and it’s up in New York. And there's go-karts. She must have said, go-karts, like 30 times. I'm pretty sure my mother thought she would walk in, say the word go-kart. And I would be packing my bags that day.
Kelsey Snelling: Mark's mom proceeded to show him some Camp Shane promotional materials.
Mark: I saw that incredibly seductive imagery that Camp Shane has,
Mark: which is the before and the after. So the before
Mark: picture the after picture. You've got the miserable little boy
Mark: without a shirt on. He's got the boy boobies, and
Mark: he's got the love handles, he's got the double chin,
Mark: he has this vacant expression, this pained expression, and then
Mark: we have the after picture where he's doing the Superman
Mark: pose right, his chest is thrust it out. He's got
Mark: this big, beautiful smile on his face.
Kelsey Snelling: Twelve year old Mark immediately saw through the BS.
Mark: And I knew instantly that this was a weight loss camp.
Mark: I knew what it was. It was clear as day
Mark: to me that this was a fat camp. And I
Mark: looked at my mother and I said, absolutely not. I
Mark: don't want to go. No, thank you.
Kelsey Snelling: Mark’s campaign against Camp Shane was justified, he just didn’t know it yet. By the second year of Camp Shane’s existence, it was officially the 1970s. Advertisements for weight loss camps were common in the 70s, and they weren’t exactly sensitive. Here’s a news headline from that era: “Roly-poly Kids Will Go to Camp Soon to Lose Extra Pounds and Nicknames.” Another one: “Nobody Loves a Fat Kid, an Ex-Fattie Finds.” In 1974, Selma was interviewed by the Detroit Free Press. She said her objective was to, quote, “make a human being of a child who enters camp looking like a glob.” I think it’s safe to say good intentions sounded pretty different in 1974 than they do now. As far as we know, Camp Shane was the very first co-ed weight loss camp for kids. It accepted boys and girls as young as seven, with boys eligible up to 19 years of age and young women all the way up to 25. Selma took a co-ed angle on purpose. She told the Buffalo Evening News that, quote, “it’s an interest in the opposite sex, not in athletics, that can be most effective in getting teenagers to lose weight.” Selma might’ve been onto something. She once overheard a female camper say, “fat boys are better than no boys at all, and besides they get thin!” From the start, Camp Shane was a mix of the usual traditions. There were cold showers, boy-girl dances, epic pranks. But at Shane there was an additional ritual. Weigh-ins.
Kenny: They weighed you in once a week on one of those doctor scales.
Kelsey Snelling: That’s Kenny Ritzer. He was a camper in 1974.
Kenny: There was no electronic scales or anything. So it was, you know, the detecto slide rule scale. I guess you figure if it was accurate at your doctor's office, it must be accurate at camp.
Kelsey Snelling: Each week, counselors gathered their bunk group and went down
Kelsey Snelling: to the gymnasium for their way in in front of
Kelsey Snelling: the other bunks waiting their turn. Every kid would have
Kelsey Snelling: to go up to be weighed and measured. They measured
Kelsey Snelling: their calves, thighs, waist, and chest.
Kenny: I think most of us were a little embarrassed and, and of course, Selma had this habit of saying your weight and telling you how much you lost. Now, telling your weight out loud where other people could hear it would be embarrassing. At least for me it was. But then if they said, okay, you lost two pounds this week, you were actually elated.
Kelsey Snelling: By 1974, there were around 175 campers at Shane. Day-to-day life at camp started with a bright and early reveille wake-up call followed by breakfast at the dining hall. Selma emphasized well-balanced, nutritional food — but most importantly, small portions.
Kenny: As far as the serving size, it was small, and
Kenny: we always walked away a little bit hungry, but it
Kenny: was portion control. I really couldn't tell you exactly how
Kenny: many calories they had us on per day, but it
Kenny: really wasn't enough.
Kelsey Snelling: At the time, Camp Shane followed the New York State Board of Health diet that only allowed between 12-1400 calories per day. To get the day going, breakfast often consisted of juice, scrambled eggs, toast with margarine, and a glass of milk. Selma ran a tight ship, so after breakfast, campers had to return to their bunks to clean up in preparation for inspection. Then the activities began.
Kenny: Then nine to 10 might be at the gym, playing basketball or doing aerobic exercises. And then you might have from 10 to 11, uh, a free swim.
Kelsey Snelling: Other activities included tennis, football, and gymnastics. Campers broke to
Kelsey Snelling: refuel around twelve thirty. Lunch could be a serving of
Kelsey Snelling: chicken chow mane on a bed of rice with ice, milk,
Kelsey Snelling: hot tea, and pineapple. Then campers got a chance to
Kelsey Snelling: rest before resuming activities.
Kenny: Maybe afternoon after 12 when you had lunch, THERE might be softball or, um, something to that effect, or just even just walking what they called the triangle, which was a track in the shape of a triangle in the middle of camp. And sometimes that was your exercise.
Kelsey Snelling: In addition to sports, there could be a late afternoon hike. And then around 5:30, campers had a free period which many used to write letters home.
Kenny: It was mandatory to write, you know, a letter, I think two or three times a week to family.
Kelsey Snelling: Finally, dinner was served at 6:30, typically consisting of something like spaghetti or a baked potato with salad, fruit, and skim milk. After dinner:
Kenny: Sometimes in the evening they had activities, um, maybe a, a movie or maybe some, uh, get together with, uh, like a little dance in the gymnasium with the guys and the girls. And that was, uh, pretty much what the daily life was for maybe seven weeks or eight weeks.
Kelsey Snelling: Kids were kept busy for the entirety of those weeks. That was strategic. Selma wanted to keep kids so busy, they didn’t think about food. And when they did have a chance to think about food, it would be in a controlled, educational setting. She gave nutrition classes on calorie counting and substitution. She taught kids how to plan what they were eating so they could go back home with the tools to implement what they learned at camp. From an article in the Philadelphia Daily News, we know that Selma cared about the reason behind their actions, and not just the result of their actions. She asked them when they eat the most, and more often than not the answer was, quote, “They eat when they’re bored. And somehow they’ve come to believe that food will make them happier.” Selma Ettenburg’s Camp Shane philosophy had a three-pronged approach: take off weight scientifically, educate kids to keep it off when they returned home, and make campers happier and more confident. She knew that if she could lose the weight, so could her campers. But they needed the right environment. And that meant a strict, no-funny business sort of camp. Here’s Sue Steinberg again.
Sue: She had hired Terry Brody to sort of be the henchman. She would, you know, come and punish. I remember, you know, cubbies that weren't clean or not folded perfectly, would get dumped over.
Kelsey Snelling: Sue had a disciplinary run-in with Selma and Terry one summer.
Sue: I was, you know, 10, 11, 12, maybe at the most. And one of the big, um, rules at camp was that you weren't allowed to chew gum.
Kelsey Snelling: Remember how we talked about gum being contraband in episode 1? Selma had her reasons.
Sue: She said that there was research that indicated that the salivary glands would be started if you were to chew gum, even sugar-free gum. And that, that actually made you more hungry. And she was, out of the kindness of our heart, making sure that we were not overly hungry and trying to suppress our appetite by having this rule that we could not chew gum.
Kelsey Snelling: That might not have been the only reason though.
Sue: There was, like, a secondary rumor that went around that said in the earlier years, even before me, that kids would chew gum and they'd put it on Charlie, the dog. And you could imagine that gum in Charlie would've, you know, caused a problem. And if Selma loved Irving, I don't know, but boy did she love Charlie the dog.
Kelsey Snelling: Sue tested her luck with the gum anyway.
Sue: She and Terry Brody were sitting on the porch of this house at the top of Lover's Lane.
Kelsey Snelling: Lover’s Lane was a tree-covered path that started at the pool and ran slightly uphill to the nutrition room. Kids would go there to make out in secret under the coverage of the trees.
Sue: And I was walking up Lover's Lane, apparently chewing my gum, large enough so that Selma had seen it. And when I got to the top of Lover's Lane, and she looked at me and she said, you know, come here. And as I was going up the stairs to the porch, I swallowed my gum because that's of course what you do. And she said, spit out your gum. And I said, what gum? And she turned to Terry Brody, and she goes, “told you she was gonna swallow it.” And I just remember, like, the fear. Selma was in charge. She was the disciplinarian, and I was in fucking trouble. So she was a force. She was a force. That's the best way to describe her.
Kelsey Snelling: From the bottom up, Selma’s staff had her back. First came counselors-in-training, or CITs. Then the basic cabin counselors; they reported up to the group leaders. Next, there were the head counselors (one for boys camp, one for girls). And above them was the camp director, which in the 70s was Selma herself. And Selma’s power stretched beyond the gates of Shane.
Kenny: The big rumor always at camp was Selma had spies all throughout the county.
Kelsey Snelling: Kenny witnessed this firsthand. His parents came to visit him one weekend, and the rules were that he wasn’t allowed off campus because it wasn’t a Selma-sanctioned parent visiting day. But Kenny and his parents had other plans.
Kenny: We just took off. And we went to Monticello, which was only maybe five miles away. Monticello, New York. And we went to a deli called Kaplan’s. And my favorite thing in the world, probably to this day, is a roast beef on rye. That's my favorite sandwich. And that's what I had there, which you’d never get at camp. Ever. And I ate it, and I was happy. And we went back to camp after I spent a couple hours with my parents. And Selma, I don't know how she knew I had a roast beef sandwich. So I just figured it was one of her spies. Maybe she knew somebody that worked at the deli. When I got back, she was awfully, awfully mad, but she was just reprimanded me and, um, was very angry that I went off campus and had the sandwich. And I just remember coming back and her being angry and yelling.
Kelsey Snelling: Because of all her weird rules, Selma had created a culture of covert mischief. And Shaners were happy to take part. Before they figured out how to sneak food through the 12-foot fence, campers were left with no choice but to sneak out to get the sweets and treats they were desperately missing.
Kenny: You would wake up in the, in the middle of the night as a camper. And the back of your bunk was a wooded area, maybe 10 or 20 yards deep of woods maybe. And you'd run down the hill through the woods to the street and down the street to the market. And you would get a box of Charles Freihofer chocolate chip cookies, which were the most delicious chocolate chip cookie. To this day, I would say it's my favorite cookie, if I could get it. And then you would eat it on the way back because you couldn't really sneak it back in, or it was very difficult.
Kelsey Snelling: Those must have been some damn good cookies if Kenny was willing to run that risk. He knew Selma could be….harsh. Strict. Particular. She was much the same with her own family. Selma, who believed that the family is, quote, “the greatest pitfall to a child’s remaining thin,” made sure that her family was front and center at camp. Shane was a family-run business. Selma and her husband Irving ate, slept, and breathed Camp Shane. They lived in a house in the middle of campus. Every family member had a job. Irving was the maintenance man, Selma’s mother was the seamstress — which was useful when kids lost weight and needed their clothes taken in. One of her daughters, Diana, supervised the kitchen and staff, and her son David worked in the front office. Selma and David had a particularly fraught relationship. Selma had grown up with a brother who was heavily favored by her parents. She was determined not to do the same with David. But some say she over-corrected and only gave David tough love. Even his sisters recognized that Selma was particularly hard on him. Selma and David also had different perspectives on the camp. David had always been fit and slim. He didn’t understand the needs, wants, or fears of the campers like Selma did.
Sue: Selma had started Camp Shane I believe, wholeheartedly…
Kelsey Snelling: Sue Steinberg, again.
Sue: …because she cared for fat kids and wanted them, of course, to be thinner, but wanted them to succeed or be successful.
Kelsey Snelling: After her time as a camper, Sue worked at Shane as a camp lifeguard and a swim instructor.
Sue: Selma had the best interest of the kids in mind. I think she was doing the best she could with the information that people had at that point.
Kelsey Snelling: Selma saw firsthand what weight loss had done for her, and wanted to give the same to as many kids as possible. She fully believed that losing weight was the key to happier, more successful lives for these kids. At the same time, Camp Shane was Selma’s livelihood. It brought in a lot of money, and she did what she could to maintain that healthy revenue stream. That could look like making a deal with the poultry farm down the street so campers could have fresh chicken. Or it could be a little less wholesome.
Kenny: I would describe Selma as a very shrewd businesswoman, very successful.
Kelsey Snelling: That's Kenny again.
Kenny: When I say shrewd, I mean cheap. I thought she was a little bit shady, to be honest with you.
Kelsey Snelling: After his time as a camper, Kenny went back as a counselor in training, or CIT, in 1976. It’s common practice for summer camps to pay CITs. Maybe not much, but they do usually get a paycheck for the summer. But Camp Shane was not like most camps. And at some point early on, Selma decided CITs wouldn’t get paid. They were reaping the benefits of attending a fat camp, after all. As a member of Selma’s staff, Kenny got a taste of those aforementioned “shady business practices.” He was only a few weeks into the job when the summer soured.
Kenny: I didn't like the way I was being handled anyway, because it was pretty much against the law to have a CIT take care of six kids. I had six kids. The youngest actually only being four, who was only there because 'cause his sister was a little chubby. Four to maybe six years old was my bunk. And I was only 16. I wasn't of age to take care of these kids.
Kelsey Snelling: But Selma had found a workaround.
Kenny: Well at night, we have a regular counselor in there. The regular counselor was usually a specialist.
Kelsey Snelling: Okay, so some context: A specialist was different from a regular or "general counselor," as they were called. The general counselors and CITs, like Kenny, were assigned to a bunk and were responsible for that specific group of campers all day long. Specialists, on the other hand, were hired to teach … well … specialties, like swimming, ceramics, or the ropes course. I myself was an arts and crafts specialist during my time at Camp Shane. Specialists didn't see their bunk group for most of the day because they were busy instructing, but they’d join them for meals and evening activity and of course, would sleep in the bunks overnight. So, back to Kenny:
Kenny: In our case, I had a gentleman that was from Europe.
Kenny: My guy was a soccer coach.
Kelsey Snelling: Essentially, Selma justified having a 16-year-old supervise such young kids by putting an older counselor in the bunk, even though he was really only there at night. That wasn’t okay with Kenny.
Kenny: I loved the kids. They were great little kids. I didn't like that arrangement. And what happened was I opened my mouth being the wise guy and told her it wasn't even legal. And I knew it wasn't legal because my father was an attorney.
Kelsey Snelling: Kenny packed his bags and stayed at a motel in town while he figured out how to get home. Selma didn’t come looking for him.
Kenny: It's not okay to leave kids, young kids, even teenage kids with somebody who's not responsible. I think she was just trying to save money by not having to pay the CITs and, um, not have to pay the counselors extra for being there all the time.
Kelsey Snelling: Selma also saved on labor using another method. She broke up staff paychecks into two amounts, one to be received midsummer and one at the end of the season. She was notorious for firing counselors she didn’t like shortly before payday so she didn’t have to pay them in full. Her children, especially David, had a front-row seat to all of it. He spent the 1970s watching and learning how to run a profitable summer camp. Towards the end of the 70s and into the early 80s, obesity became viewed as a personal failure or lack of willpower. If you were a fat kid at that time, people blamed it on overindulgence and laziness. Fad diets had a surge in popularity as new information came out about them. And technology allowed information to spread faster. Diets like the Grapefruit Diet reappeared in the 70s because of claims it could burn body fat. The cabbage diet, which involved eating primarily cabbage soup for a week, also gained popularity in the 80s. And then there was the lemonade cleanse which was a liquid diet of only lemon juice, maple syrup, and cayenne pepper. And perhaps the most bizarre was the sleeping beauty diet. Where you’d literally sleep all day to avoid eating food. Weight and body size also became fair game for celebrity interviews. Here’s Joan Rivers and Oprah Winfrey.
Kenny: Joan: So how’d you gain the weight? Oprah: I ate a lot. Joan: No, no, no you said 50 pounds, you shouldn’t let that happen to you. You’re pretty. No, I don’t want to hear it. Oprah: Let me tell you something — Joan: You’re a pretty girl and you’re single. You must lose the weight!
Kelsey Snelling: The audacity. Former camper Mark Rothenberg was part of this generation. And he very much did not want to go to fat camp. When he realized his pleas to his parents were going nowhere, he tapped his grandfather for help.
Mark: I petitioned him. I said, “Zadie,” my grandfather. I said, “I don't wanna do this.” And he came from Poland where he had known starvation. He thought this was the most absurd, ludicrous, ridiculous thing in his life. “You're gonna spend money to, to not feed this kid? Like, I don't understand this.” In Fiddler on the Roof, you know, the song, if I were a rich man, he says, “I want my wife to have a proper double chin.”
Kelsey Snelling: Mark’s grandfather came from a world where a few extra pounds meant health and wealth. Within just one generation, that had changed.
Mark: I remember the car pulled up and I knew that my father was just going to get outta there as quickly as possible. We barely spoke in the car. And so we pulled up to the gate and it was, you know, it's, it's terrible to think in these terms, but having grown up in a Jewish household and, and there was so much Holocaust education, I almost had these just terrible thoughts of, it's like I'm going up to the gates of a camp. I mean, it's just terrible. Um, I was so miserable in the car, and I just felt so dejected. I felt that my parents just don't want me, and they've thrown me away, and I'm repulsive and horrible, and here I am, I'm in this camp.
Kelsey Snelling: Mark felt rejected. He knew that sleepaway camp was not the answer to his weight struggles, but now the situation was out of his hands. His fate was with the Ettenbergs.
Kelsey Snelling: At this point in 1982, Selma’s son David had become camp director. But he still worked under his mother’s thumb. David didn't particularly like working at Camp. According to an interview he did with Bloomberg Businessweek, he always wanted to be a musician. Before camp, he worked in finance and then commercial real estate. While Selma’s passion for camp came from an understanding of what it’s like to be a fat kid, it’s less clear what David’s motivations were. After more than a decade in operation, the physical maintenance of Camp Shane was slipping, while the number of campers was climbing. It seemed like the camp couldn’t keep up with the growth. The 1980s kicked off with about 250 campers, compared to 175 a decade earlier. When Mark first arrived at camp in the late 80s, he was horrified by the state of his cabin.
Mark: It reeked of, of urine and, and must, and it just had this musky, wet smell. And I've been to sleepaway camp before. I know it's not the Four Seasons, but this just didn't smell right. It didn't feel right. It didn't look right.
Kelsey Snelling: These cabins were never….upscale. Most campers told me the bunks were rustic, but overall fine for the summer. Mark, however, had a different experience.
Mark: And I kind of looked around this cabin that I'm now gonna be spending my summer in. And it was sort of like a cheap linoleum floor. The tiles were curling. You could see mold growing under them. There was like a, a cheap kind of wood. It's the kind of wood that you buy at Home Depot when you're boarding up a broken window. Went into the bathroom and, and the floors were unfinished. You could see right down into the, into the ground, through the slits. There was no insulation. And the janitor was working on the toilets. And he kind of saw me and said, “Hey, I'm, I'm just working on these toilets.” His advice to me, “don't flush the toilet while you're sitting down because you don't want to know what's gonna happen.”
Kelsey Snelling: Unfortunately for Mark, things didn’t get much better from there. Compared to the decade before, the food didn’t sound as nutritious as it once had.
Mark: I remember the, the food was just uniformly horrible. And again, this is not an elitist snob who expected caviar. I was not expecting high quality food. But, you know, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich would've been fine. They were very cheap. Um, I remember a lot of meals that oriented around bread and cheese. There'd be like a slice of bread and a, and a slice of cheese. Um, and then there might be a small salad, which was like iceberg lettuce.
Kelsey Snelling: And those fun camp activities from the brochure? Well, those leading them were not always the most qualified to do so.
Mark: I remember even some of the counselors didn't know we had archery once. For the whole summer, we had it once. Um, the counselor knew nothing about archery, didn't even have know where the key was to open up the, the storage cabinet, for the, uh, bows and arrows.
Kelsey Snelling: Now there’s nothing wrong with a rustic, minimalist environment, especially for kids who’ve never had that experience. But for what families were paying, this was hardly acceptable. By the 80s, campers could choose between staying for three weeks, six weeks, or nine weeks. And the cost was proportional: a little over $1,000 for 3-weeks, $2,100 for six weeks, and almost $3,000 for nine weeks which today would be $12,000. Far too much for campers to basically not be fed and not have proper instruction. But Camp Shane had a bigger issue than disappointing food and a few run down cabins. It also wasn’t addressing the underlying reasons why campers were heavy in the first place. Here’s Mark:
Mark: The reason these kids are eating is because of something, whether it's a trauma or just some emotional problem. And these kids have also developed these horrible self-confidence issues. My biggest criticism of Camp Shane, and this is gonna make no sense, doesn't teach you how to be thin. And people would say, oh, we, it's, it's the how to eat. And I said, no, it has nothing to do with that. When people pay me compliments, I don't know what to do with them because I don't believe them. I don't know how to be thin. I don't know what that means. I don't know how not to want to eat everything in sight regardless of whether I'm 40 pounds lighter or not. The camp didn't teach me that.
Kelsey Snelling: The nutrition classes that Selma once led had severely dropped off.
Mark: We had, um, occasionally, maybe once a week, once every other week we would sit down for about a half an hour with, I don't even think she was an actual nutritionist. I think she was a counselor that maybe had some extra training. But you know, she would, she would go over the basic food groups, talk about controlling your calories, eating smaller portions, dabbing your pizza with a napkin to soak up the grease. That was it. There was no gem or nugget of wisdom that we got from any of those sessions. And it, it seemed readily apparent to us that whomever was teaching us, you know, was either just reading from a book or, or a pamphlet and didn’t seem to have a good grasp of what any of us were really dealing with.
Kelsey Snelling: Still, right or wrong, camp delivered on what was promised. Kids lost weight. And parents were ecstatic to see their kids in new bodies.
Mark: When I came back, my mother said to me, “oh, you walked right by me in the airport and I didn't even recognize you.” My father, I remember when I walked in the house, and he was in the pool, in his pool chair, and he looked up from his book and said, “Look at you. You look great. You came back a lean, mean fighting machine. You look fantastic.”
Kelsey Snelling: But this positive feedback didn't make Mark feel good.
Mark: Now, problem with, with Camp Shane, at least in, in my experience, was you took a kid who loathed himself. He's now of the belief that is, he was repulsive and had to be sent thou– a thousand miles away for, for treatment, if you will. And when my father or mother would say things like, you look great. When it went through the filter in my head, it came out as: you were repulsive and had to be sent away. And the word were, the past tense vanished. So instead of you, you know, you were repulsive. It remains, you are repulsive.
Kelsey Snelling: That kind of message is so harmful to a developing teen. And it reinforces the need to drop pounds whenever the weight inevitably comes back. It creates repeated cycles of weight loss and gain, or what we know as yo-yo dieting. All of that fluctuation can be worse for your body than just maintaining a stable, higher weight. It can lead to a range of negative health effects such as increased risk of heart disease, disrupted metabolism, and decreased muscle mass. Studies show that a, quote, “healthy” weight loss is 1 to 2 pounds a week — and that’s for adults. Shaners lost way more than that. Shane’s method of restricting calories and excessively exercising didn’t work all that well for anyone — even, eventually, for Selma. When she hit menopause, the pounds crept back on. She tried her old technique again: calorie restriction and portion control. Nothing. Not a pound gone. And that’s why, Kenny — years after he’d left the camp and Selma behind — ended up having a cosmic encounter.
Kenny: There was a losing weight facility in North Carolina, part of Duke University. they had several programs. So I was down there one time, and I walk into their gym and on the Schwinn Airdyne Bicycle, there she is, Selma Ettenberg. And I was saying to myself, boy, she has some nerve trying to be on this program, losing weight, 'cause she had packed on some pounds. But I was saying to myself, boy, that's funny. Being the owner of a diet camp, she's on another diet program, not her own. And I knew it was her and I wasn't gonna say anything to her 'cause I just was, well, stay away from her. But she came up to me privately and said, “don't tell anybody that I was here.” Just like that. And I laughed at that inside. 'cause I was like, yeah, what's she trying to hide? You know? Was it gonna get out to, you know, channel two news and that the owner of a fat camp, was at a fat camp?
Kelsey Snelling: The woman who believed in portion control, exercise, and sheer willpower, needed outside help. She didn’t have all the answers. Like all weight loss ploys, Camp Shane’s approach was not sustainable. And that’s exactly why it made for such a brilliant business. With weight coming on and off each year, you could almost guarantee a steady stream of revenue and repeat customers. After years working under his mother and becoming fundamental to the camp’s operations, David knew that he deserved a bigger piece of the pie. So to speak. Between him and his sisters, David wanted to be the sole inheritor of the camp. In 1987, David gave Selma an ultimatum. If Selma and Irving wanted him to keep him working, they'd have to give him some level of ownership and promise to hand over full control within ten years. Recognizing that David had become indispensable, they agreed. David would have more power at camp and by no later than 1997, he would be given control as owner. But Selma wasn’t ready to step aside just yet. Here’s Sue Steinberg again.
Sue: I do remember more than one summer there being, um, anxiety, um, me being anxious, um, that I didn't know who I was working for. There was at least one summer that I had two different contracts. And I remember insisting on that because I was like, I need a contract from you, David, and I need a contract from you, Selma, because I don't really know who's gonna pay me, and I wanna make sure that I get paid.
Kelsey Snelling: The animosity between David and Selma spilled over into the day-to-day operations of camp.
Sue: Then there was one summer where in order to exert power over each other, they would put padlocks on the entrance or the gate to the pool. And I didn't know whose padlock it was, so I had to get in touch with both of them. And, you know, then one of them would complain, “oh, it must be so and so because I didn't do it,” and then I would have to go to the other one. And that happened several times. I know that sounds crazy.
Kelsey Snelling: The back and forth between Selma and David was only just beginning. Camp Shane was growing, but only one Ettenberg could take it to the next level of success. If David was going to fully take over, it wasn’t going to be without a fight. And Selma fought dirty. Next time, on Camp Shame…
Sue: If someone had said to me back in those days, um, “do you think that David will ever inherit the camp?” I probably would've told you Selma will never give it up.
Kelsey Snelling: This episode is in memory of Kenny Ritzer. We reached out to David Ettenberg and his wife 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. 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.