June 5, 2025 • 42 mins
Camp Shane is under new leadership: Selma’s son, David Ettenberg. In the 1990s, David’s reign brings with it more campers, more money, and even a Disney movie inspired by the camp itself. But as diet culture and fat phobia grip the decade, life at Shane gets stricter, stranger, and more dangerous. Selma struggles to hand over control, a disastrous Heavyweights screening becomes legend, and cracks in the camp’s foundation begin to show.
References:
- The Epic Family Feud Behind an Iconic American Weight-Loss Camp for Kids
- The term ‘heroin chic’ needs to die – even if skinny-worship rages on
- An Epidemic of Beauty Sickness by Renee Engeln at TEDxUConn 2013 (Full Transcript)
- Is BMI Accurate? New Evidence Says No
- U.S. Weight Loss Market Size/Share Worth USD 305.30 Billion by 2030 at a 9.7% CAGR: Custom Market Insights (Analysis, Outlook, Leaders, Report, Trends, Forecast, Segmentation, Growth, Growth Rate, Value)
- That diet probably won’t work long-term — here’s what to focus on instead
Camp Shane—one of America’s longest running weight loss camps for kids—promised extraordinary results. Campers who began the summer in heavy bodies were often unrecognizable when they left. In a society obsessed with being thin, it seemed like a miracle solution.
But there were some dark truths behind Camp Shane’s facade of happy, transformed children. Kids were being pushed to their physical and emotional limits as the family that owned Shane turned a blind eye. More than 50 years after its founding, host Kelsey Snelling is bringing the real story of Camp Shane to light.
In this eight-episode series, she unpacks and investigates stories of mistreatment and reexamines the culture of fatphobia that enabled a flawed system to continue for so long. Along the way, she reveals and weighs the heavy price of shame.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Kelsey Snelling (00:00):
This episode contains descriptions of disordered eating and diet behavior.
This language could be sensitive for some listeners, so please
take care. Camp Shane, like any other summer camp, had
a set of traditions that kept it afloat. Starting in
the late nineties, one of those traditions was watching the
movie Heavyweights, the Disney movie from nineteen ninety five about
(00:22):
a boy's weight loss camp. In the film, a group
of campers hold an uprising against the camp's oppressive, militaristic
leader played by Ben Stiller.
Heavyweights Archival (00:32):
Attention, campers. Lunch has been canceled today due to lack
of hustle. Deal with it.
Kelsey Snelling (00:39):
It's based at least partially on Camp Shane. I actually
talked to the director of the movie, Steve Brill.
Steve (00:46):
My name is Steve Brill. I think I was built
as Steven Brill earlier in my career, but I dropped
the "N". I thought it was too pretentious.
Kelsey Snelling (00:54):
Great! Okay, I won't call you Steven then. Steve told
me that the idea for the movie came from an advertisement.
When he was a kid, Steve saw the notorious Camp
Shane ad in the back of the New York Times magazine.
You know, the one with a skinny kid holding out
his waistband inches away from his body to show off
how much weight he'd lost.
Steve (01:14):
I would always stare at that ad, going Wow, what
would it be like to go there?
Kelsey Snelling (01:19):
Years later, Steve was working in Hollywood brainstorming movie ideas
with then rookie producer Judd Apatow,
Steve (01:26):
And I told him that about that ad. He said,
we have to make it that. So that's how it
became about a weight loss camp, and particularly about Camp Shane,
because that was the only camp that we knew about.
Kelsey Snelling (01:38):
If you know anything about Camp Shane, then when you
watch Heavyweights you can see the parallels. There are kids
smuggling candy. There are weigh ins, there's a bus driver
pretending to pull into a fast food drive through before
course correcting in the direction of camp. There are even
go karts,
Heavyweights Archival (01:56):
Go carts! How many times can you go on the go carts?
As much as you want, Jerry.
Kelsey Snelling (02:00):
Jerry, if you went to Camp Shane, you'd be sorely disappointed.
The go carts were always broken. For many kids who
had not yet been to Camp Shane, Heavyweights was their
point of reference, and the movie made camp look crazy fun.
When I was interviewing people for this show. It came
up again and again.
Stephen (02:22):
Movies like Heavyweights.
Seth (02:23):
That movie Heavyweights.
Casey (02:24):
I think we all saw Heavyweights.
Stephen (02:26):
All I really had naturally was Heavyweights in my mind.
Nelson (02:28):
It was like the movie Heavyweights.
Kelsey Snelling (02:31):
But Camp Shane wasn't quite like Heavyweights, not really. Even
Steve Brill could see that. During his research, he watched
several promotional videos from fat camps all over the country.
Steve (02:43):
The Camp Shane when it was always just something a
little off about it. I remember being bummed ultimately that
the camp that I was hoping would be the model
camp was shady.
Kelsey Snelling (02:57):
This is Camp Shame. I'm your host, Kelsey Snelling. Today
we're talking about Camp Shane's new ownership, mother son squabbles
and an innocent film screening gone awry. Like the camp
in Heavyweights, Camp Shane passed hands from an older married
couple to a young man with a fresh perspective. But
(03:20):
instead of the fitness guru Ben Stiller, Camp Shane had
David Ettenberg. By nineteen ninety, he had been camp director
for eight years and business was booming. The proof was
in the sugar free pudding. Shane's tax returns that year
showed profits of two hundred and sixty thousand dollars. Adjusted
(03:41):
for twenty twenty five, that's upwards of six hundred and
thirty thousand dollars, and that's just from the nine weeks
that Camp Shane was open each year, and enrollment was rising.
By nineteen ninety five, four hundred kids had signed up
to go to Camp Shane. It had come a long
way since the twenty nine campers of its opening year
(04:01):
in nineteen sixty nine. Looking back at the nineties, there
are certain things you might remember, like Friends, Seinfeld and
the Simpsons dominating television, or Sir Mix A Lot's "Baby
Got Back" on the radio.
Baby Got Back Archive (04:22):
I liked big butts and I can not lie. You otha brothas can't deny.
Kelsey Snelling (04:26):
Maybe you have memories of walking around your hometown mall
or sitting at home in the computer room exploring the
World Wide Web. These cultural touchstones might make you sigh
with happy nostalgia, But there was another cultural undercurrent roaring
through the nineties, fat phobia. Fat Phobia wasn't new, but
(04:49):
as pop culture shifted and advertising became all the more pervasive,
it was taking on fresh tactics to convince Americans that
being fat was something to fear, something to be mocked,
and if you were fat you'd better spend serious chunks
of your hard earned money trying to slim down,
Special K Archival (05:09):
And. Protein can help you keep missiles while you lose fat.
So make the special k breakfast part of your daily
diet and exercise plan.
Slim Fast Archival (05:18):
That's why I chose the Ultra Slim Fast Plan and
I lost fifty pounds in six months.
Workout Archival (05:23):
Your body can be trim toned, firm, slim, fit, and
in shape in just eight weeks. Now there's the Sports
Illustrated Super Shape Up program fully sponsored by Diet PEPSI.
Kelsey Snelling (05:36):
Trim toned, firm, slim, fit and in shape. I think
we get the point. When you weren't explicitly being sold
thinness like in those ads, it was still implicitly being
marketed towards you. Fashion magazines were filled with images of
emaciated models with pale skin and dark circles under their eyes,
(05:57):
a look dubbed heroin chic without an ounce of irony.
These models weren't selling diet pills or exercise plans, but
they were communicating the idea that thinness equals beauty, even
if it's a thinness that can only be obtained through
objectively unhealthy means like drug addiction or disordered eating, and
(06:19):
in TV and movies, fat people were constantly the butt
of the jokes, once again sending the message that being
fat is abnormal and shameful. Take the show Friends, for instance,
it was filled with jokes about Monica's weight.
Friends Archival (06:34):
Oh oh, and I'm sorry that I said you were
a cow in high school. That's okay, I was a cow.
I know, I'm just sorry I said it.
Kelsey Snelling (06:45):
All of these signals were affecting people's psyches. For example,
in nineteen ninety four, Esquire magazine printed an article revealing
that fifty four percent of women surveyed would rather be
hit by a truck than be fat. Think about that,
women would rather be seriously injured or die than be fat.
(07:09):
This fear of fatness could have stemmed from the fact
that between nineteen eighty and the late nineties, childhood obesity
rates in America nearly tripled, hovering around fifteen percent. In
nineteen ninety seven, the World Health Organization declared obesity as
a major public health problem and a global epidemic. Around
(07:31):
the same time, the American Heart Association added obesity to
its list of major risk factors for heart disease and
heart attacks. Then, in nineteen ninety eight, the National Institutes
of Health changed body mass index or BMI categories. For
those who don't know, BMI is a medical screening tool
(07:51):
that measures the ratio of your height to your weight.
The resulting number supposedly indicates how much body fat you
have. Your number places you into four categories underweight, healthy weight, overweight, or obese.
Under the new guidelines, a BMI of twenty six or
higher was considered overweight. With this change, millions of Americans
(08:16):
went to bed normal sized and then woke up overweight
without gaining a single pound. The National Institutes of Health
told reporters at the time that the changes were necessary
because of studies linking extra weight to health problems. Parents
and physicians alike now had a medical cause to prescribe
(08:37):
fat camp to even more children. But here's the thing.
BMI actually does a crap job of assessing how healthy
someone is, and it was never meant to assess the
health of an individual in the first place.
Dr. Erlanger (08:51):
It was developed by a Belgian mathematician in the eighteen hundreds.
Kelsey Snelling (08:55):
That's doctor Lisa Erlanger. She's a family physician, educator, activist,
and speaker who focuses on anti bias weight inclusive trauma
informed care for patients of all sizes and backgrounds. This mathematician,
named Adolphe Quetelet, was simply collecting data on averages. He never
intended for this to be used as a medical prescription. Plus,
(09:19):
he conducted his measurements only on men, and this was
nearly two hundred years ago. Clearly, his findings are far
from applicable in most modern societies.
Dr. Erlanger (09:29):
Those ideas were adopted by eugenicists people trying to create
the ideal human. And also later this BMI, which was
never intended to measure the health of an individual, particularly
not in our modern community, started to be used as
a way to assess the health of an individual.
Kelsey Snelling (09:50):
And here's another thing. BMI does not take into account
muscle mass, body composition, or really anything other than height
versus weight.
Dr. Erlanger (10:00):
BMS is also just an incredibly poor predictor of how
much body fat a person has. And we know this intuitively, right.
We know two hundred and fifty pound people who are
all muscle, and we know one hundred and fifty pound
people who are all fat. And so the idea that
just taking these two measurements would tell us how fat
a person is is intuitively ridiculous.
Kelsey Snelling (10:21):
Researchers have found that BMI alone is not a good
indicator of mortality risk. In some studies, people in the
overweight category actually had the lowest mortality rate of anyone.
Obese people fare better than any other group when faced
with congestive heart failure, certain bypass surgeries, and hypertensive heart disease.
(10:42):
Ironic because doctors often use BMI to determine the types
of treatment a patient will receive, and a patient's BMI
can even affect their insurance premiums.
Dr. Erlanger (10:53):
And so not only was this never intended to be
a measure of health, the way we use it is
clearly not a reflection of health.
Kelsey Snelling (11:04):
Contrary to popular belief, it's extremely possible to be healthy
and fat at the same time. Yet in nineties America
and at Camp Shane, that possibility was completely unrecognized. In fact,
obesity was starting to be viewed as a disease. To
weight inclusive health experts like doctor Rachel Milner. These attempts
(11:27):
to turn body size into a disease not only to
humanize people and put blame where it doesn't belong, it
also sets people up for ineffective treatment. It's why she
actually avoids using the words obese or overweight.
Dr. Millner (11:40):
This language and this attempt to identify body size as
a disease is really a way for the pharmaceutical companies
and for the diet industry to make money. If we
say bodies are a disease and then they come up
with these so called interventions. This is a multi multi
billion dollar industry.
Kelsey Snelling (12:01):
A condition can be classified as a disease if it
impairs the normal functioning of the body, but millions of
fat people have no negative symptoms at all. In fact,
fat storage is actually the human body working properly. It's
a key component of our species survival. With this in mind,
Doctor Millner doesn't think weight should factor into medical treatment.
Dr. Millner (12:24):
The only role that body size should play in medical
treatment is if the dosage of a medication or anesthesia
or a blood pressure cuff needs to be adjusted to
make sure that it's safe and effective for the size
of the person's body. Outside of that, it is unethical
(12:46):
to make body size a part of treatment.
Kelsey Snelling (12:50):
So yes, Americans were getting fatter throughout the nineties. I mean,
how could we not when eleven servings of grain were
at the base of the food pyramid. But BMI was
also screwing with obesity data, we can now look back
and realize it wasn't really the health catastrophe the National
Institutes of Health or the World Health Organization would have
(13:11):
us believe. But at the time, rising childhood obesity rates
and rampant fat phobia and popular culture meant more parents
were concerned about their children's weight and more people were
interested in Camp Shane than ever. Behind the scenes, Camp
Shane was going through some major strife. Selma and her
(13:31):
son David were caught up in a battle for ownership
and things were about to get nasty. Not yet ready
to pass the reins to her son, Selma still owned
the camp, but David was camp director and partial owner.
He and his wife, Ziporah moved into the house in
the center of camp and lived there. During the summer season,
Salma moved into a house across the street from camp.
(13:54):
That meant David had more power and presence than ever before.
Under David's reign things were different because his motivation wasn't necessarily
to help kids lose weight like it was for Selma.
Sue (14:07):
The biggest change between Selma and David's era is that
you could tell by lots of little things that it
had become a business, a for profit business.
Kelsey Snelling (14:21):
That's Sue Steinberg, who you heard from last episode. By
the nineties, she was working at Camp Shane as a lifeguard,
swim instructor, and later on head of the pool. She
witnessed what she saw as a rocky transition from Selma
to David.
Sue (14:36):
I did recognize the signs of the lack of love
for this community and with that said,um, giving David Ettenberg
the benefit of the doubt. To him, it was a business,
you know. Like he never purported to have started a
camp for fat people to create a bubble of societal
(14:59):
you know, marginalized people who could explore their identities. You know, like,
he never would have said that Camp Shane was supposed
to be that to him, he would. Have said, you know,
I am running a business, and he ran it as
such for sure.
Kelsey Snelling (15:18):
Another person who noticed this was Jenna Hopkins. Jenna was
a group leader throughout the nineties. She saw David's leadership
style grow increasingly lax over time.
Jenna (15:28):
It seemed to be better managed by the owners and
staff in the beginning. It just seemed like maybe it
was too big for them to properly manage, and maybe
weren't even really, we're just taking the money and running,
you know. Just it's all right, Well that happens who cares,
you know. That was sort of the mentality that it
seemed to be as the years went on.
Kelsey Snelling (15:50):
What happened next was an avalanche. According to reporting from
Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Selma insisted that David and his wife Ziporah
live in their house on camp all year long, even
outside of the summer season. David and Ziporah said no.
According to David, Selma then sent the sheriff to evict
(16:11):
them from their on campus house. Selma later claimed that
David abruptly announced he was quitting during the crucial hiring
period in April before camp began. We're sure whether or
not he actually did. Because of this debacle, which may
or may not have even happened, Selma and her husband, Irving,
(16:32):
furiously filed a lawsuit to invalidate their previous agreement, the
one that said David would one day own the Camp.
David then used his minority shareholder status to dissolve the company.
An ugly legal battle ensued. In the end, both parties
agreed that David would.
Purchase the Camp for one point two million dollars. By
(16:55):
nineteen ninety three, David was the sole owner of Camp Shane.
Though David and his mother were often at odds, he
did continue a few of her business practices, like hiring
counselors through exchange programs like Camp America, an organization that
sends camp counselors from other countries across the globe to
(17:16):
America for summer jobs. This saved David money because Camp
America counselors generally worked for lower wages than state side
counselors would, and David loved saving money. Camp America counselors
are some of the central characters behind the grandest of
(17:37):
Camp Shane lore, like the supplier of the M and
M cartel in episode one, Remember Heavyweights. Each year, a
counselor would drive to the Blockbuster in town to rent
the VHS tape and host a screening in the gymnasium.
And yes, I know some of you listening are probably
googling Blockbuster and VHS tape right about now. But one
(17:58):
year the screening didn't white go according to plan.
Nelson (18:01):
There was the operations manager then was from Eastern Europe
and he had a heavy accent, and he was told
to go to Blockbuster and rent Heavyweights. Well, I don't
know why we didn't have it at the camp. We
watch it every year. God bless him. He goes to
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 (18:38):
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
Nelson (18:53):
And they put in what they think is Heavyweights, and
they turn it off when it wasn't Heavyweights. It was Heevyweights, which
was this graphic porno. It only lasted for like a
few seconds to like Big Dog, who was like a
notorious counselor, jumped in front of the projector. But all
(19:16):
the kids whore like five seconds saw this like graphic
sex act.
Kelsey Snelling (19:20):
We're talking around one hundred kids, some as young as
eight years old being exposed to graphic pornography. Somehow, despite
this mishap, the Heavyweight screenings continued with the actual movie.
Of course. Another Camp America counselor was a British former
race car driver named Simon Greenwood. Merryl Winter, a camper
(19:45):
and then counselor throughout the eighties, nineties, and two thousands,
worked closely with Simon.
Merryl (19:50):
All the girls fell in love with Simon. He had
an English accent, he was adorable, and he's meticulous, so
he was always good at what he did.
Kelsey Snelling (20:00):
If this were really like the movie Heavyweights, then Simon
would be Pat the encouraging counselor that all the kids
and fellow staffers love, only like the Lady Magnet version.
David loved Simon too, and soon David made him his
right hand man, and they were quite the character foils
to one another. Where David was distant,
Merryl (20:21):
He never took the time to get to know the kids,
he didn't know any of them.
Kelsey Snelling (20:27):
Simon was invested.
Merryl (20:29):
He was a hard worker, he loved the kids, he
loved the concept of camp, and he was really the
backbone of that camp. It wouldn't have survived without him.
Kelsey Snelling (20:42):
But Selma was still living across the street from camp,
and she didn't care how many passionate, hard working sidekicks
David had by his side. She challenged David at every turn.
She may have no longer been the camp's owner, but
she was still around, helping out in the office and
riding her golf cart on the campgrounds to yell at
kids for chewing gum. Even when she was off campus,
(21:04):
she never really left. She was known to watch whatever
she could from her house. If that sounds like I'm exaggerating,
I'm not. She sometimes sat on her porch with a
pair of binoculars to peer inside the camp. She even
contested the sale of the camp, claiming she felt pressure
to sell at a low price. Everyone could see the
continuing tension between Selma and David, including Merryl.
Merryl (21:28):
I saw they were feuding. You couldn't not see they
were feuding when they weren't talking. Yet they were sharing
an office together, and they were mother and son, so
it's really hard to fathom. But she installed a lock
on the door so if David walked out of the office,
she would just lock it from her seat, which was
(21:51):
kind of funny.
Kelsey Snelling (21:52):
And these were the adults in charge of hundreds of children.
Janna Hopkins, the group leader you heard from earlier, noticed
the rivalry between Selma and David as soon as she
stepped on camp for her first day of work.
Janna (22:06):
Everybody knew that there was a battle going on. It
was just it was, you know, it permeated everything.
Kelsey Snelling (22:11):
Janna was a single mom in Texas when she came
across an ad for Camp Shane in the back of
a teacher's magazine. She decided to apply and got a
job as a group leader.
Jenna (22:21):
Kind of thought, well, I'm going to make money. I
got an opportunity to be in the outdoors and maybe
lose some weight. Plus my kid camps for free. This
is pretty cool, and you escape the you know, one
thousand degree summers in Dallas.
Kelsey Snelling (22:39):
Jana drove herself and her seven year old all the
way from Dallas to the Catskills. That's a crazy journey
for a single mom to make, but she did it.
After days on the road, Janna arrived in Ferndale and
drove into the center of Camp Shane.
Janna (22:55):
So I drive in and I park, and we get out,
and I walk up to the you know, the window
of the office and this woman slams the window open
and she looks at me and she says, what do
you want? So I'm immediately thinking, oh, no. You know,
maybe I'm in the wrong place.
Kelsey Snelling (23:15):
I don't know.
Janna (23:16):
And I said hi, I said, my name is Janna,
and I said I'm supposed to be a group leader
this summer. And she looks at me and she says,
I didn't hire you. Go home, And I'm just standing
there with my kid going uh oh, I have to say,
I mean, so many things are running through my head.
I'm literally still standing there. And then David Ettenberg comes
(23:38):
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 (23:45):
But Janna couldn't really ignore Selma. She kept making herself
known and flexing power that she didn't really have anymore.
One day, Janna took a group of her campers for
a walk into town. One of the girls fell and
hurt her leg. It hurt so much she couldn't walk
back to camp. So Janna ran back to camp to
get her car and drove the girl to the infirmary
(24:07):
on campus.
Janna (24:08):
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 (25:34):
Truly horrifying. Remember, at this point, Selma was no longer
in charge, but that didn't stop her from trying to
discipline staffers as if she were. Her presence still loomed large.
Janna (25:47):
And I honestly I was afraid of her. There are
a lot of people who love her and have a
lot of respect for her, But I didn't see or
know that Selma. I just saw the one who was
overwrought with the desire to get her camp back and
would do anything she could to do that.
Kelsey Snelling (26:05):
Jana didn't know just how far Selma was willing to go.
In nineteen ninety five, a smoke alarm went off in
Selma's house across the street from Camp, prompting a visit
from the fire department. The police investigated. Leslie, Selma's daughter
(26:28):
and David's sister believed Selma started the fire herself, using
old newspapers and film negatives to frame David. Selma claimed
she wasn't home that evening. Later that summer, a quote
"concerned parent" sent an anonymous letter to the New York
State Department of Health calling attention to overcrowding and poor
(26:50):
food quality at Shane. The thing is the letter included
lots of insider details like enrollment figures, bunk square footage,
and health inspection dates. To David, the letter wasn't anonymous
at all. With all of this drama and chaos going on,
(27:10):
no one seemed to be prioritizing the kids. Sometime that August,
a fourteen year old broke his collarbone while allegedly playing
unsupervised at the off campus Lake. Nineteen ninety five was
Janna's last summer. At this point, she'd been at Camp
Shane for years. She had the sense that something bad
(27:32):
was going to happen, and she didn't want to be
there when it did.
Jenna (27:36):
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 (27:55):
Another thing David wasn't handling well, the food. David didn't
prioritize nutrition so much as he prioritized cutting calories, so
kids were served the same junk food they were likely
eating at home, just much smaller portions, say two French
toasticks for breakfast instead of four, and then for dinner
one slice of pizza instead of two or three, served
(28:17):
with a glass of milk. Not enough food to sustain
kids doing eight hours of exercise a day. Now, there
was one workaround, at least for the skinny campers at Shane.
If kids were deemed an acceptable level of thin, they
were sometimes awarded a visit to... The Pig Out Room, a
(28:42):
supply closet off the dining hall filled with all the
contraband snacks that Shaners weren't allowed to eat, peanut butter
and jelly sandwiches, candy chips, cakes baked by the camp chefs.
Sue (28:55):
And then of the people that were like normal weighted people,
they had the pig out where. You know, I never
got there, so I'm not really sure, but I think
there was peanut butter there. You know.
Kelsey Snelling (29:07):
The Pig Out Room disappeared in the late nineties, but
while it existed, it was protected like a national treasure.
Sometimes staff would check bags and backpacks to make sure
no one was hiding any contraband food that they might
have smuggled from the room. Campers were almost never allowed
in there, try as they might, and most counselors weren't either.
(29:29):
Only the fittest were permitted, those who had reached Camp
Shane's definition of a goal weight. Usually that meant the
Camp America counselors who were already thin and weren't at
Camp Shane to lose anything. So camper's food intake was
heavily restricted, and then their reward for restriction was to
(29:51):
eat a bunch of cake and cookies in The Pig
Out room. It's a confusing message that further fetishized quote
"bad foods" and not one that in stilled healthy habits.
Sue remembers a Camp America counselor who was a semi
professional soccer player. He was one of those straight sized
counselors who would have been allowed to go to The
Pig Out Room. He didn't understand this relationship that camp
(30:14):
was establishing between campers and food.
Sue (30:17):
For him, food was fuel. He never could compute. And
I just remember the whole summer of him being like,
I do not get it. These kids are out there
running all day and we are feeding them, you know,
a teaspoon of apple butter and some dried toast and
some cottage cheese.
Kelsey Snelling (30:38):
Like her fellow counselors, Sue also had questions about the
camp's approach to food and how it was all adding up.
One day, she got a glimpse of the numbers and
learned just how little these kids were surviving off of
Sue (30:51):
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 (31:48):
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 (32:31):
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 (32:52):
Stacy told me about the shame and embarrassment she felt
growing up in a bigger body. She hated walking to
the plus size section to pick out her new swimsuit,
and she was always comparing herself to her stepsisters, who
were just naturally smaller than her, while she listened to
her grandma brag about only drinking water and eating Ritz
Crackers all day. Stacy used food as a coping mechanism
(33:14):
after a traumatic experience in her childhood. She felt like
a black sheep in her family.
Stacy (33:21):
But looking back at photos, I looked like an Olympic swimmer,
Like I looked like a healthy person with a lot
of muscle mass. And it wasn't until I was at
Camp Shane that I learned how to purge, you know,
to binge and purge, how to avoid food right like
(33:42):
if we were going to be weighed in the next day,
everybody would just not eat.
Kelsey Snelling (33:46):
This mentality to lose weight by all means necessary was dangerous.
At Camp Shane, Stacy experienced disordered eating, long hours exercising.
And little food. After a few weeks of this, she
got sick and because she was at fat camp. The
counselors didn't believe her. They thought she was just making
(34:09):
excuses to get out of exercising.
Stacy (34:11):
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 (35:07):
Stacy had bronchitis, which turned into walking pneumonia. She was
given broth and tea, but that was it. She kept
coughing and soon cracked a rib.
Stacy (35:19):
My body was overwhelmed with the amount of exercise and
extreme pressure that it was being put under physically and
not supported with nutrition, and that led to my body
literally crashing, crumpling to beg for help. I mean, that's
(35:42):
what sickness is, right is our body physically telling us
to slow down, to rest, to recover.
Kelsey Snelling (35:49):
Stacy went home early that summer feeling like a failure.
She didn't accomplish what she went to Camp Shane to
do to lose weight to become skinny. She tried to
replicate the weight loss tactics she learned from camp at home.
Stacy (36:04):
I would starve myself. I would try to restrict my
calories the way that had been restricted at camp, and
then I would starve. I was just so hungry that
then I would binge, and then I would feel badly
about having binged, and then I would purge, and that
cycle would go over and over and over again. I
(36:29):
don't know that I fully understood body shame until I
went to a fat camp, and it's why it was
called Camp Shame. We didn't call it "Camp Shane". We
called it Camp Shame. And the messaging was very much
especially for children who had been going for years. It
(36:53):
was a focus on you get love, you get attention,
you get these sort of things when you perform at camp,
and performance in that instance was losing weight.
Kelsey Snelling (37:09):
Stacy's experience of starting with calorie restriction and developing disordered
eating from there is a pretty common long term effect
according to psychologists and certified eating disorder specialist doctor Rachel Millner.
Dr. Millner (37:24):
So anything that is an attempt to either lose weight
or prevent weight gain for kids and adolescents who need
to be growing and developing, is going to increase their
risk of eating disorders. And if they're not somebody that
developed an eating disorder, it's still going to put them
in a place where they're constantly weight cycling, so they're
(37:45):
trying to lose weight and then regain weight, which we
know as a negative impact on health, and where they
don't get to feel fully embodied, that they feel like
their body is constantly betraying them.
Kelsey Snelling (38:01):
Of course, this mindset and messaging wasn't only playing out
at Camp Shane. It was happening at home, at school
and in the TV and movies kids watched, which brings
us back to Heavyweights. One interesting thing about the movie is,
even though it was released in nineteen ninety five, it's
somehow not filled with outdated fat phobic jokes like you
(38:23):
might expect. The movie is a comedy, but the jokes
are rarely at the expense of the fat characters. Director
Steve Brill said that was intentional.
Steve (38:32):
I certainly wanted to ennoble and make these characters fun
and people you could look up to and not make
fun of, which is obviously what the fat guy or
the fat kid has always been in movies. By being overweight,
you know, the shame and self criticism and the doubt
(38:53):
that it brings into you is is really harmful. And
that's something that you know, we wanted to address as
a problem, and that's something that you know, hopefully the
kids when they watch the movie, they go, oh, it's
all right, it's all right to be overweight.
Kelsey Snelling (39:10):
If you've never seen the movie, then spoiler alert, I'm
about to talk about the ending. The campers have successfully
ousted their militaristic camp director and they've just won the
annual competition against their rival. Camp Music swells as the
campers all cheer and hug each other. The main character
Jerry turns to Pat the camp counselor, and says.
Heavyweights Archival (39:31):
Thanks for the best damn summer of my life.
Kelsey Snelling (39:41):
Unfortunately that's just a movie. At the end of a
Camp Shane summer, there's no trophy, no music that swells
as the credits start to roll. No hearts filled with
new lessons about loving yourself in spite of the bullies
and naysayers. It is all right to be fat, like
Steve said, but our culture is often telling us otherwise.
(40:05):
So even though almost all Shaners had fun at one
point or another, I don't think any of them walked
away from camp thinking it's all right to be heavy.
Another difference between Camp Shane and the fictional Camp Hope.
The camp owner at Shane hadn't been ousted. In fact,
(40:25):
in spite of his mother's sabotage, David was about to
lead Camp Shane into its biggest decade yet. Next week.
On Camp Shane.
Merryl (40:38):
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 (40:54):
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
This episode contains descriptions of disordered eating and diet behavior.
This language could be sensitive for some listeners, so please
take care. Camp Shane, like any other summer camp, had
a set of traditions that kept it afloat. Starting in
the late nineties, one of those traditions was watching the
movie Heavyweights, the Disney movie from nineteen ninety five about
(00:22):
a boy's weight loss camp. In the film, a group
of campers hold an uprising against the camp's oppressive, militaristic
leader played by Ben Stiller.
Heavyweights Archival (00:32):
Attention, campers. Lunch has been canceled today due to lack
of hustle. Deal with it.
Kelsey Snelling (00:39):
It's based at least partially on Camp Shane. I actually
talked to the director of the movie, Steve Brill.
Steve (00:46):
My name is Steve Brill. I think I was built
as Steven Brill earlier in my career, but I dropped
the "N". I thought it was too pretentious.
Kelsey Snelling (00:54):
Great! Okay, I won't call you Steven then. Steve told
me that the idea for the movie came from an advertisement.
When he was a kid, Steve saw the notorious Camp
Shane ad in the back of the New York Times magazine.
You know, the one with a skinny kid holding out
his waistband inches away from his body to show off
how much weight he'd lost.
Steve (01:14):
I would always stare at that ad, going Wow, what
would it be like to go there?
Kelsey Snelling (01:19):
Years later, Steve was working in Hollywood brainstorming movie ideas
with then rookie producer Judd Apatow,
Steve (01:26):
And I told him that about that ad. He said,
we have to make it that. So that's how it
became about a weight loss camp, and particularly about Camp Shane,
because that was the only camp that we knew about.
Kelsey Snelling (01:38):
If you know anything about Camp Shane, then when you
watch Heavyweights you can see the parallels. There are kids
smuggling candy. There are weigh ins, there's a bus driver
pretending to pull into a fast food drive through before
course correcting in the direction of camp. There are even
go karts,
Heavyweights Archival (01:56):
Go carts! How many times can you go on the go carts?
As much as you want, Jerry.
Kelsey Snelling (02:00):
Jerry, if you went to Camp Shane, you'd be sorely disappointed.
The go carts were always broken. For many kids who
had not yet been to Camp Shane, Heavyweights was their
point of reference, and the movie made camp look crazy fun.
When I was interviewing people for this show. It came
up again and again.
Stephen (02:22):
Movies like Heavyweights.
Seth (02:23):
That movie Heavyweights.
Casey (02:24):
I think we all saw Heavyweights.
Stephen (02:26):
All I really had naturally was Heavyweights in my mind.
Nelson (02:28):
It was like the movie Heavyweights.
Kelsey Snelling (02:31):
But Camp Shane wasn't quite like Heavyweights, not really. Even
Steve Brill could see that. During his research, he watched
several promotional videos from fat camps all over the country.
Steve (02:43):
The Camp Shane when it was always just something a
little off about it. I remember being bummed ultimately that
the camp that I was hoping would be the model
camp was shady.
Kelsey Snelling (02:57):
This is Camp Shame. I'm your host, Kelsey Snelling. Today
we're talking about Camp Shane's new ownership, mother son squabbles
and an innocent film screening gone awry. Like the camp
in Heavyweights, Camp Shane passed hands from an older married
couple to a young man with a fresh perspective. But
(03:20):
instead of the fitness guru Ben Stiller, Camp Shane had
David Ettenberg. By nineteen ninety, he had been camp director
for eight years and business was booming. The proof was
in the sugar free pudding. Shane's tax returns that year
showed profits of two hundred and sixty thousand dollars. Adjusted
(03:41):
for twenty twenty five, that's upwards of six hundred and
thirty thousand dollars, and that's just from the nine weeks
that Camp Shane was open each year, and enrollment was rising.
By nineteen ninety five, four hundred kids had signed up
to go to Camp Shane. It had come a long
way since the twenty nine campers of its opening year
(04:01):
in nineteen sixty nine. Looking back at the nineties, there
are certain things you might remember, like Friends, Seinfeld and
the Simpsons dominating television, or Sir Mix A Lot's "Baby
Got Back" on the radio.
Baby Got Back Archive (04:22):
I liked big butts and I can not lie. You otha brothas can't deny.
Kelsey Snelling (04:26):
Maybe you have memories of walking around your hometown mall
or sitting at home in the computer room exploring the
World Wide Web. These cultural touchstones might make you sigh
with happy nostalgia, But there was another cultural undercurrent roaring
through the nineties, fat phobia. Fat Phobia wasn't new, but
(04:49):
as pop culture shifted and advertising became all the more pervasive,
it was taking on fresh tactics to convince Americans that
being fat was something to fear, something to be mocked,
and if you were fat you'd better spend serious chunks
of your hard earned money trying to slim down,
Special K Archival (05:09):
And. Protein can help you keep missiles while you lose fat.
So make the special k breakfast part of your daily
diet and exercise plan.
Slim Fast Archival (05:18):
That's why I chose the Ultra Slim Fast Plan and
I lost fifty pounds in six months.
Workout Archival (05:23):
Your body can be trim toned, firm, slim, fit, and
in shape in just eight weeks. Now there's the Sports
Illustrated Super Shape Up program fully sponsored by Diet PEPSI.
Kelsey Snelling (05:36):
Trim toned, firm, slim, fit and in shape. I think
we get the point. When you weren't explicitly being sold
thinness like in those ads, it was still implicitly being
marketed towards you. Fashion magazines were filled with images of
emaciated models with pale skin and dark circles under their eyes,
(05:57):
a look dubbed heroin chic without an ounce of irony.
These models weren't selling diet pills or exercise plans, but
they were communicating the idea that thinness equals beauty, even
if it's a thinness that can only be obtained through
objectively unhealthy means like drug addiction or disordered eating, and
(06:19):
in TV and movies, fat people were constantly the butt
of the jokes, once again sending the message that being
fat is abnormal and shameful. Take the show Friends, for instance,
it was filled with jokes about Monica's weight.
Friends Archival (06:34):
Oh oh, and I'm sorry that I said you were
a cow in high school. That's okay, I was a cow.
I know, I'm just sorry I said it.
Kelsey Snelling (06:45):
All of these signals were affecting people's psyches. For example,
in nineteen ninety four, Esquire magazine printed an article revealing
that fifty four percent of women surveyed would rather be
hit by a truck than be fat. Think about that,
women would rather be seriously injured or die than be fat.
(07:09):
This fear of fatness could have stemmed from the fact
that between nineteen eighty and the late nineties, childhood obesity
rates in America nearly tripled, hovering around fifteen percent. In
nineteen ninety seven, the World Health Organization declared obesity as
a major public health problem and a global epidemic. Around
(07:31):
the same time, the American Heart Association added obesity to
its list of major risk factors for heart disease and
heart attacks. Then, in nineteen ninety eight, the National Institutes
of Health changed body mass index or BMI categories. For
those who don't know, BMI is a medical screening tool
(07:51):
that measures the ratio of your height to your weight.
The resulting number supposedly indicates how much body fat you
have. Your number places you into four categories underweight, healthy weight, overweight, or obese.
Under the new guidelines, a BMI of twenty six or
higher was considered overweight. With this change, millions of Americans
(08:16):
went to bed normal sized and then woke up overweight
without gaining a single pound. The National Institutes of Health
told reporters at the time that the changes were necessary
because of studies linking extra weight to health problems. Parents
and physicians alike now had a medical cause to prescribe
(08:37):
fat camp to even more children. But here's the thing.
BMI actually does a crap job of assessing how healthy
someone is, and it was never meant to assess the
health of an individual in the first place.
Dr. Erlanger (08:51):
It was developed by a Belgian mathematician in the eighteen hundreds.
Kelsey Snelling (08:55):
That's doctor Lisa Erlanger. She's a family physician, educator, activist,
and speaker who focuses on anti bias weight inclusive trauma
informed care for patients of all sizes and backgrounds. This mathematician,
named Adolphe Quetelet, was simply collecting data on averages. He never
intended for this to be used as a medical prescription. Plus,
(09:19):
he conducted his measurements only on men, and this was
nearly two hundred years ago. Clearly, his findings are far
from applicable in most modern societies.
Dr. Erlanger (09:29):
Those ideas were adopted by eugenicists people trying to create
the ideal human. And also later this BMI, which was
never intended to measure the health of an individual, particularly
not in our modern community, started to be used as
a way to assess the health of an individual.
Kelsey Snelling (09:50):
And here's another thing. BMI does not take into account
muscle mass, body composition, or really anything other than height
versus weight.
Dr. Erlanger (10:00):
BMS is also just an incredibly poor predictor of how
much body fat a person has. And we know this intuitively, right.
We know two hundred and fifty pound people who are
all muscle, and we know one hundred and fifty pound
people who are all fat. And so the idea that
just taking these two measurements would tell us how fat
a person is is intuitively ridiculous.
Kelsey Snelling (10:21):
Researchers have found that BMI alone is not a good
indicator of mortality risk. In some studies, people in the
overweight category actually had the lowest mortality rate of anyone.
Obese people fare better than any other group when faced
with congestive heart failure, certain bypass surgeries, and hypertensive heart disease.
(10:42):
Ironic because doctors often use BMI to determine the types
of treatment a patient will receive, and a patient's BMI
can even affect their insurance premiums.
Dr. Erlanger (10:53):
And so not only was this never intended to be
a measure of health, the way we use it is
clearly not a reflection of health.
Kelsey Snelling (11:04):
Contrary to popular belief, it's extremely possible to be healthy
and fat at the same time. Yet in nineties America
and at Camp Shane, that possibility was completely unrecognized. In fact,
obesity was starting to be viewed as a disease. To
weight inclusive health experts like doctor Rachel Milner. These attempts
(11:27):
to turn body size into a disease not only to
humanize people and put blame where it doesn't belong, it
also sets people up for ineffective treatment. It's why she
actually avoids using the words obese or overweight.
Dr. Millner (11:40):
This language and this attempt to identify body size as
a disease is really a way for the pharmaceutical companies
and for the diet industry to make money. If we
say bodies are a disease and then they come up
with these so called interventions. This is a multi multi
billion dollar industry.
Kelsey Snelling (12:01):
A condition can be classified as a disease if it
impairs the normal functioning of the body, but millions of
fat people have no negative symptoms at all. In fact,
fat storage is actually the human body working properly. It's
a key component of our species survival. With this in mind,
Doctor Millner doesn't think weight should factor into medical treatment.
Dr. Millner (12:24):
The only role that body size should play in medical
treatment is if the dosage of a medication or anesthesia
or a blood pressure cuff needs to be adjusted to
make sure that it's safe and effective for the size
of the person's body. Outside of that, it is unethical
(12:46):
to make body size a part of treatment.
Kelsey Snelling (12:50):
So yes, Americans were getting fatter throughout the nineties. I mean,
how could we not when eleven servings of grain were
at the base of the food pyramid. But BMI was
also screwing with obesity data, we can now look back
and realize it wasn't really the health catastrophe the National
Institutes of Health or the World Health Organization would have
(13:11):
us believe. But at the time, rising childhood obesity rates
and rampant fat phobia and popular culture meant more parents
were concerned about their children's weight and more people were
interested in Camp Shane than ever. Behind the scenes, Camp
Shane was going through some major strife. Selma and her
(13:31):
son David were caught up in a battle for ownership
and things were about to get nasty. Not yet ready
to pass the reins to her son, Selma still owned
the camp, but David was camp director and partial owner.
He and his wife, Ziporah moved into the house in
the center of camp and lived there. During the summer season,
Salma moved into a house across the street from camp.
(13:54):
That meant David had more power and presence than ever before.
Under David's reign things were different because his motivation wasn't necessarily
to help kids lose weight like it was for Selma.
Sue (14:07):
The biggest change between Selma and David's era is that
you could tell by lots of little things that it
had become a business, a for profit business.
Kelsey Snelling (14:21):
That's Sue Steinberg, who you heard from last episode. By
the nineties, she was working at Camp Shane as a lifeguard,
swim instructor, and later on head of the pool. She
witnessed what she saw as a rocky transition from Selma
to David.
Sue (14:36):
I did recognize the signs of the lack of love
for this community and with that said,um, giving David Ettenberg
the benefit of the doubt. To him, it was a business,
you know. Like he never purported to have started a
camp for fat people to create a bubble of societal
(14:59):
you know, marginalized people who could explore their identities. You know, like,
he never would have said that Camp Shane was supposed
to be that to him, he would. Have said, you know,
I am running a business, and he ran it as
such for sure.
Kelsey Snelling (15:18):
Another person who noticed this was Jenna Hopkins. Jenna was
a group leader throughout the nineties. She saw David's leadership
style grow increasingly lax over time.
Jenna (15:28):
It seemed to be better managed by the owners and
staff in the beginning. It just seemed like maybe it
was too big for them to properly manage, and maybe
weren't even really, we're just taking the money and running,
you know. Just it's all right, Well that happens who cares,
you know. That was sort of the mentality that it
seemed to be as the years went on.
Kelsey Snelling (15:50):
What happened next was an avalanche. According to reporting from
Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Selma insisted that David and his wife Ziporah
live in their house on camp all year long, even
outside of the summer season. David and Ziporah said no.
According to David, Selma then sent the sheriff to evict
(16:11):
them from their on campus house. Selma later claimed that
David abruptly announced he was quitting during the crucial hiring
period in April before camp began. We're sure whether or
not he actually did. Because of this debacle, which may
or may not have even happened, Selma and her husband, Irving,
(16:32):
furiously filed a lawsuit to invalidate their previous agreement, the
one that said David would one day own the Camp.
David then used his minority shareholder status to dissolve the company.
An ugly legal battle ensued. In the end, both parties
agreed that David would.
Purchase the Camp for one point two million dollars. By
(16:55):
nineteen ninety three, David was the sole owner of Camp Shane.
Though David and his mother were often at odds, he
did continue a few of her business practices, like hiring
counselors through exchange programs like Camp America, an organization that
sends camp counselors from other countries across the globe to
(17:16):
America for summer jobs. This saved David money because Camp
America counselors generally worked for lower wages than state side
counselors would, and David loved saving money. Camp America counselors
are some of the central characters behind the grandest of
(17:37):
Camp Shane lore, like the supplier of the M and
M cartel in episode one, Remember Heavyweights. Each year, a
counselor would drive to the Blockbuster in town to rent
the VHS tape and host a screening in the gymnasium.
And yes, I know some of you listening are probably
googling Blockbuster and VHS tape right about now. But one
(17:58):
year the screening didn't white go according to plan.
Nelson (18:01):
There was the operations manager then was from Eastern Europe
and he had a heavy accent, and he was told
to go to Blockbuster and rent Heavyweights. Well, I don't
know why we didn't have it at the camp. We
watch it every year. God bless him. He goes to
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 (18:38):
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
Nelson (18:53):
And they put in what they think is Heavyweights, and
they turn it off when it wasn't Heavyweights. It was Heevyweights, which
was this graphic porno. It only lasted for like a
few seconds to like Big Dog, who was like a
notorious counselor, jumped in front of the projector. But all
(19:16):
the kids whore like five seconds saw this like graphic
sex act.
Kelsey Snelling (19:20):
We're talking around one hundred kids, some as young as
eight years old being exposed to graphic pornography. Somehow, despite
this mishap, the Heavyweight screenings continued with the actual movie.
Of course. Another Camp America counselor was a British former
race car driver named Simon Greenwood. Merryl Winter, a camper
(19:45):
and then counselor throughout the eighties, nineties, and two thousands,
worked closely with Simon.
Merryl (19:50):
All the girls fell in love with Simon. He had
an English accent, he was adorable, and he's meticulous, so
he was always good at what he did.
Kelsey Snelling (20:00):
If this were really like the movie Heavyweights, then Simon
would be Pat the encouraging counselor that all the kids
and fellow staffers love, only like the Lady Magnet version.
David loved Simon too, and soon David made him his
right hand man, and they were quite the character foils
to one another. Where David was distant,
Merryl (20:21):
He never took the time to get to know the kids,
he didn't know any of them.
Kelsey Snelling (20:27):
Simon was invested.
Merryl (20:29):
He was a hard worker, he loved the kids, he
loved the concept of camp, and he was really the
backbone of that camp. It wouldn't have survived without him.
Kelsey Snelling (20:42):
But Selma was still living across the street from camp,
and she didn't care how many passionate, hard working sidekicks
David had by his side. She challenged David at every turn.
She may have no longer been the camp's owner, but
she was still around, helping out in the office and
riding her golf cart on the campgrounds to yell at
kids for chewing gum. Even when she was off campus,
(21:04):
she never really left. She was known to watch whatever
she could from her house. If that sounds like I'm exaggerating,
I'm not. She sometimes sat on her porch with a
pair of binoculars to peer inside the camp. She even
contested the sale of the camp, claiming she felt pressure
to sell at a low price. Everyone could see the
continuing tension between Selma and David, including Merryl.
Merryl (21:28):
I saw they were feuding. You couldn't not see they
were feuding when they weren't talking. Yet they were sharing
an office together, and they were mother and son, so
it's really hard to fathom. But she installed a lock
on the door so if David walked out of the office,
she would just lock it from her seat, which was
(21:51):
kind of funny.
Kelsey Snelling (21:52):
And these were the adults in charge of hundreds of children.
Janna Hopkins, the group leader you heard from earlier, noticed
the rivalry between Selma and David as soon as she
stepped on camp for her first day of work.
Janna (22:06):
Everybody knew that there was a battle going on. It
was just it was, you know, it permeated everything.
Kelsey Snelling (22:11):
Janna was a single mom in Texas when she came
across an ad for Camp Shane in the back of
a teacher's magazine. She decided to apply and got a
job as a group leader.
Jenna (22:21):
Kind of thought, well, I'm going to make money. I
got an opportunity to be in the outdoors and maybe
lose some weight. Plus my kid camps for free. This
is pretty cool, and you escape the you know, one
thousand degree summers in Dallas.
Kelsey Snelling (22:39):
Jana drove herself and her seven year old all the
way from Dallas to the Catskills. That's a crazy journey
for a single mom to make, but she did it.
After days on the road, Janna arrived in Ferndale and
drove into the center of Camp Shane.
Janna (22:55):
So I drive in and I park, and we get out,
and I walk up to the you know, the window
of the office and this woman slams the window open
and she looks at me and she says, what do
you want? So I'm immediately thinking, oh, no. You know,
maybe I'm in the wrong place.
Kelsey Snelling (23:15):
I don't know.
Janna (23:16):
And I said hi, I said, my name is Janna,
and I said I'm supposed to be a group leader
this summer. And she looks at me and she says,
I didn't hire you. Go home, And I'm just standing
there with my kid going uh oh, I have to say,
I mean, so many things are running through my head.
I'm literally still standing there. And then David Ettenberg comes
(23:38):
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 (23:45):
But Janna couldn't really ignore Selma. She kept making herself
known and flexing power that she didn't really have anymore.
One day, Janna took a group of her campers for
a walk into town. One of the girls fell and
hurt her leg. It hurt so much she couldn't walk
back to camp. So Janna ran back to camp to
get her car and drove the girl to the infirmary
(24:07):
on campus.
Janna (24:08):
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 (25:34):
Truly horrifying. Remember, at this point, Selma was no longer
in charge, but that didn't stop her from trying to
discipline staffers as if she were. Her presence still loomed large.
Janna (25:47):
And I honestly I was afraid of her. There are
a lot of people who love her and have a
lot of respect for her, But I didn't see or
know that Selma. I just saw the one who was
overwrought with the desire to get her camp back and
would do anything she could to do that.
Kelsey Snelling (26:05):
Jana didn't know just how far Selma was willing to go.
In nineteen ninety five, a smoke alarm went off in
Selma's house across the street from Camp, prompting a visit
from the fire department. The police investigated. Leslie, Selma's daughter
(26:28):
and David's sister believed Selma started the fire herself, using
old newspapers and film negatives to frame David. Selma claimed
she wasn't home that evening. Later that summer, a quote
"concerned parent" sent an anonymous letter to the New York
State Department of Health calling attention to overcrowding and poor
(26:50):
food quality at Shane. The thing is the letter included
lots of insider details like enrollment figures, bunk square footage,
and health inspection dates. To David, the letter wasn't anonymous
at all. With all of this drama and chaos going on,
(27:10):
no one seemed to be prioritizing the kids. Sometime that August,
a fourteen year old broke his collarbone while allegedly playing
unsupervised at the off campus Lake. Nineteen ninety five was
Janna's last summer. At this point, she'd been at Camp
Shane for years. She had the sense that something bad
(27:32):
was going to happen, and she didn't want to be
there when it did.
Jenna (27:36):
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 (27:55):
Another thing David wasn't handling well, the food. David didn't
prioritize nutrition so much as he prioritized cutting calories, so
kids were served the same junk food they were likely
eating at home, just much smaller portions, say two French
toasticks for breakfast instead of four, and then for dinner
one slice of pizza instead of two or three, served
(28:17):
with a glass of milk. Not enough food to sustain
kids doing eight hours of exercise a day. Now, there
was one workaround, at least for the skinny campers at Shane.
If kids were deemed an acceptable level of thin, they
were sometimes awarded a visit to... The Pig Out Room, a
(28:42):
supply closet off the dining hall filled with all the
contraband snacks that Shaners weren't allowed to eat, peanut butter
and jelly sandwiches, candy chips, cakes baked by the camp chefs.
Sue (28:55):
And then of the people that were like normal weighted people,
they had the pig out where. You know, I never
got there, so I'm not really sure, but I think
there was peanut butter there. You know.
Kelsey Snelling (29:07):
The Pig Out Room disappeared in the late nineties, but
while it existed, it was protected like a national treasure.
Sometimes staff would check bags and backpacks to make sure
no one was hiding any contraband food that they might
have smuggled from the room. Campers were almost never allowed
in there, try as they might, and most counselors weren't either.
(29:29):
Only the fittest were permitted, those who had reached Camp
Shane's definition of a goal weight. Usually that meant the
Camp America counselors who were already thin and weren't at
Camp Shane to lose anything. So camper's food intake was
heavily restricted, and then their reward for restriction was to
(29:51):
eat a bunch of cake and cookies in The Pig
Out room. It's a confusing message that further fetishized quote
"bad foods" and not one that in stilled healthy habits.
Sue remembers a Camp America counselor who was a semi
professional soccer player. He was one of those straight sized
counselors who would have been allowed to go to The
Pig Out Room. He didn't understand this relationship that camp
(30:14):
was establishing between campers and food.
Sue (30:17):
For him, food was fuel. He never could compute. And
I just remember the whole summer of him being like,
I do not get it. These kids are out there
running all day and we are feeding them, you know,
a teaspoon of apple butter and some dried toast and
some cottage cheese.
Kelsey Snelling (30:38):
Like her fellow counselors, Sue also had questions about the
camp's approach to food and how it was all adding up.
One day, she got a glimpse of the numbers and
learned just how little these kids were surviving off of
Sue (30:51):
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 (31:48):
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 (32:31):
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 (32:52):
Stacy told me about the shame and embarrassment she felt
growing up in a bigger body. She hated walking to
the plus size section to pick out her new swimsuit,
and she was always comparing herself to her stepsisters, who
were just naturally smaller than her, while she listened to
her grandma brag about only drinking water and eating Ritz
Crackers all day. Stacy used food as a coping mechanism
(33:14):
after a traumatic experience in her childhood. She felt like
a black sheep in her family.
Stacy (33:21):
But looking back at photos, I looked like an Olympic swimmer,
Like I looked like a healthy person with a lot
of muscle mass. And it wasn't until I was at
Camp Shane that I learned how to purge, you know,
to binge and purge, how to avoid food right like
(33:42):
if we were going to be weighed in the next day,
everybody would just not eat.
Kelsey Snelling (33:46):
This mentality to lose weight by all means necessary was dangerous.
At Camp Shane, Stacy experienced disordered eating, long hours exercising.
And little food. After a few weeks of this, she
got sick and because she was at fat camp. The
counselors didn't believe her. They thought she was just making
(34:09):
excuses to get out of exercising.
Stacy (34:11):
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 (35:07):
Stacy had bronchitis, which turned into walking pneumonia. She was
given broth and tea, but that was it. She kept
coughing and soon cracked a rib.
Stacy (35:19):
My body was overwhelmed with the amount of exercise and
extreme pressure that it was being put under physically and
not supported with nutrition, and that led to my body
literally crashing, crumpling to beg for help. I mean, that's
(35:42):
what sickness is, right is our body physically telling us
to slow down, to rest, to recover.
Kelsey Snelling (35:49):
Stacy went home early that summer feeling like a failure.
She didn't accomplish what she went to Camp Shane to
do to lose weight to become skinny. She tried to
replicate the weight loss tactics she learned from camp at home.
Stacy (36:04):
I would starve myself. I would try to restrict my
calories the way that had been restricted at camp, and
then I would starve. I was just so hungry that
then I would binge, and then I would feel badly
about having binged, and then I would purge, and that
cycle would go over and over and over again. I
(36:29):
don't know that I fully understood body shame until I
went to a fat camp, and it's why it was
called Camp Shame. We didn't call it "Camp Shane". We
called it Camp Shame. And the messaging was very much
especially for children who had been going for years. It
(36:53):
was a focus on you get love, you get attention,
you get these sort of things when you perform at camp,
and performance in that instance was losing weight.
Kelsey Snelling (37:09):
Stacy's experience of starting with calorie restriction and developing disordered
eating from there is a pretty common long term effect
according to psychologists and certified eating disorder specialist doctor Rachel Millner.
Dr. Millner (37:24):
So anything that is an attempt to either lose weight
or prevent weight gain for kids and adolescents who need
to be growing and developing, is going to increase their
risk of eating disorders. And if they're not somebody that
developed an eating disorder, it's still going to put them
in a place where they're constantly weight cycling, so they're
(37:45):
trying to lose weight and then regain weight, which we
know as a negative impact on health, and where they
don't get to feel fully embodied, that they feel like
their body is constantly betraying them.
Kelsey Snelling (38:01):
Of course, this mindset and messaging wasn't only playing out
at Camp Shane. It was happening at home, at school
and in the TV and movies kids watched, which brings
us back to Heavyweights. One interesting thing about the movie is,
even though it was released in nineteen ninety five, it's
somehow not filled with outdated fat phobic jokes like you
(38:23):
might expect. The movie is a comedy, but the jokes
are rarely at the expense of the fat characters. Director
Steve Brill said that was intentional.
Steve (38:32):
I certainly wanted to ennoble and make these characters fun
and people you could look up to and not make
fun of, which is obviously what the fat guy or
the fat kid has always been in movies. By being overweight,
you know, the shame and self criticism and the doubt
(38:53):
that it brings into you is is really harmful. And
that's something that you know, we wanted to address as
a problem, and that's something that you know, hopefully the
kids when they watch the movie, they go, oh, it's
all right, it's all right to be overweight.
Kelsey Snelling (39:10):
If you've never seen the movie, then spoiler alert, I'm
about to talk about the ending. The campers have successfully
ousted their militaristic camp director and they've just won the
annual competition against their rival. Camp Music swells as the
campers all cheer and hug each other. The main character
Jerry turns to Pat the camp counselor, and says.
Heavyweights Archival (39:31):
Thanks for the best damn summer of my life.
Kelsey Snelling (39:41):
Unfortunately that's just a movie. At the end of a
Camp Shane summer, there's no trophy, no music that swells
as the credits start to roll. No hearts filled with
new lessons about loving yourself in spite of the bullies
and naysayers. It is all right to be fat, like
Steve said, but our culture is often telling us otherwise.
(40:05):
So even though almost all Shaners had fun at one
point or another, I don't think any of them walked
away from camp thinking it's all right to be heavy.
Another difference between Camp Shane and the fictional Camp Hope.
The camp owner at Shane hadn't been ousted. In fact,
(40:25):
in spite of his mother's sabotage, David was about to
lead Camp Shane into its biggest decade yet. Next week.
On Camp Shane.
Merryl (40:38):
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 (40:54):
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
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