This episode contains descriptions of disordered eating and diet behavior.

We also mention specific weights, weight loss numbers, and self harm.

Please take care when listening.

I didn't feel safe.

No one knew I had left the camp for good.

One of my friends texted me and was like, Hey, people are looking for you, you're on lockdown because they think you went missing

This is Camp Shame.

I’m Kelsey Snelling.

Our final episode is about stranded kids, a state investigation, and a better tomorrow.

Lily really struggled with her body starting in middle school, and she really wanted to start high school as a healthy young lady.

It wasn't so much really about the weight at that time, but more about just being physically fit and being able to participate fully in the high school experience.

That's Pamela Artigis.

Her daughter Lily, went to Camp Shane in the summer of twenty nineteen.

Lily has two chronic congenital health conditions.

One is a heart disease and the other is a connective tissue disorder.

So if she was going to leave her home in Florida for several weeks, Pamela needed to feel confident about where her daughter would be.

When Pamela started looking into summer camps, she took her search seriously.

So I started doing research on weight loss camps and physical fitness camps.

I looked at heart camps, cardiac camps.

One of the biggest issues for me is that they had medical staff on site all the time.

And so, I felt more comfortable sending her to a medically supervised summer camp rather than just a summer camp.

Enter Camp Shane.

When I found it on the website, it looked like a great fit for Lily.

When it came to short term weight loss, the camp succeeded as per usual.

Lily came home 22 lbs lighter.

But not because of fun activities and healthy eating habits.

She put on a good front on the outside that it was a good experience.

I have later found out that it was in 2019 the other kids in the camp had taught her how to purge, and really how to manipulate the scale on the day of the day before weigh-ins.

So they, the kids were, um, forcing themselves to have diarrhea, so they would weigh less, they would, um, self dehydrate so they would weigh, so they would weigh less.

Despite the new location, the toxic habits of the Ferndale campus had found their way to Connecticut.

And other irresponsible practices had carried over, too.

But this time, what happened at Shane, didn’t stay contained.

In 2019, there were 34 violations initially listed on 211childcare.org.

That's Currie Engle.

Back then, she was a general assignment news reporter.

She often reported on stories with a focus on health and wellness at the News Times, a daily newspaper in dan Berry, Connecticut.

And the concerns were with camper and staff records, first aid supplies, equipment and instructions, communicable disease control, emergency plans, water supply regulation, and medically trained staff.

The Office of Early Childhood, or OEC, had begun to look into the camp.

It’s the OEC’s job to oversee youth summer camps in Connecticut and ensure that camps are licensed and operating appropriately before opening.

And Ettenberg, when I spoke to him, said they had moved from New York and ran into issues with state regulation differences.

When I asked him about these violations, he basically was saying that the state licensure differences was part of the reason why all of these violations had come up.

Licensing requirements do vary between states (and sometimes even between cities and counties.) For example, Connecticut summer camps require an inspection before an operating license can be granted, while New York summer camps just require two annual inspections by the health department.

Regardless, it’s the camp owner's responsibility to be up to date on what they need to run their camp.

The child’s family claimed the rope wasn’t secure and got tangled around the kid’s hands, severely injuring three of his fingers.

One of them was fully severed and eventually had to be amputated.

His family filed a lawsuit, and Camp Shane settled the case out of court.

Because, after camp, the weight would creep back on, and it became a, a cycle, if you will.

And so I think every summer she was trying to, you know, self-correct and go back.

Lily wasn’t the only one itching to go to camp that summer.

Coming off the heels of a very intense period of isolation, kids all over were eager to get out of the house and back among their peers.

Camp Shane claimed to be more necessary than ever.

Here’s how David Ettenberg described campers after the pandemic.

In all the 57 years I've been here, I've never seen kids in worse shape, mentally and in terms of their health.

After such a difficult time, parents were looking for ways to help their kids bounce back.

My name is Ramona Schwartz.

I have a now 17-year-old son who wanted to go to a weight loss camp a few years ago when we had just moved to Asheville.

Ramona’s son Stellan was 14 years old that summer.

When he was 6 years old, Stellan began to transition genders.

Having a transgender child meant Ramona had to carefully consider before sending him just anywhere.

And so I had called David the one who owns the camp and he had promised me that it was a really good fit.

He said that there would be a nurse at the camp that would handle meds and testosterone.

Stellan looked forward to being with other kids in a fun, new place.

I first heard about Camp Shane through my parents.

They had originally found it and they showed it to me.

And from my point it seemed like a good idea and I was totally on board.

It wasn't a case where my parents were forcing me to do this.

On the website, you know, they had kids looking happy and they also had photos of jet skis and water slides.

And for the Connecticut location, it said that it had a lake and go-karts.

Always the allure of the go karts.

Of course, the promotional materials did not change to accurately reflect the differences between Ferndale and Connecticut.

Why would they?

There were photos of kids in like full face helmets and dune buggies and you know, people riding on a banana boat in a lake.

And I, I was ready to get a tan.

I wanted to ride a banana boat.

I wanted to dive into a lake.

Camp Shane was a big deal for Stellin, who struggled with body dysmorphia and gender dysphoria.

I thought Camp Shane, would, you know, help that?

And I thought losing weight would also help me figure out who I was and maybe figure out who my gender identity was a little bit more.

Most Shaners had complicated relationships with their bodies, but it was even more intense for someone with gender identity insecurities.

And after a secluded year of Covid quarantine, Stellan looked forward to what Camp Shane promised.

A red flag should have been when signing up for the camp in twenty twenty one is that there was really no communication from them.

I recall having to go and reach out to them several times, even all the way through May, asking did you receive my deposit?

Is Lily good to go to camp?

It was obvious looking back that the organization wasn't there.

I mean, there was no organization, There was no preparation.

Even as summer rapidly approached, Shane offered no information to parents.

Even through the end of May.

We really didn't know whether or not she would be going to camp, even though they were taking our money.

So our money was tied up in a camp that we really weren't sure was going to happen.

But then it did.

Camp opened on June 24th.

When I first got there, I realized it was a little bit disorganized.

Checking in was, was a little bit of a shitshow.

And when I did get it checked in, they realized that they had lost the bags that I had, um, shipped over there beforehand.

And so they showed me to my room and left me there while they went searching for my bags.

And I ended up taking a nap on the bare mattress

Stellan couldn’t immediately call his parents to let them know how his first day was going because phones had already been confiscated.

The counselors eventually found his bags under a tree.

But unfortunately, things didn’t get much better from there.

I'm very lucky in my journey to be able to pass as a cis male.

A lot of people didn't know unless I specifically told them.

But even if I didn't tell them, the people that they were having me room with in the cabin were very outrageously homophobic and sexist.

And these are, I was the oldest there, I believe I was 14 and these kids were like 9, 10, 12.

And just like saying the most vile things to the point where even me as the biggest and the oldest, I felt unsafe and I had to move in with a counselor.

His living situation improved, and Stellin made some friends, but that was about the only thing that got better.

I realized that a lot of the fun activities that they had advertised weren't there.

A lot of the main activities that people were excited about weren't there.

You know, like the lake, the go-karts, the jet skis.

And I also realized that the number of counselors was slowly dwindling.

Um, one of the first people to leave was the nutritionist, which I believe is one of the most important roles at a weight loss camp, and then a few other counselors just ended up disappearing.

Some of the counselors who stayed had their own reservations about how things were being run.

But then there were the ones who stayed and didn’t seem to care about the campers or the mission of camp.

There were counselors buying campers alcohol and vapes and junk food.

And that's when I realized this is not the camp that I signed up for.

When Stellan realized how laissez-faire some of these counselors were, he asked one of them for his phone back.

I got a Snapchat from one of my friends who also got her phone and she was like, hey, we're watching Wolf of Wall Street in so-and-so's room if you wanna come.

And so why I came and one of the counselors had set up her laptop and people had put all the mattresses on the floor and we were listening to music and about to start the movie and people were passing around Oreos and Cheez-Its and vapes.

Stellan decided he needed to let an adult know what was going on.

He called his mom, Ramona.

It just sounded like Lord of the Flies, there just wasn't any supervision.

He said, we're not doing anything all day now.

We're just sitting here because there's not enough people to watch us.

From the sounds of it, Camp Shane had completely devolved into a college party for minors.

It’s safe to say, Stellan was right.

This was not the camp he’d signed up for.

Not only was it objectively not fun, but it was dangerous, too.

Because as it turns out, Camp Shane never got clearance to open that summer at all.

During a July 1st meeting in 2021, the agency actually realized that the camp had yet to receive its license for the summer.

That's despite the fact that Shane had already opened a week prior.

By July 2nd, the supervising nurse consultant of youth camps sent an email to Ettenberg.

She asked Ettenberg to email her a statement saying he wouldn't operate the camp until he obtained a license.

Um, she noted she left messages on his personal cell and on an alternate phone line.

The licensing division director emailed her saying that if she didn't hear back by midday, she should just head out to check on the camp.

The nurse consultant arranged for a state investigator to go to the camp that day.

On that July 2nd visit the state investigator already had concern, a concerns about medical oversight and among other things specifically that the camp was not able to provide a CPR or nursing license documentation.

And, um, the inspector also noted that one counselor was working as both first aid director and lifeguard.

Despite these concerns, the investigator left, quote, “knowing that the director, first aid director, and a camp physician agreement were in place.” Based on this report, the OEC granted Camp Shane a license.

The doctor had told the OEC that they had been asked to serve as camp doctor 10 days before the start of camp, but had declined due to the fact that they had a family vacation scheduled.

Um, the doctor assumed that the camp had found another physician, but that was not the case.

And then the doctor agreed to help out until a replacement was found.

Our reporting found that after an initial visit to the camp on June 30th, the doctor reported having, quote, “immediate concerns,” end quote, about the way medications were being administered.

The doctor also said that he, quote, “recommended that the camp close on more than one occasion due to lack of safety.”

The lack of medical supervision affected Lily directly.

Remember, she was attending camp with several complex medical conditions.

And one particular day things got really scary.

Lily went to camp on June 24th, and she flew up with her friend, and her friend's parents dropped her off at camp.

That was on a Thursday.

I received a call the following Monday or Tuesday from one of the camp counselors named Bella that told me that she had been forced to resign that day.

And that before she left, she went into the office and quickly grabbed my name and telephone number to call me and let me know of an incident.

Bella wasn't just a counselor, she was actually the camp director that summer.

Well for a hot minute.

She quit within a few days of starting.

Here's what Pamela remembers from her talk with Bella and leader Lily.

Lily was out on the tennis court playing tennis, and she told the physical fitness instructor that her heart was beating very fast and that she was under doctor's orders to take a rest and to hydrate if that happened.

The physical fitness instructor told her that she was not allowed to stop exercising until she either threw up or passed out.

And she required her to continue playing tennis and exercising outside until Lily physically couldn't do it anymore.

Bella spoke with Currie as well.

So she told me that she was hired two days before arriving at the camp, and she told me, quote, “it was in disorder when she arrived.” And that quote, “there was no paperwork ready for opening.”

On July 6th, shortly after Bella left, she contacted the investigator who’d visited as part of the OEC inquiry.

Bella included concerns about there not being appropriate staff, no guidance counselor, no paperwork about medical problems, no paperwork to the nutritionist regarding allergies and food restrictions, no certified medical staff on site, and no trained person for the behavior therapy program.

The person who was supposedly trained in CBT did not appear to be trained in CBT.

Yet camp was shamelessly continuing to misrepresent the qualifications of their staff.

After the tennis court incident, Lily called her mom.

And Lily called me on Tuesday evening and said, “mom, come and get me outta here.

You need to get me outta here.

I don't feel safe.” And that phone conversation broke my heart.

By Thursday morning, Pamela was on a flight from Florida to Connecticut.

She rented a car and pulled up to camp Thursday afternoon.

Lily was packed and waiting for me, and I drove up, she and her friends put her camp stuff in the back of my car, and no one came out to talk to me.

No one knew I took her.

It really felt sad because the other kids were standing there looking at me.

I'll never forget the look on the other kids’ faces.

This is like, please get me out of here.

This is gonna make me cry.

And I didn't wanna leave him, but I had to.

Meanwhile, Stellan, who was still stuck at camp, depended on the remaining staff to care for him.

This nurse, her name was Hannah.

Hannah, the quote-unquote, “camp nurse,” was also the camp’s only lifeguard.

She was in charge of, you know, all the kids' medications and you know, they're ailments, of course, as a nurse.

And I remember, since I am transgender, at that time I was doing one testosterone shot a week.

And yes, I could have done it myself, but also I was young and not a registered nurse.

And so it was required for her to do the shot, like for me.

And so when I walked up to her to do my shot, she handed it to me and was like, “I'm not registered to, to give you a shot, you need to do it yourself.” And I'm like, “Hannah, I'm 14.

Why am I doing your job?”

This was a turning point for Stellan.

He decided he’d had enough and called his mom again.

He said, “I need to come home.”

At first, Ramona wasn't sure what to believe.

She thought Stellan might just be homesick, or maybe he was being a little dramatic.

She didn’t yet realize how dire the situation had become.

The camp had caused me to self harm.

I feel like when I was there I was abandoned and I didn't really have a good support system because, you know, my family was so far away and so I turned to cutting to, you know, kind of alleviate that stress and no one really cared.

Despite the cuts being very visible on his forearms, nobody acknowledged them.

So he called a couple of times and he said, “I'm serious, mom, I'm not safe here.

These kids are not safe.

There's something going on.” So then I got on Facebook and I found a Camp Shane Facebook.

And so then I posted, “Hey, does anyone know?

Is something going on?

My kid’s calling me, but I can't tell.” And then a couple of other parents were like, “no, our kids are calling too, something's going on.”

At this point, the word was out.

Parents, in varying states of concern and confusion, began posting on the official Camp Shane Facebook page.

From there, they formed a separate, private 2021 parent group.

They compared stories and shared contact information for state officials and media outlets.

The parents who could, pulled their kids from camp.

They got a call and the father described it as a horrific call.

And a counselor at the camp was basically calling to let them know that their daughter had been injured and that she'd been taken to the hospital.

Currie spoke to multiple staff members and several parents, including the parents of this young girl.

And the dad was actually a surgeon and so he'd asked the staff to send him a picture of his daughter's face.

And what he told me was the injury looked like somebody who'd been hit with a pipe.

I could tell she had a nasal fracture just by looking at the picture.

The terrible irony in this is that this family had already planned to pick up their daughter early because she’d called and told them she was unhappy.

He told me, “I was petrified, and it really takes a lot to get me nervous, but it was sheer terror.

No parent should ever have to go through that.”

The 8-year old, thank God, eventually recovered from the accident.

She was discharged, but faced lingering effects like fever and lethargy.

Today she is healed and doing well.

I never received a phone call from Camp Shane.

I got an email that said the camp will be closed tomorrow, come and get your son.

But we lived in North Carolina.

I couldn't even get a flight to go get him.

Parents were given 48 hours to pick up their kids.

Out-of-state parents scrambled to figure out how to get their child back home on such short notice.

And even for parents who were in state, two days just wasn’t enough.

So I called Rosemary, and Rosemary borrowed a car and drove to go get him.

Rosemary said that she walked in and it was just a bunch of kids running around.

She never once saw one adult.

There were just medications rolling around on the ground.

The scene Ramona described was just the beginning.

When we followed up with Rosemary about this experience, she said the image was seared into her mind.

Half-naked kids running around.

Furniture flipped on its head.

Doors torn off the hinges.

And a rug that was inexplicably soaking wet.

She just walked in and grabbed him and walked out.

Like no one stopped her.

No one had Rosemary sign him out.

I had to call the camp and I was like, Hey, I just left.

They just never checked.

They didn't know that I had taken my medication with me when I left.

And so they didn't realize that this medication had gone missing.

After David sent parents that email, Camp Shane officially shut down on July 13th, 2021.

Right now at five: camp closed, parents left scrambling.

The state is now investigating the sudden closure.

When local news got wind of what was going on at Shane, David blamed Covid and staffing shortages.

Absolutely nobody to hire.

Ettenburg says he decided to close because he couldn't keep staffing since, he says, no one wanted to stay on campus for camp Covid safety procedures.

As soon as the camp closed, the Office of Early Childhood and the Department of Children and Families launched a formal joint investigation.

Here’s what they found.

There was a witness list of at least 34 people, pages upon pages upon pages of interviews, and inspection notes.

Some of the goings on included not having documented medical training for staff administering medication, um, not having proof of current lifeguard certifications, current physicals for campers, staff health forms, prescriber and parent authorization or self-administration of medication, and parent permissions for all medication at camp.

And that's from the inspection log.

The inspection log was a report of what the state investigator found during visits.

But also campers reported experiencing injuries including sprains, knee injuries, smashed toes, and serious sunburns.

And so, I think this is really interesting, the investigation notes had 12 complaints filed against Camp Shane.

And typically the department receives about 24 camp complaints per year.

So that meant half of the complaints in an entire year were filed against Camp Shane.

For context, there are more than 200 summer camps in Connecticut.

And as Currie said, assuming it was a typical year, Camp Shane could have been responsible for about 50% of the complaints.

In the affidavit surrendering his license, Ettenberg denied all charges.

But he did agree that if he tried to reinstate or obtain a new license from the agency in the future, it would mean basically that the allegations in the investigation, which included missing campers and falsified documents, would be deemed true.

This affidavit essentially makes it so that David can’t obtain a new camp license without facing intense scrutiny and investigation.

And some of those allegations in the record also include campers walking around unsupervised at night and in lightning storms and who were encouraged to work out until they vomited, counselors leaving campers unsupervised to quote hangout and quote party in the lounge, a counselor who yelled at and threatened to fight a camper, falsified medical administration training documents presented to the state, inappropriate quote comments of a sexual nature by a male camper toward a female camper, and multiple reports of campers being bullied.

Here's Lily's mom, Pamela.

Again.

Nothing about that camp was right.

It was really actually like a horror movie because these kids were pretty much locked in these dorms without access to contacting the outside world.

And if it wasn't for the, you know, the few hidden cell phones and the few teenagers that were able to use their phones, I mean, some of these kids are young.

They're eight, nine, ten years old, and they're completely unsupervised with prescription medicine laying all over the place.

There was really nothing right about that year at all.

Meanwhile, David made it publicly known in an interview with NBC Connecticut how the closure affected him personally.

We are giving all the people their money back, right, after that.

And it’s a big hit for me, financially.

The effects of that summer lived on.

Pamela’s daughter, Lily, returned home, but her time at camp seriously affected her mental and physical health.

This experience affected Lily in a lot of different ways.

But I've recently learned that it's affected her much more deeply than I realized.

She's been in counseling ever since this experience, and she's been pretty withdrawn and has spent a lot of the time in her bedroom over the past couple of years.

And, um, I learned last week from her counselor that she's been diagnosed with an eating disorder.

And that based on the labs that we're doing and her cardiologist, whether or not she's gonna need to do inpatient stay or outpatient, because she used to make herself throw up and she can no longer hold food down on her own.

So she's spontaneously vomiting and, um, it could have a fatal effect on her heart and her metabolic systems.

Purging isn’t something Lily did before camp.

She learned it through other campers, who, like her, were trying to fulfill Camp Shane’s weight loss goals.

I was really depressed, honestly.

It was traumatic and it did have a big impact on the trajectory of my life back then.

Stellan spent the first few days back at home locked away in his bedroom.

Those around him knew something was wrong, but they didn’t know the severity of it.

My dad, you know, he, he didn't think that I should have been acting that way.

And he thought that I was overreacting in a way.

He just wasn't there.

The people who weren't there just won't really understand how bad it was and how traumatizing it was, you know.

That final summer left scars that could stay with some of these campers forever.

And as we all now know, it wasn’t just that one summer that was so problematic.

It was what Camp Shane had been teaching and endorsing throughout its 52 years of operation.

So where do we sit now, in a modern, civilized, 2025 society?

There are also these things that are even more systemic

That’s Tigress Osborn, Executive Director of the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance.

Things like wage disparity, things like housing discrimination, like what your landlord or other people in your building get to say about you and your body and what they think that means in terms of the, the, the use of the building.

There's lots of evidence of employment discrimination in everything from, whether you get paid the same as your thin counterparts, even if you have the same or better qualifications to things like, uh do you even get past the first interview?

You've done phone interviews and you've been doing great, then you show up at the office and all of a sudden something changes.

Right?

The discrimination that Tigress is referring to happens all over the country.

Well, except Michigan.

It’s legal to discriminate based on body size in all states but Michigan.

We're saying this doesn't resonate with what has worked for me and my patients.

Sending a kid to fat camp from a medical perspective is a very intensive intervention.

I think there's a rising interest in what are the harms of being so aggressive about body size?

What stigma does that perpetuate and what could it look like to be more weight inclusive?

Some parents are leading their children to consciously take action against stigma and bias.

Here’s Dr.

Rachel Milner:

One of the things I've often thought about as a parent is that I cannot prevent my kids from being impacted by the culture.

Right?

Diet culture is everywhere.

There's no way for me to prevent them being exposed to weight stigma or anti-fat bias.

What I can do is give them the internal resources and compass to identify when they see weight stigma showing up.

And I can make sure that our home is a place where their bodies will always be accepted and they'll never encounter body shame.

And here’s something we can all do in the name of equity and progress: we can check our own internal biases and learn how to be allies.

Here’s Tigress again.

You don't have to be fat yourself, um, or wait for the fat person to be the one who advocates for accessibility, for, for fat people.

You can spend your money in places that are accommodating to fat people.

If you just look around the world through a lens of, you know, who is not here and why are they not here?

And include fat people in that lens, and then take steps towards what that, you know, like what it looks like to create a more inclusive and welcoming space, um, that doesn't take law change that, you know, that takes heart and mind change.

Being free of shame can open up a whole new world for all of us.

One where we can live boldly and freely.

When you have the audacity to just be in the world as who you are, um, that has ripple effects for people around you that you might not even be seeing.

It is really empowering to, to see folks who look like you and who feel like you out in the world getting to live their best lives.

I can’t help but notice the stark difference between Tigress’ dream and Selma Ettenberg’s dream.

Tigress imagines a world where kids feel good about themselves despite the bullies.

Selma envisioned a world where kids could feed good because they got thin.

Maybe, for her time, that’s the best she could do.

For former die-hard Shaner, Carl Evans, Camp Shane was a place of profound personal growth, with a side helping of guilt.

The only way I can describe it is comparing it to what I've heard other people talk about when they had an abusive parent, that they still loved, die.

Part of trying to, to make peace with Camp Shane was the fact that I felt complacent in the harm that was happening, even though me and a number of other counselors were actively defenders and protectors against things that could be harmful at Camp.

The fact that we didn't blow a whistle and tear it all down, you know, means that Dave got to go on in 2010 and 11 and 12 and 13 and 14 and still open the door and the possibilities for, for every kid that found joy and happiness under the camp, they could still, there could have been others exposed to harm and hurt.

For Stacy Toth, a 90s Shaner, her feelings about camp are much less complex.

She sees all the ways Camp Shane failed her.

I think coming to a place of acceptance and realizing I can be healthy and I can love myself no matter what my body looks like, I can choose to be active without it being about making my body smaller.

I can choose to nourish my body with the foods that it needs, micro and macronutrients without feeling like I need to count calories.

All of those are concepts that are things that I did not learn at a camp that, in my opinion, could have benefited a lot of people.

And what I really needed at that time was someone to ask me how I was feeling, for someone to say like, you know, what's going on and how can I help?

And nobody asked those questions.

Mark Rothenberg, a camper from the 80s, wishes his parents had chosen differently.

We should be teaching kids how to find something they love and that will give them self confidence that isn't necessarily tied to their physical appearance.

If my parents had said to me, you can stay home all day long provided you do two things.

You spend an hour engaged in any physical activity of your choice.

You could spend an hour in the pool.

You could take a walk for an hour, and you read a book or you write a story for an hour.

That would have been my dream summer.

My parents had dropped me off at the public library, that would have been my dream summer.

If they were hell bent on putting me in a camp, a camp on learning how to make computer games, or a creative writing camp that would have been my dream summer.

There were a million things my parents could have done without frankly spending a whole lot of money that would have, in the long term, done far more for me than sending me away to lose thirty five pounds that I would inevitably gain back, and those pounds brought a whole bunch of their friends with them for me.

For me, I empathize with Shaners who grieve the loss of what once felt like home.

But I also believe there are few things more criminal than to damage someone's relationship with their own body.

And in that, Shane certainly played a part.

If we're gonna do that level of intervention, I think ethically we should be very sure that what we're trying to treat, what we're trying to change is going to be a medical problem for that person.

That our intervention will have long lasting medical benefits and that it won't have short or long term negative outcomes that outweigh those benefits.

And fat camp just doesn't meet any of those criteria.

We can make this world better, more navigable, and more equitable.

We can stop judging peoples’ health by their size.

We can disentangle our moral judgments from someone’s physical appearance.

We can be conscious that our expectations of beauty and desirability are influenced by society, and are arbitrary and ever-changing.

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.