Maintenance Phase - Growing Up Richard Simmons

Episode Date: October 25, 2024

Before building his fitness empire, America’s most bedazzled fitness guru was a guy named Milton from New Orleans. Support us:Hear bonus episodes on PatreonWatch Aubrey’s documentary in AU & NZ, or watch it at home anywhere else!Buy Aubrey's bookListen to Mike's other podcastGet Maintenance Phase T-shirts, stickers and moreLinks!Still Hungry...After All These Years by Richard Simmons "Hair-Do" Anatomy Asylum CommercialRichard Simmons: New Orleans's hometown heroA Speedy History of America’s Addiction to Amphetamine Thanks to Doctor Dreamchip for our lovely theme song!Support the show

All I know what Richard Simmons is like sad things, like melancholy things, but I'm trying out to have like a melancholy tagline. Wow, you really got surprised by this podcast. I've been planning for like a month. We keep pushing back. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. Well, this one's bad, but whatever. Welcome to Maintenance Phase, the podcast that thinks tank tops.

and short shorts are appropriate for any weather. Yeah, I like that one. It was not very clever, but it is accurate. I'm Aubrey Gordon. I'm Michael Hopps. If you would like to support the show, you can do that at patreon.com slash maintenance phase. You can also get bonus episodes through Apple Podcasts. It's the same audio content.

And if you live in Australia or New Zealand, you can see Aubrey in other ways. Yes. Jeannie Finley's documentary, Your Fat Friend, about yours truly, is in the theaters now in Australia and New Zealand. And as soon as it leaves theaters, it will be joining Doc play for all the details on that and all of the screenings. You can go to YR Fat Friend Film.com or there's a handy-dandy link for you in the show notes. Aubrey down under. Something, something lesbian joke. Something, something. Michael, today we're talking about Richard Simmons. We haven't done a good old like influencer episode in a while. Just like, here's a person. How do you really? How do you

remember Richard Simmons. I think I mostly remember him from late night TV appearances where he would show up on like Jay Leno to talk about stuff or I was really into those like best of Johnny Carson tapes that you could get. He showed up on Johnny Carson a million times. I've seen all of those like four thousand times. Him and like Sam Kinnison are like the people I modeled my personality after. The thing is I don't think he was like that great of a presence. And I think looking back, I think a lot of those appearances were probably like low key, pretty homophobic. Oh, baby. And then I listened to the podcast about him, Dan Tiberski's, I thought excellent, but like complicated podcast about Richard Simmons. And then he emerged to me as kind of like a more tragic figure.

Well, first of all, those appearances were not low-key homophobic. Were they high-key homophobic? One of the recurring bits that Richard Simmons would, that people would call Richard Simmons onto their show to do would be to like, be like, you're going to be a guest on the show. and then they would hide cameras in his dressing room and do things to scare him. Oh, God. So that he would like scream and like jump up and down. Oh, and like in a feminine way. Yeah.

I mean, I think I remember him the way a lot of people remember him, which is honestly like, I think societally we just kind of treated him like a manic pixie dream gay, despite the fact that he never, you know, addressed his own sexual orientation. Right. I'll say, I just read as much Richard Simmons reporting. as I could get my hands on, which is not a ton of reporting, right? Including the recent wave of eulogies, including missing Richard Simmons. All of those were sort of written in the way that you and I are talking about remembering him, right?

Which is these sort of hazy, fond memories. Yeah. Really light on details. And none of them referenced his memoir, still hungry after all these years. And when I read his memoir, it was 100% things I had not heard. Oh, really? Okay. So this is part one of a two-parter.

Today we're going to talk about Richard Simmons' life sort of before he became a household name because there is a lot there. So today is sort of about the messages he took in. And next time is sort of like what he decided to do with those messages and the messages that he put out. Wait, I just thought of a better tagline. What? His whole thing was like sweating to the oldies, right?

Yes. That's what we call it when people exercise while listening to maintenance phase. Because we're old and they're doing, they're doing exercise. So many emails from people who are five to ten years older than us. Look, I am 42. I can do this. A heads up before we get into it. This story has some really dark moments. So we're going to be talking about anti-fatness. We're going to be talking about eating disorders.

We're going to be talking about drug abuse, physical assault. So just like basically buckle up. Yeah. So we're going to start out with Richard Simmons, as you might remember him. So here's a little refresh. I'm going to send you a link. Okay. Wow, what a...

His energy. This is your 59th video. 59 video. 59th DVD. Wow. That's amazing. Swin to the oldies five. I know, but...

Hey, what are you sitting down for us? You thought we were... Yeah, that's right. He's going to... Well, first of all, Tell people, everybody has, you know, I think, aspirations to get in better shape. What advice do you have for people? Number one, love yourself, have a lot of self-worth.

Number two, lower your calories and watch your portions. And number one, move those buns! Can I tell everyone to... What? Can I tell everyone... Mama? Talking this... Mama wants to hear. Mama wants to see, Mama!

Gypsy. Oh my God. Anyway. It was from gypsy. I know, I know. We can do... You know, gypsy. Anyway, everyone, the audience is getting my new sweat and fine.

Okay. This is the energy that Richard Simmons was operating with all of the time. This is also the energy that Ellen was operating on where she's kind of like, let's get this over with. She's sort of officially joking, but you can tell in her face that she's like, this is annoying the shit out of me. She hates it. She hates shit. Shut up, Richard. So clearly.

she hates everything about it and I think that's maybe the greatest indictment of her yet is like oh you don't like Richard Simmons? I know. The funny, he's such a like ray of sunshine. Yeah.

But also because he's so loud, because it's sort of so sticky. You can find it grating. Yeah, like this is projecting based on everything else I know about him but people who act like this oftentimes are like covering up for something to have this much energy

and to be this on all the time. just seems like it would be so much work. Yeah, there was a quote from Billy Eichner in one of the write-ups after Richard Simmons passed away. He was very straightforwardly just like, yeah, Richard Simmons goes in the long line of gay men who made it through by making themselves the joke. Right, right. Yeah, kind of.

People come up with strategies to fit in. And you're like 12 when you're coming up with these strategies, right? Because you realize you're gay and you're like, oh, fuck, I have to like do something about this. And oftentimes establish patterns that then are very hard to. to break, right? The way that you fit in in social situations is like the habits and the defense mechanisms that you developed by being in the closet. And so I wonder if Richard Simmons started doing this to compensate for something and then just like couldn't break the habit. Yeah. I mean,

I think part of the way that you make it through is by telling stories about yourself, like fully concocted. But it's also based on, as you're saying, your kid brain. So it's like as convincing as two kids in a trench coat. Yeah, this was absolutely me in middle school. Guys were like, ooh, she's hot. I'm like, yeah, I want to poke her boobs. I want to play her boobs like bongo drums. So Richard Simmons for the uninitiated built a fitness empire in the U.S. He had a chain of gyms at one point. He had 22 DVDs and 38 home videos, including sit tight, which I think is kind of a great name. Not going to make a gay joke.

I'm not going to make a gay joke. I'm going to be very mature on this podcast. I'm going to stay very classy. Get ready. Because he made sit tight. Dance your pants off. And no ifs, ands, or butts.

Oh, that one's actually pretty good. That's very wholesome. He had one vinyl record with a bunch of ballads on it that he sang and he was an okay singer. Okay, fair enough. He also made one absolutely incredible music video and you and I are going to watch it right now. Oh no. Okay.

Oh my God. Get something cute. Get something girlish. No. That will give you a lip. God. Choose a dude that we'll get you in trouble. Be high praise.

All right. No, shut it down. Shut it down. Shut it down. Shut it down. We're stopping this episode. We're done for the day. I'm not watching Richard Simmons rap.

Look, I hope you can tell this was recorded in the 2010s. I don't want to make fun of this man, Aubrey. We just like a tragic figure. No, it's like I really genuinely enjoy this song and have been listening to it recreationally. There are a bunch of stories about later in his career about Richard Simmons showing up to his Jim to lead classes in drag. Oh. And he does some drag in this video.

Okay. To me, this feels like we're getting closer to how he saw himself. I love that you're trying to recast this as like an act of self-actualization when it's a music video called hair do and he's rapping. Get something cute. Get something girly. The thing is, I have exactly the same hair as him. Any jokes about his hair off limits.

Michael, are you ready for story time? I know this man, but I don't. really know this man. So let's do it. Richard Simmons was actually born Milton Teagle Simmons. Okay. In the French quarter in New Orleans in 1948. Okay. He was born to Leonard Simmons Sr. and Shirley Mae Simmons.

His father was actually a professional MC before he was born. So he has a background in rapping. And his mother was a fan dancer. What does that mean? You know the ladies who would dance like burlesque with big feather fans to cover up their bodies like whoa salacious i know about that theoretically not personally but yes some sort of cracks started to emerge pretty early on in their marriage so when surely became pregnant leonard decided that he needed to quit show business according to his memoir the day that his mother

told his father she was pregnant his father started gathering up photo albums and headshots and publicity photos, sort of anything from their showbiz careers. He gathered it all up in the backyard and burned it. Oh. This is a quote from Still Hungry after all these years. He says, this bonfire was not to be discussed. My father made all the decisions in his house. My mother watched from the kitchen window as he tore apart albums and tossed pages into the fire.

With the fire still raging, he strode back into the house not saying a word. He walked right past my mother and into the bathroom, shutting the door. While he was cleaning up, Shirley quickly went out into the yard, picked up a stick, and poked through the fire. She managed to salvage some of the photos. Aw. Quickly, she trimmed the burnt edges from the photos and then hid them away, never saying a word again about the whole affair.

So that's how I came to have no family history. Oh, God. That's so sad. So clearly this is like a third hand story, right? presumably his mother told him and then he told his ghost writer and here it is in book form right he was also I should say he was very open about his books being written by ghost writers he was like I'm not a good writer he's more of a rapper he's more of a sugar hill gang type of figure in America my guess here is that there is a kernel of truth to it or that it's just straightforwardly as real story it's a

really it would be a weird one to make up for wool cloth right And it's painting a picture that resonates with how Richard saw his father, right? Which is kind of a storm cloud of a dude. And also when you have mercurial presences like that in a family, oftentimes the rest of the family adjusts to avoid these outbursts. So I can imagine a family based around not getting these weird blowups from his dad. Yeah, absolutely. Things are sort of engineered toward Don't Make Dad Mad.

Yeah. So his dad quits his job as an MC. different places report different jobs for him, but the most common ones are that sometimes he worked in a thrift shop, but most of the time, it seems he was just unemployed. So his dad is a storm cloud of a dude in the 40s and 50s, who is not providing for his family. Right.

That's also a cause of volatility often. Yeah, totally. If you have weird stuff about masculinity, especially in this era. Right. And you're not working and supporting your family. Like, that's only going to make that stuff gnarlier. Dudes are weird about it.

Yes. Dudes are weird about it. After her years as a fan dancer, Shirley became a cosmetic salesperson, which also seems fitting for a parent of Richard Simmons. Yeah. Oh, first I was in burlesque. And then I started selling makeup.

You're like, yeah. Did you invent the bedazzler also? Right. we all become a combination of our parents and I think Richard did too. He had one older brother, Lenny, who Richard refers to as Mr. Perfect and Mr. Business. Those are like, those are like guess who characters. Okay. It's really clear that Richard and Lenny loved each other, but that Richard felt really pitted against Lenny.

Richard thought that in his parents' eyes, he was always doing the wrong thing and Lenny was always doing the right thing. It's that sort of sibling dynamic. Does he talk in the memoir about realizing he was gay or is this all under the surface? He never discusses his sexual orientation in the memoir. Oh my God. So like, listen, the backdrop of this story is that Richard Simmons rise to fame almost exactly mirrors the onset of the AIDS epidemic. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You're going on Carson, you're going on Letterman, you're going on all these shows and you have this wide appeal coming out puts you squarely in the middle of Pat Buchanan's culture wars, right? But then do you get the sense that Richard Simmons, like, knew that he was gay and made a business

decision not to talk about it? Or was he in denial about the fact that he was gay? I don't have any sense of any of it. Okay. According to some reports, he did have a long-term partner. Okay. That is the person who was sort of, like, saying that his housekeeper had kidnapped him in the missing Richard Simmons era. Yeah.

Right? So like it's just all fraught. It's all unreliable narrators. It's all other people speaking for him. The thing that I feel really dead set on in this episode is Richard Simmons speaking for Richard Simmons. There's no chance that he's actually just an effeminate heterosexual guy. Is there?

Or is there? There's a YouTube video of outtakes and like pre-record from an interview he did at one point in like the 80s or something where somebody said something about out of the closet. And he was like, well, I've been out of the closet for a lot. long time. No, he hasn't. And I was like, you have not. Yeah. But also you sort of have, like, I see what he's saying. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Especially in the 80s, people were not being like, well, actually, he hasn't addressed it. I, I personally think Richard Simmons probably could have come out. I mean, everyone kind of knew already. But also, it's like the psychology of this is so complex.

I mean, this brings us to the next point in the story, which is that he and his brother were raised Catholic. Oh, good. To add that layer in there. He talks about thinking that it was weird that he and his brother went to Catholic school. They dressed up and went to Mass every week. Lenny was an altar boy, but neither of them had ever been baptized and their parents never attended religious services

or talked about religion. Oh, so they're like culturally Catholic, but not like actually beliefs. They don't believe stuff. So Richard sort of asked his parents and pressed about it, was like, why do we go to Mass, but you don't go to Mass? Why do we go to a Catholic school, but you're not, we don't seem to be Catholic.

And his dad was like, look, it's a good school and it's three blocks away. It's where you go to school. Shut up about it. Look, we want to instill in you a weird sense of constant shame. Yeah, yeah. We can tell how gay you are and we want you to feel bad about it forever. We are, this is a subsidy to your future therapist. In high school, Richard actually takes the.

plunge and fully converts to Catholicism. He gets baptized because the whole thing. He at that point strongly considers becoming a priest or even joining a monastery. Yeah, that's like a thing for gay people back then. 100%. In his memoir, he says that he thought about becoming a priest because he quote, likes the outfits. God. Richard, you're not making this easy. We're trying to be sensitive to you. And the way that you wanted to be discussed, but it really seems Like you want to tell the audience something and you're not telling them. It isn't until after he converts that he meets some cousins who live far away and they start talking about these bat mitzvahs that they've been having.

And Richard is like, what's a bat mitzvah? And his cousins are like, oh, it's a Jewish thing because we're a Jewish family. Wait, what? You're Jewish? Wait, really? He's like secretly Jewish. and he didn't know? His dad was raised Methodist and his mom was Jewish.

Oh. And in Judaism, if your mom is Jewish, you are Jewish. His parents never told them. That's fascinating. Through the grapevine that they were Jewish. The title of the chapter where he tells this story is, A Catholic, oy. That is, in fact.

The chapter's like, oh, God. I like this man. I like this man. So this is sort of like the tone and tenor of life at home. We're not talking about things. We're not showing affection. We're not letting you in on what's happening. He talks about his parents not really showing affection even to each other. Man, they really did lean into the Catholicism, didn't they? It's a really odd and sort of cold sounding household. To wit, Richard had asthma.

Oh. In his memoir, he writes that he had. asthma at a time when people didn't really understand it, right? So we're talking about the 50s. And some people didn't even fully believe in it. Of course. According to Richard Simmons, one of those people was his dad. Nice. So he didn't get like an inhaler and stuff? Quote, well, my father didn't believe in all this asthma medicine. He secretly thought that my asthma would get better if I weren't such a brat. Oh my God. It's always the same thing. My dad also tended to be his own doctor. No matter what was wrong with you, he felt that it could be cured with one of the four remedies from his medicine cabinet.

Oh, no. Canfo Phanique, cod liver oil, calamine lotion, or mercuracrome. Oh, no. That's all you needed. I thought he was going to say the carnivore diet. We'd really go full circle. You didn't think we go full circle on mercuracrome? So his relationship with his dad sounded like rough in a really,

deep way. Initially, I was going to say strained, but like, that would be an improvement. Yeah. So I'm sending you another quote from his memoir. When I tried to one-up him, I was punished. This happened a lot when my mother was away. His method of punishment was perfect. He just ignored you. It was the punishment of silence, very effective for a child who craves attention. You didn't exist. He didn't do your laundry. He didn't set a place at the table for you. Milton doesn't live here anymore. He had a short fuse. And if it went off, his words could be like daggers, cloaked in the most incredible vocabulary. His temper had style.

Rather than being afraid of him, I wanted to see that temper in action and explore how I could twist it. So I'd push just to get him going. Oh, man. So he's just like trying to get any form of attention he can. He's just trying to get a reaction. And his dad is like, that not setting a place at the table for you is like chilling. Yeah, brutal.

I also appreciate about this quote that he lifts up his response to. it where he's like, oh yeah, then I made it worse. Yeah. Then I would go in and be like, what else can I get him to do? Right. Right. So there's another little vignette in the book about his father ignoring him completely until Richard just starts singing show tunes at the table.

Oh, man. Until his father finally has to acknowledge him, even if it's just by being like, hey, stop it. That makes so much of his public persona. Makes sense. Yeah, because it's like he's just trying to get your attention. Yeah. And he's trying to get you to look at him. He's trying to annoy his way.

into your heart. Yeah, and his dad probably gave him his first ever Ellen face. One more thing about his dad. At one point in his childhood, his mother was rushed to the hospital, and it turned out that she had an ulcer. And they all go to the hospital together. They're in the waiting room, and his dad immediately tears into him and says that Richard is the reason that his mom is sick. Oh, God. According to the memoir, he screamed at Richard, quote, it's not Lenny. It's you. I'll spell it out for you. M-I-L-T-O-N. No way. Jesus Christ. And then Richard turns it around on his dad and is like, no, you're the one who aggravates her. She's stressed out because she has to work all the time. Why don't you get a job? He says to his dad. Choke on a C-O-C-K, dad.

So things were tough with his dad, good with his mom. He loved his mom so much, really tough with his dad. And they're tough at school, too. He's growing up in Louisiana in the 50s, and he is not a Louisiana in the 50s kind of guy. He's more of a Portland in the 2010s kind of guy. More than 2024. He's got a huge personality. He's got big curly hair. He's super theatrical. He's fat at the time. He's left-handed. And he talks in. the memoir about trying to correct every single one of those things. He's trying to be a silent mask Northpaw. 100%.

He's looking for an extremely specific kind of conversion therapy. He is desperate to fit in and he is painfully aware that he fails to fit in with his family and he also fails to fit in with his peers, right? Right, right. Those experiences of difference are most acute for him, around his fatness. That difference plays out at home. He goes to the doctor when he's in grade school

and the pediatrician gives him a lecture about weight loss and puts him on a diet. The way that he describes that meeting felt so familiar to me. They're like sitting in a doctor's office with this sort of authority figure that's not just an authority over you, but is also an authority to your parents. Yeah.

And they're reporting to your parent that your body is a failure. Also, on top of everything else, he has to be insecure about and he's getting shitted on for it's like, oh, throw fatness in there too. Yes. It's just like so much for one little guy to deal with. And again, this is all happening before he's like 10. Yeah. Yeah.

So at that doctor's visit, the doctor hands him a photocopied piece of paper that lays out a diet for him to follow. Oh, God. It's going to be bad, isn't it? You want to hear the diet? Do you have any guesses about what the diet is? Isn't it going to be some Scarsdale bullshit where it's like eat three blueberries in a bowl and then like salted ice cubes for lunch and then go jogging for dessert or something. Salted ice cubes is too light, but three blueberries is too heavy. Oh my God. Okay.

Breakfast, one slice of dry wheat toast, a poached egg and quote a beverage. They don't really specify and that seems like a real open. That's kind of weird. Yeah. So milkshake is fine. Right. Lunch is three ounces of tuna that's been packed in water, drained, and then dressed just with lemon juice. Oh, that's like the rocks diet. Oh. And two slices of rye crisp. In case that wasn't dry enough for you, your snack is one apple and your dinner is three ounces

of lean meat and one cup of dark green vegetables. And again, a beverage. Yeah, God, it's like a YouTube challenge. It's like for dinner, eat six solace. teens and then afterwards fold a piece of paper more than eight times. So I looked at his diet and did a little rough estimate on the calories. If your beverages are water, this adds up to 588 calories for the whole day. That's like prisoner of war rations. At this point, the Minnesota starvation study had already happened and that was at 1,570 calories, right? I'd also leave it up to his

parents to enforce this, I guess, which then just contributes to the bad relationship with his dad. Well, he also talks about sitting down to eat with the whole rest of his family and they're eating all of their normal dinner stuff. Oh, God. And he's got like a little bowl of tuna. That's so fucked up. With his sad little bowl of tuna. Yeah. Yeah. So he starts, the diet food is terrible and he hates it. So he starts quietly feeding it to their dog under the table. But that just means he's eating even less. Yes. And he starts just skipping meals.

Oh, God. And the more weight he loses. the prouder his mom is of him. So he instantly gets the message that no one cares how you lose weight. It's just that you lose weight. I mean, he's bad for you at any age, but it's like to be doing this, this like important developmental time

is like so dangerous and scary. I have nothing to say throughout this whole episode other than like, that's bad. That poor guy, I'm contributing nothing. So that difference around his size shows up for him in a big way at school. He talks about arriving at school on the first day and being like everyone here is thin and everyone here is staring at me

he also talks about a kind of constant casual bullying of kids just being like hey fat so and that kind of thing he learns to deal with it by leaning into the fat joke oh so when people are like hey fat so can you even make it to the end of the block he like start wheezing like asthma style wheezing and then he'd be like, no, I can't, I'm not okay. Like he would like, be like, you're so right, this is how out of shape I am. Got so he's got the gay compensatory stuff and the fat compensatory stuff. So he's like establishing all these really harmful patterns. It's kind of the same skill set that he developed with his dad, right? Which is just like, you just go over the top with it. You go when they go hard, you go harder. I'm imagining like maintenance phase

listeners who saw like, oh, they're doing a Richard Simpson. episode. Now just sitting in their car, staring into middle distance, like, oh, God. I'm sad. I'm so sad about something that happened like 60 years ago. I told you. So at this point, when this happens, Richard's friends are all girls. Yeah. And they figure that if he isn't fat, this won't happen. Oh, okay. Which is like, rookie mistake, right? So they all raid their mom's medicine cabinets and bring in various diet pills. Oh, no. Which was like, fuck. fucking meth back then. Right.

He doesn't name the pills, but he does describe taking a bunch of different colors of diet pills. This was a thing in the 60s in particular. There was a huge boom in quote unquote diet pills. And they were sometimes called rainbow pills. Oh. There was very little information and research into their safety at this point. But pill mills started to pop up, just fully walk-in clinics. Yeah.

where patients would come in and be prescribed a quote unquote rainbow of pills that were supposedly like bespoke just for them. And the patients would get a consult and a prescription, usually a few prescriptions, to be filled at a compounding pharmacy. And the appeal, the sort of selling point was that it was a medical solution and it was fully customized. Peter Cohen, a professor at Harvard Medical School, told the Smithsonian, quote, what they were really doing was selling stimulants

combined with other medications to counteract the side effects of the stimulants. Oh. So all they're doing is giving you amphetamines and then things to make the amphetamines less amphetamine-y. Also, did I, okay, maybe we'll keep this, maybe we won't. Did I tell you I once took one of my dad's antidepressants because I thought antidepressants were like happy pills?

I was in seventh grade. Oh, no. I was like, oh, if he takes them for depression, then it'll make me extra happy. So I took it, but then it turned out they weren't. weren't antidepressants, they were for his insomnia. You just went to sleep? It was like some nuclear level sleeping pill. And it was the day, it was the last day of school for seventh grade and we were all going to a

roller skating rink. Oh, no. And you wanted to be extra happy. I wanted to be extra happy. And so I sat down to lace up my skates and I was like, I'm tired. I'm going to lie down. And then I woke up at 3.15 when somebody was like shaking me. You missed the whole thing. The whole day. Baby, you took some trazadone. There's none question in my mind. I have no fucking idea what it was, but I was also a tiny child. And I like the dosage was also deranged. And then also there was speaking of bullying, there was a kid who had been bullying me all

here. And that was like his last chance to like beat me up. And like as I was sleeping at some point during the day, he like shook me awake. And he's like, come out back. Bitch, I'm going to beat your ass. And I was too tired to deal with it. I was like, not right now, man. I'm too tired.

And he just never fucked with me again. I'm too sleepy for you to mess me up. It's such a wild. Like, keep him on their toes. What a fighting move. So anyway, could have been worse. You could have been on amphetamines. Well, yeah, I mean, that would have been way better.

And also, I would have kicked the shit out of that guy. So he keeps taking diet pills and he realizes that if he takes more pills, he loses more weight. Of course. He only stops taking the pills after he has a very intense episode of thinking, and I quote, that my heart would explode. Oh, God. So he backs off of the diet pills. freaks him out and he's like, no, no, no, no, no, never mind. So he finds out that one of his

friends' moms is going to wait watchers and he begs her to take him with her. Oh, God. This is early high school by this point. She agrees and he's so happy that he runs home to tell his parents. And he writes that when he told his parents, they were really deeply proud of him. Oh. More proud of him for going to wait watchers than like most other things. things, right? Which scans with the experiences of a lot of fat kids. Yeah, this is, I mean, some of these are parallels with your experience, right? 100%. I was reading this and I was like, I'm in this picture. They're just like from a very young age. This is like the overwhelming, like issue that people talk to you about and give you shit about. Pretty much the only times

he writes about his parents being proud of him around weight loss. Oh, God. So he describes going to this first Weight Watchers meeting with his friend's mom. Everyone lines up and weighs in. The group leader records everyone's weight and tells them how it changed from last week to this week. If your weight goes down, you get a star pinned to your shirt. If your weight plateaus and stays the same, you get a turtle, which is like slow and steady, pinned to your shirt. And if your weight increases, Michael, you get a fucking pig. Yeah, God.

I was like, oh, it's not going to be a pig, is it? Oh, yeah. It was going to be a pig or a cow or a hippo. Yeah. Then the group leader announced everyone's weight loss or gain to the entire group. Yeah. And people clapped or did not clap. Fuck.

And his friend's mom, when he goes to the first meeting, gets the fucking pig pinned to her shirt. Oh, my God. Here's what he writes about that moment. I held her hand. She looked over at me for a moment and then she said something that I'll never forget. you better do something about your weight now because it only gets worse later in life. Catch it now before it's too late. I'll never forget the look of shame on her face.

Here was this happy lady, and one trip to the scale and 20 minutes later, she's crying, her mascara is running down her cheeks, and she has a pig on her shoulder. I knew from past experience that the system and reward and punishment probably wasn't going to work for me. Oh God, it's like such a sad lesson for like a little kid. Totally. And I think this is like where you start to see. the birth of the Richard Simmons who stays up all night on the phone with people who watches videos or come to his classes, right?

Yeah. This is where you see the person who's just like, I just don't want you to get wrecked by this, right? That's something I remember very vividly from the podcast that he has it like a deep well of empathy. He seems to like really care about other people. But then he also has like these weird blind spots where he sort of stops. Like it seems like he struggled to form relationships with people that weren't around

like kind of rescuing them or like. like being a support for them. Yeah, he describes himself repeatedly in adulthood as someone who does not have friends. Right. So he's just sort of doing this kind of like deep emotional support work. Right. But he doesn't feel like a reciprocal relationship. He doesn't feel, you know, that's how I took that.

And then you also think about this poor kid carrying around the fact that he's gay at the same time, right? It's like, okay, I have this fat thing that is like the number one thing that everybody is shitty to me about. And then I have this big fucking secret that I'm carrying around, or at least this feeling I have that I can't put words to, even if he hadn't sort of identified it in himself yet. And he's left-handed. And he's left-handed. So inferior.

So all of this, all of the crash diets, the diet pills, the doctor's visits, the Weight Watchers, all of this happens while he is a child or a teenager. He has not even gone off to college yet, and he's already been through the ringer, right? So when it comes time for him to leave home, he is stoked. Yeah, all that.

He started at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, and then he transferred to Florida State, where he graduated, interestingly enough, with an art degree. Oh. We could have had a Richard Simmons Bob Ross. That's very fun for me to think about. Maybe there's a happy little tank talk. Maybe there's a happy little tank top right here. He wanted to be a painter, and he studied abroad in Italy.

Okay. And he loved it. Oh. He is there to make his dreams to be an artist come true, but things take a very different turn when he's sitting at a cafe after class one day. Oh, no. All right. There you go. He says, I noticed a table of men across the way staring at me.

I just assumed they must be admiring my gorgeous curly hair or my new Paisley Gucci knockoff overalls. Overalls. Okay. Yep. He's already Richard. One of the men came over and introduced himself asking me if I knew Frederico Fellini, the Italian director. I said I didn't know him, but I knew who he was. Well, the gentleman who introduced himself was the casting director for the movie Satyricon,

and Fellini wanted me for a small role. And he wanted me because I was fat, but in Italian, it sounded so much nicer. So Richard Simmons appears briefly in Felini's. satiricom. Wait, this actually went through. This actually happened? It is a blink and you'll miss it kind of appearance. No way. He is there. Dude, in his little overalls? No, but he is a little fat guy. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. YouTube has it. YouTube has it. YouTube has it. Richard Simmons in Falini's satiricon, exclamation point, exclamation point, exclamation point. Send me the clip. Hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, going, sending it to you.

This is fun. Richard Simmons. I would not in a million years have recognized that as him. Full beard. Definitely like a fat dude. He looks like Jack Black. He looks like a young balushi. Yes.

Dude, one of the comments is, my God, the amount of people who think that's Richard Simmons is disturbing. According to his memoir, it is him. I don't know. Somebody commenting without full context and information. I don't know. That doesn't sound like the YouTube comment section that I know. In a YouTube comment.

I don't know. So the satiricon role leads to a bunch more acting work in Italy. What? Mostly in commercials. Really? In one, he played a bunch of grapes for an Italian fruit of loom commercial. Nice. Okay.

In another, he played a dancing meatball that sings a jingle. God, now I'm imagining a life for Richard Simmons where he just became a successful Italian actor. Just only did commercials. Yeah, just like a fat, hat. happy guy in Italy. Totally. He did the skinny, sad guy in America version of it. Like, he did make his money off of commercials.

There's no question. Yeah. This all leads to him becoming a little local celebrity in Florence. Ooh. He's living there. He's 20 years old. He's supporting himself through acting. He's going to school.

He's loving his life. This whole chapter of his life makes me so happy for him. Dude, I know. It's like his eat, pray love era. And I just love that he gets this sort of era of, of just being appreciated as he is and celebrated as he is in his true form as a dancing meatball. You know?

You're like, yeah. Stay there, Richard. Freeze frame. Keep Richard the happy meatball. So good. This is what we want for you, Richard. So one day he borrows his friend's car to go grocery shopping. His friend has a little tiny fiat.

And once again, fat lady in a little car loves fat dude in a little car. he goes grocery shopping, he uses his friend's car. When he comes out of the market to go to the car, there is a note on the windshield. This is a note that he cites throughout the rest of his career as like the turning point when he was like, I finally have to do something about my weight. Oh, no. The note says, according to his memoir, Richard, you're very funny, but fat people die young. Please don't die. Dude, leave the happy meatball alone.

Totally. Let him be a happy little meatball. God, that's awful. So then like this act of bullying becomes like this crucial part of his origin story? Well, and he goes on to say in later interviews, like, I thought people just didn't like me because I was fat. I didn't realize I was going to die because I was fat. So one of his big messages later on was like,

you got to tell fat people, they're going to die. God, that's so sad. So he goes on this real emotional roller coaster on this one. Like, who wrote the note? It's somebody who clearly knows or recognizes him. It wasn't signed so he doesn't know who it was. He gets way up in his head about like which one of his friends probably wrote it.

Say it to my face, motherfucker. Totally. So he writes about how he ultimately sort of processed all of this. And this is how he dealt with the feedback from that note. He says, I knew I didn't want to die. So who or what was the enemy? I knew the answer. Food. I knew what I had to do. I had to stop eating. That was it, plain and simple. And that's what I did. I stayed very busy. I drank water. I walked everywhere and the weight began to come off. And I do mean the weight began to come off. Almost like a sugar rush. I began to feel a sort of heady euphoria. It became a game. Every day I found new ways to avoid eating. If I were going to a party or someone's house, I'd fill up with water, quickly drinking seven or eight glasses before I went. Every day I'd roll the dice. How many days could I do this? Dude, this sucks. Yeah, and he's like, now this is a strategy for my health. Yeah, why can't people just be

fat and you've been fucking nice to them? Good enough for Fellini. Yeah, I know. Jesus Christ. Fat activist king, Frederico Polini. God. So that's exactly what he does. He stops eating. And in two and a half months, he loses over 100 pounds. No fucking way that fast? Michael, this is how Richard Simmons, quote unquote, loses the weight. Dude. It is just straight up, wild, unchecked, happily embraced anorexia. I hope he's, like, lying or exaggerating about that.

I mean, that's, like, so dangerous. He talks about his nails breaking off because they're so brittle. he talks about his skin thinning out and turning gray. Oh, God. He talks about finding clumps of hair on his pillow most mornings. And one day he's out running errands and he starts feeling nauseated and dizzy. And the next thing he knows, he wakes up in a hospital and he's talking to the nurses about starving himself.

Oh, God. The nurses start refeeding him and they explain to him that this is not the way to lose weight. He starts to slowly but surely come back a little bit from his disordered eating, but he's what 12-step folks or AA folks might call it dry drunk, right? He's not in therapy. He's not at peace with his body. He doesn't have a neutral, much less a positive relationship with food.

He's just like, I'm eating because I'm supposed to eat, leave me alone. And probably all kinds of like still like guilt and shame about how much he's eating and when he's eating, stuff like that. Nothing is resolved. He's just managing to kind of bear down and knuckle through. So he's just starting to come back from his eating disorder stuff. And he gets a draft notice for Vietnam. Oh, God.

I forgot this was taking place in like his history. He's told to report to a center in New York City for duty. He shows up, but he is still very early in refeating from his eating. God. So he's still losing hair. He still looks malnourished. And he's given a deferral and doesn't serve, right? And he decides from there to move to Los Angeles and start working in restaurants. Is he attempting to become an actor at this point? Is that way he goes to L.A.? He doesn't really say why he goes to L.A. It's odd. I sort of thought, oh, maybe he's going to pursue acting out there. No, no. He just starts working in restaurants. Oh, okay. His longest

stint is in a restaurant called Derricks, which was a very CNBC in restaurant. And its celebrity guests are like peak 70s. He was like, the people who ate at Derricks were Dionne Warwick, Tom Jones, Johnny Carson, and friend of the show, Ed McMahon. Aubrey, we don't have time to tell all the youths who all these people are. We now take an hour-long detour. to describe these folks. They used already know who Dionne Warwick is from her excellent Twitter career. Oh, that's true. Actually, that is like to know her.

Yes. And Ed McMahon, our listeners will know from a previous episode. Scroll back. Our single least popular episode. You love bringing that up. And my number one favorite, I love it so much. It's your worm wars. As you can imagine, Richard Simmons is the Mater D, and he is built for front of housework.

Yeah, he's an ENTJ. No. Fuck off. We know this. From the completely real categorization, we now can diagnose him with one of the 16 people types. Oh, so like you, he's an extrovert. All right, right, right, right. How dare you?

Never bring that up again. So he finds a way to supplement his income. He makes jewelry. Okay. And he models it at the restaurant. And then people are like, oh my God, your jewelry. Where'd you get it? And he'd be like, I made it.

Do you want some? And would like pull jewelry out of his pocket. This is like early Instagram. This like is, he's like a little influencer. He's totally an influencer. But wait. Do you want to know? What do you imagine?

Let's just start here. What do you imagine the Richard Simmons jewelry looks like? I don't want to be mean. I don't want to be mean. The theme of his jewelry is anatomy. Oh, what? Oh, is it just like dicks? No.

No. Not that kind of anatomy. Boops, boobs. Kid me earrings. What? Wait, what? broaches. Wait, spleen hat pins.

Are you sure you're not misreading? Are you having a stroke? Is this real? A very special 24-carat gold uterus with opal ovaries. Some of those you wouldn't even know that it's the part of the body. The kidney necklace would just look like a bean. I would, well, famously the Tiffany design, the classic Tiffany design is just a little gold bean. So like, you know, maybe it looks like knock off Tiffany.

A uterus, I feel like I would recognize because it is it'll like. ears. Anyway, I can't express to you how much I would wear like pancreas earrings. We have so many Richards. Like, it's like the happy meatball Richard we want the best for. The artist Richard, the kidney gold maker Richard. The 24-carat gold uterus Richard. One gallbladder, please. We want the best for all of these people. And we got this totally different Richard. So while he's working in restaurants selling his wears, he picks up some more extremely maladaptive weight loss methods, right? He's now working in restaurants. He is surrounded by food. And also he's in fucking L.A. where like everybody has disordered eating. So he's like, I'm sure he's getting all kinds of tips. A server at one restaurant

where he works gives him a tutorial on how to purge. Oh, God. Another coworker introduces him to abusing laxatives for weight loss. And he was like, I like that they tasted like chocolate. Oh, my God. At one point, he notices some regulars are all at the restaurant all the time, but they're rarely eating and they're very thin. And they spend a lot of time in the bathroom. And they come back having powdered their noses. He's like, so one day I just marched into that bathroom right behind them. And he sees powder on the sink.

And he's like, what is this? Richard. And you're like, you live in L.A. And you work in the restaurant industry with famous people in the 70s. You know cocaine. I have no experience with L.A. or cocaine, but I do assume that it was basically a snow globe at that time. Anyway, that is a point at which he's like, I actually don't think I'm going to do cocaine to lose weight.

Good call, Richard. You should do cocaine because it makes you more fun to be around. You should do it for the good reasons. While he's living in L.A., he starts experimenting with exercise, which is sort of a burgeoning leisure activity in L.A. at this point. All right. Like the industry is forming, yeah. Yeah, this is the 70s. We're not even into the. 80s. So this is like exercises for like Jack Lillane and like strong men and that kind of thing. And we're starting to move into like, oh, what if it's something that people do as part of their

daily lives? Yeah. So he tries out Bikram Yoga and he's like, not for me. Yeah, that does seem a little low energy for Richard. And then one day a friend recommends exercise classes at a place called Body Body by Gilda. Okay. Body by Gilda was a studio. run by Gilda Marks. I would say, based on what I've read, that Gilda Marx is sort of like the exercise equivalent of that saying about the Velvet Underground. Like, not everybody listened, but everybody who did started a band. Right.

So Body by Gilda is where Jane Fonda started working out. Oh, okay. Regular attendees also included Bet Midler and Barbara Streisand. Nice. So Richard goes to Gilda's class in L.A. And he talks about sort of all of the feelings of being a fat kid and learning that physical activity is a place where you get ridiculed or you get excluded or you get whatever. And he's like, this is the first time.

I didn't feel any of that. And I got to be exactly as exuberant as I wanted to be. I got to be exactly who I was. Someone was there playing the piano and they were playing like crowd pleaser kind of songs. Gilda is this kind of glamorous class leader. She always has her nails done for her gym class and her hair is done. She has like a signature red lip that she wears to the, where I'm just like,

holy hell, full face of makeup for the gym. Look at you. That doesn't like she looks like a Salvador dolly painting by the end, but I'm sure she was moving at work. It's exercise, but it's mostly about having fun. He feels like it can really, cut loose and be his whole self with his whole energy level. And he leaves feeling strong,

feeling amped and with this sense that he really found the place for him. So much so that he prepays for a whole series of 10 classes. He's like, sign me up. He is also the only person in the class who's not a woman. That night, he goes to work at Derricks, at the restaurant. And Gilda and her husband walk in the door of the restaurant. And he thinks that they're there to have dinner. He's really excited to see her. And what she's actually there to do is give him a refund. What? And to tell him that he can't come back. What? And that the women in the class weren't comfortable with having a man in the class. And he's straightforwardly in the memoir is like, I don't believe her. So what do you think it was? I think probably like if you're not accustomed, if you

And sign on specifically for Richard Simmons level of energy. Yeah. I could understand feeling like this is more than I'm up for. I'm just like marveling at how like hurtful that must have been. Because like you finally find a place that you're comfortable and you're like, oh, I found my people. And then an hour later, they're like, no. Yeah.

So this one, he describes this one as hurting him in more depth and detail than any of the other previous hurts in this book. Yeah, it must be. Yeah. Once again, he's getting the message that he's not wanted. Yeah. Yeah. So next in the book, he tells this story of being out for dinner and running into a customer of his from Derek's from the restaurant.

Like a lot of his customers, this dude is wealthy as hell. And they start talking. And Richard is like, I think it's time for me to move on from restaurants. And this customer says, well, what do you want to do? and Richard says, I actually want to start my own gym. So that's what did it? He just like gets kicked out of one. He's like, I'm starting one.

He went to one exercise class. He loved it. And he was like, oh, you're going to kick me out. How about I start my own gym? I need to know how many public figures launch their careers out of pure spite. It has to be more than 50%. According to Richard Simmons in this memoir,

this strains credulity to me. Okay. The customer at that dinner is like, what a great idea. I'll finance it. Yeah. Huh. Like it occurs to him and he has a, you know, a financing partner.

Right. Just immediately. It's, there's this weird sort of way of storytelling that Richard Simmons has. Like, he just keeps stumbling into major career victories. At one point, he's like, I never wanted to write a book. And then I sat on a plane and I was sitting next to the VP of Random House. I'm like, no, you weren't. Also, you wonder how much he was exploring the gay scene.

in L.A. at this time. For sure. Like, it could have been somebody he knew from the restaurant. It could have been someone he was dating. It could have been, like, as soon as you leave out this huge part of your identity, there's probably entire, like, entire people that you know that are not going to make it in your book and entire relationships and subplots that just aren't going to be in there. Yeah, I will say I did find a clip of an interview where he's being interviewed by Hewell-Hauser. California listeners will be familiar with. No idea. Hewel-Hauser. It's like Dionne Warwick to our young listeners. For the entire interview, Richard Simmons is staring at Hewell Houser's chest.

And then he goes, sorry, there's a chubby little alligator on your shirt. And then later he's like, do you want to arm wrestle me? Oh my God. Richard Simmons is working overtime to get laid and it's in an interview for CNN. Control your meatballs, Richard. It's, it made me, it made me so happy. I was going to show it. I was going to play it on the show

and then I was like, do you know who Hewell Hauser is? And you were like, I've never heard that name in my life. And I was like, well, then it's not fun. This is what I would be like if I was ever in the room with Jeremy Irons. I'd just be looking at his neck veins. Oh, you got a Jeremy Irons thing. Specifically, Jeremy Irons from Die Hard with a vengeance. Where he's all ropey and mean.

So regardless of the origins, that is when Richard Simmons opens his first exercise studio. This is the gym that is later known as, Slimons. Okay. It's pretty good. So he opens his gym and he decides that it's going to be a gym that takes all comers, you know? And it really takes off with two demographics in particular. Gay men and fat women. Just like this show. Just like our show. Just like our podcast. We are the Richard Simmons demographic. We cannot talk shit. We cannot come for Richard Simmons less someone come for us. A number of gay men are into Nautilus gyms.

at this point. But those are described at the time as being kind of like nightclubs and sort of like hookup spaces. Like cruisy. Yeah. Yeah. So it's not a everyone is welcome and you're here to exercise space. My friend's gym in London, which is like around Soho, has like a women's changing room,

a men's changing room and another men's changing room. It's like, everyone knows that's like the gay sex changing room, even though there's like not a sign. And the women's room is just like a tumbleweed. It's just storage. They keep like the paper towel in there. There's no one's ever been in there. There are these Nautilus gyms that are kind of like nightclubs.

There are bodybuilding gyms. But if you're not a bodybuilder, you're going to feel so weird there. Oh, right. People use a particular phrase a lot when talking about the early years of Slimons. And that phrase is, quote, you don't have to look like you already go to the gym to belong there. Oh, that's nice. Right? Yeah.

So he starts leading exercise classes at this gym. And he starts getting pressed because he is Richard Simmons. And I left this out. The gym, despite being like, come one, come all. Outsiders. Hello. The gym is in Beverly Hills. Okay.

And the classes were expensive. Oh, okay. In late 70s dollars, it was $100 for 10 classes. That's $650 in today's dollars. So that's $60. $55 a class. Yep. Damn.

He also starts getting press just for being in L.A. and being Richard Simmons. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. There are a bunch of like little profiles of him that start to pop up. There's an L.A. Times one where they call him, quote, a kind of freaked out Jack Lillane, which Jack Lillane did not love. Yeah, I'll bet. Yeah.

Just say the gay version of me. This is taking forever. The gym takes off and it becomes a chain. At this point, the gym is not yet called Slimins. Oh. Also, nowhere in the write-ups. I'm like, everybody was asleep at the wheel for these obituaries of him because no one mentioned that the original name of his gym was the anatomy asylum.

What? That's garbage. So we're going to watch an ad for the anatomy. that I found on YouTube. The man who brought us, I'm a Catholic oi, also did. A Catholic oi. Yeah. The anatomy asylum is so bad.

Wait until you hear the slogan. It gets better slash worse. Oh, God, okay. Hi, I'm Richard Simmons. My first anatomy asylum in Los Angeles was the start of something great. A great national network of 72 clubs and 13 cities, including yours, where people like you can lose weight, look good and feel great. Now we've got the music, the instructors, and the facilities right here to help you get yourself back in shape. Join me in over 100,000 members all over the country.

Isn't it time you were committed to the anatomy asylum? Join the anatomy asylum now and get two people for the price of one or 50% off the enrollment. Okay, he saved it. He saved it. Do you see what I need about both better and worse? So we are at the beginnings of the Richard Simmons Fitness Empire. It's happening. And next time, we're going to watch the empire sort of unfold in front of him. And we're going to see what Richard Simmons does when he stops being sort of the target of the messages and starts being the deliverer of the messages, right? We start seeing what he decides to do with the platform that he builds. And it's really interesting. So what was your takeaway from this section of the book? Like, how did it change?

the way that you think about Richard Simmons. I felt honestly like a little bit embarrassed that someone who had been such a constant presence in my life had been given so little thought by me, but also just kind of by the culture at large. Right. It made me sad that I had to go back and read this book from 25 years ago. Right. To hear from anyone anywhere that he actually had a really rough time growing up. Yeah.

that he had different dreams than this, and that he thought he was going to be a priest and then maybe an actor and then maybe a painter, right? Like all of this was new information to me. All of it makes sense. Right. And all of it makes me wish that we had been better to him when he was around to experience us being better to him. I mean, I do think next time we're confronted with a public figure like this, who's sort of happy, go lucky, almost to a fault. I think we should immediately ask ourselves, shouldn't you be a happy little meatball? Meatballing around somewhere in Italy.