Sixteenth Minute (of Fame) - i love my curvy wife, pt. 1

Episode Date: August 20, 2024

In 2017, Robbie Tripp posted about his "curvy wife" Sarah, inspiring months of discourse and a permanent internet turn of phrase. This week, Jamie revisits the saga and speaks to Curvy Wife Guy himself ahead of the release of his new single, which is obviously called "Hot Wife." How did a couple build a 'desert empire' on a controversial post, and what does that say about the internet economy? Tune in next week for part two, where Jamie takes a closer look at how this story resonated with women and fat activists -- featuring interviews with journalist Rebecca Jennings, Tigress Osborn of NAAFA (the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance), and Cate Navarrete of the Body Positivity Alliance. Stream Robbie's music here.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an IHeart podcast. Welcome to Pretty Private with Ebeney, the podcast where silence is broken and stories are set free. I'm Ebeney, and every Tuesday I'll be sharing all new anonymous stories that would challenge your perceptions and give you new insight on the people around you. Every Tuesday, make sure you listen to Pretty Private from the Black Effect Podcast Network. Tune in on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Our IHeart Radio Music Festival, presented by Capital One, is coming back to Las Vegas. Vegas.

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on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Wife guys. What do we do with all of the wife guys? This was a question you could find floating around the internet in the late 2010s, and it's kind of weird already to think about how novel it seemed at the time. These days I see a wife guy in my feed. I pause. I think, well, I hope she's on board with this and I keep scrolling. But there was a time in recent history where the question of

what do we do with the wife guys was one of pressing importance. In the space of a few weeks in 2019, the New Yorker, the New York Times, and New York Magazine all wrote their own deep dives of the meaning of the term wife guy. A lot of people trace the term to drill one of our greatest living comedy minds, but it quickly evolved into something else. A wife guy became someone who didn't just love his wife online, but if social media was to be believed, telling people how much he loves his wife, appeared to be a part of his job or something. And if said wife guy was rich, handsome, successful, and still publicly loved his wife, it could even be considered newsworthy. Like many internet terms, the age of the wife guy has come and gone.

2019 brought a slew of listicles of famous wife guys who bravely, publicly loved the person they married, which just goes to show how gendered this concept is. We've talked about it on the show before, because a wife publicly celebrating her husband is nothing. Treated as unremarkable. No one's tossing around the term husband lady, not only because it sounds dumb, but because there is a tacit expectation that any married woman is a husband lady. To many, wife guy behavior on social media started to read as a PR decision versus an expression of actual love. In some cases, a wife, seemed to be a prop or a signifier that the wife guy is a good guy and one you can trust with your vote, your money, or your willingness to listen to amateur rap. So by 2022, people are over it,

and you get guardian headlines like, the world is done with wife guys. Thank God for that. Wife guys are seen now sometimes as less effusively loving and more insecure and wishing to signal that they have a wife. And to be honest, my mileage kind of varies on this concept. because if my boyfriend doesn't say something nice about me on the computer this weekend for my birthday, I will shit myself and stomp around. It's a polarizing genre of post, then and now. But as long as the wife and the wife guy are okay with it, the rest of us can mute and speculate in a group chat as is our God-given right. But what are the wife guys really talk about? The many aspects of wife, of course, their wife's professional accomplishments, their relationship milestones, their hobbies, and less commonly, explicitly,

celebrating their wife's body. If you know nothing about today's story, I want you to go in cold. And if you're revisiting this story, try to return with me. It's the summer of 2017, and you're sweating your ass off on a walk as the 50th chorus of Despacito drifts out of the nearest CVS. You open your social media of choice, and there's screenshots of this Instagram post. It's a picture of a straight white couple on a beach. They're embracing and they're about to kiss. The post belongs to the husband. It looks like an innocuous picture and you think to yourself, well, this is kind of an innocuous picture. Why is everyone? And then you read the caption. I love this woman and her curvy body. As a teenager, I was often teased by my friends for my attraction to girls on the

thicker side, ones who were shorter and curvier, girls that the average basic bro might refer to as chubby or even fat. Then, as I became a man and started to educate myself on feminist issues, such as how the media marginalizes women by portraying them in a very narrow and a very specific standard of beauty, thin, tall, lean. I realized how many men have bought into that lie. For me, there is nothing sexier than this woman right here. thick thighs, big booty, cute little side roll, etc.

Her shape and size won't be the one featured on the cover of Cosmopolitan, but it's the one featured in my life and in my heart. There's nothing sexier to me than a woman who is both curvy and confident. This gorgeous girl I married fills out every inch of her jeans and is still the most beautiful one in the room. Guys, rethink what society has. has told you that you should desire. A real woman is not a bikini mannequin or a movie character.

She's real. She has beautiful stretch marks on her hips and cute little dimples on her booty. Girls, don't ever fool yourself by thinking you have to fit a certain mold to be loved and appreciated. There is a guy out there who is going to celebrate you for exactly who you are, someone who will love you like I love my Sarah. Oh, oh! And as you finish reading the post, the city begins to crumble around you.

Buildings collapsing. The earthquake has come. It's the big one. Nothing is as it was and cannot be again. Because Curvy Wife Guy and Curvy Wife, Robbie and Sarah Tripp, your 16th minute, starts now. Welcome. All in a time Don't make me a start

Let's take it too far And give me one more A minute Six ten minute of fame Sixteen minute of fame Sixteen minute of face One more minute of fame Welcome

Welcome back to We're re-revisit and check in the internet's main characters to see what their moment says about the internet and us. And ooh boy, I hope you have a glass of water nearby because we're getting into some deeply complicated Trump administration era internet drama this week. some true heterosexual madness. We are talking about the saga of the curvy wife guy,

or as he's not shy about letting people know for the last seven years, a guy named Robbie Tripp. And while Robbie is pretty cleanly the main character in this case, he's the one that receives the most criticism and benefit from the story, he wrote the caption that everyone is reacting to. This story is still a two-hander in nature, because Robbie Tripp can't pull this moment off without his wife. Not some Bechtelcast humor if you're a fan of the show.

He can't pull this moment off without his wife Sarah Tripp's body being at the center of the discussion. Whether she likes it or not. And like Kelly Dodson in our first episode of 16th Minute, it's originally unclear to the public how much Sarah is welcoming the discussion or how much this moment presented the risk of monetizing and discoursing over a hyperfixation of Sarah's body. So before we get into it, I want to say at the top, This is going to be a two-part episode because this is a stunningly complex story for what it is, and I want to really take time to look at the full breadth of not just the subjects of this story, but why it struck the chord that it did, because the discourse around the

Curvy Wife saga went on for months, which even in 2017 was very unusual. But any story about bodies and especially bodies that haven't been historically accepted or celebrated, is going to be received by everyone in a very personal way. And I wanted to make sure to speak to Fat Liberation activists about their reflections of this story seven years later. So we'll be airing that next week because it really does deserve its own episode. This week, we're sorting back through the original Curvy Wife Saga and 16th Minute Exclusive, having a postmortem with the Curvy Wife guy himself. So buckle in. It's a It's a story. Come with me, if you dare. To July 2017. A Burundian team of teenage robotic students

vanish into thin air while traveling in Canada. OJ. Simpson is granted parole. The U.S. government approves Elon Musk's dumbass hyperloop, as we keep using Twitter like he'll never run it into the ground. What a joke. We're less than a year removed from Trump's election, and in a few months, the Me Too movement will begin a number of important conversations about gender. gender violence and daily discrimination, only to devolve into yet another social movement that centers white collar, white women, but does radicalize many. And on Instagram.com, Instagram, the Meta Property, a man named Robbie Tripp posts a photo of him and his wife Sarah at the beach with an infamous caption.

I love this woman and her curvy body. As a teenager... You know what, we actually don't need to listen to the whole thing again. I trust you've retained it. So let's talk about who Robbie and Sarah Trip were at the time this was posted. By the summer of 2017, Instagram had been using an algorithmically driven feed for more than a year, doing away with the chronological feed that their parent company Facebook had shed over half a decade ago. So this puts Robbie and Sarah at a pretty interesting moment in internet history. They're benefiting from a couple different things here. It's a post whose high engagement was definitely boosted by this algorithm, but the curvy wife story also got a lot of traditional media-driven

traffic. If memory serves, I first saw this story while people were tearing Robbie to shreds over on Twitter and then read an article about it on a culture website and then was linked to the original post back on Instagram. It was everywhere. An Instagram looms large over this couple's personal history. It's part of how they got together in the first place. Robbie was born and raised in Utah, and his early passion was basketball. He'd play all the way into junior college before hanging up the cleats, packing in the hoop.

After a while, he stopped playing. And Sarah, who is a year younger, had an early fixation on fashion design and is from Las Vegas, where the couple lives with their three children today. Because, yes, these two are still very much together. For any rightful criticism of Robbie and eventually of Sarah that exists,

it's undeniable that they love each other. But here's the wrinkle. It's Robbie's post that the algorithm and the press gobbles up, with the narrative quickly reducing Sarah Tripp to the role of curvy wife. But by 2017, Sarah had been an influencer in the plus-size space for over four years. It was her who was the more successful of the two online, and much of her work was entrenched in body positivity and commentary on her own life. Until all of a sudden, things changed. Robbie didn't take the reins.

They were kind of given to him. This wasn't always the case. Sarah had been regularly posting Outfit of the Day posts and writing blogs for her site Sassy Red Lipstick since 2013. She'd had the idea for the site after a summer fashion internship in New York City left her feeling inspired to start something of her own that was inclusive of women who looked like her. She was a college student who wore what she would call in-between her sizes.

Here's a 2015 post from the blog where she explains what that means. Since the release of my story on how I've come to love and accept my curves, many women messaged me to express their feelings toward the inexplainable reason that fashion-conscious women are quickly separated into one of two categories, regular size, aka typical skinny and size 0 to 4, or plus size, aka heavy and size 14 plus. But what about those in between? What I've been noticing for years is that there is no in-between,

no happy medium. For girls like me and the countless other women I see around me, we do not fit into either category. We are what I'll call in-betweeners, just average girls of varying sizes with some junk in the trunk, but not a part of either of the two categories mentioned above. Think about it, there is not a term or definition

or description for those women who don't fit, no pun intended, into either of these categories. This seemingly no woman's land concerning fashion and body type pushes girls like me into a gray area that at best creates a feeling of ignorance, and at worst creates feelings of judgment. Sarah would post her outfits, updates on her life, and did so knowing she was more representative of what the average American woman looked like, at that time between a size 16 and 18. Looking back at this blog was kind of nostalgic, I'd never seen Sarah's work specifically before Curvy Wife, But the style of posts is from a bygone era. There's a leopard print font heading to the site that's reminiscent of like a Sex in the City fan site. There are carefully posed photos of Sarah taken on a digital camera.

There are pages of Pinterest graphics that read things like, dress like Jackie, act like Audrey, inspire like Lily, party like Gatsby. I don't know who Lily is. So Sarah's site starts in 2013, which is also the year that she and Robbie start seeing each other after being introduced by mutual friends in Vegas. They do some long distance between New York where her internship was and California, where Robbie was going to school, then got serious and quickly became engaged when they both returned to Utah

so Robbie could be with his family and Sarah could finish college at Brigham Young University. And for the record, they both appear to be from pretty well-off families. Robbie describes his father as a construction entrepreneur, and here's Sarah talking about what first got her interested in fashion on a podcast called Like to Know It Influencer Radio from 2019. I feel like my first love for designer came from going to a private school because these are families who are very successful in Vegas and have a lot of money. And my parents have always been very successful, but they're very humble, very hardworking

and could care less about brand games or status or anything like that. But the parents of all these kids I went to school with, it was very important to them. And so that's kind of where I feel like I first was introduced to it. And from the beginning, Robbie has mentioned on the sassy red lipstick website all the time. And he's cited as a huge source of support for Sarah emotionally and, by both of their accounts, in the day-to-day making of her social media. He was an Instagram boyfriend. He was an HTML boyfriend. Not yet an influencer himself, but a partner who took these carefully staged pictures of Sarah to support her burgeoning career. This is from the frequently asked question section of sassy red lipstick shortly before they got

engaged. Question. Why did you start a fashion blog? I've kept a lifestyle blog for the past couple years, but living in the city made me realize that I need to chase my dreams. My cute boyfriend, Robbie, encouraged me to finally start one. He's the techie behind everything you see here, and the rest is history. This blog is a great outlet for me to showcase my fashionista side to anybody who's interested. The two get married at the Las Vegas Church of Latter-day Saints in 2014. In 2016, the couple moved to San Francisco to continue pursuing their respective ambitions as Sarah grew sassy red lipstick and Robbie. Well, let's talk about what Robbie is up to. This posts start as pretty innocuous.

On Instagram, Robbie posted a picture of himself and Sarah the day that sassy red lipstick was launched in 2013. They're holding hands and it's captioned. This morning, Sarah and I officially launched her new fashion blog. I designed, photographed, and edited everything. and I'm super proud of how it came out. She fancy. Check it out. But Robbie also has his own stuff going on,

and a few themes emerged that are a part of his persona to this day. Yes, he loves his wife, then girlfriend. And by the way, he's not really commenting on her body with any frequency in the early years of their marriage. But there's wife content. There's a lot of hustle mindset posts. I'm talking the kind of memes that say, I have to be successful because wifey really likes shoes and her. handbags hashtag trip swag or it's natural for some people to dislike you not everyone has good taste

or if you're not making enemies you're not gaining fans and spoiler alert these posts really clarify why robbie's end game is ultimately as a white rapper in his content there is a pattern of a wish to prove something to people he very frequently brings up the concept of the haters even though i'm not sure who the haters would have been at this time. What's clear in these early posts is Robbie feels he's got something to prove, both as an individual and with Sarah as a team. Then there's his creative output, which included a self-published book from 2015 called Create Rebellion, which he describes as a, quote, abstract manifesto for disruptive creativity, unquote. Here's a 25-year-old Robbie talking about it on the local news. It's just really its main purpose is just to inspire people to

create. Don't be afraid to push against the status quo and just really, you know, do your own thing. Disregarding people who don't understand it, you create your art for you, not for anybody else. That I'm a born creative. I think I'm a creative genius. So what I'm hearing here is Robbie was very influenced by this 2010's hustle culture that had really taken hold in Silicon Valley. And given that the couple would soon move to San Francisco, a big tech city the year after this interview, it's not that surprising. It's prosperity gospel. And as time goes on, his emphasis on money and status will only increase. But around the time that Create Rebellion comes out, Robbie's angling to be a writer and a motivational speaker. He is interested in music,

specifically Macklemore, which is foreshadowing, but in 2016, he's focused on doing his book tour and is trying to get a TED talk, which he does. By 2017, Robbie secures a local TED talk in Salinas, California that is called Why Millennial Narcissists Are Changing the World. Here's a clip. This perception that millennials are selfish and effete is really just a skin-deep analysis when there's a much deeper and much more positive reality at the core. All you've got to do is look past the surface to see that millennials are actually changing the world for the better because our positives are born from our perceived negatives. Here's what I mean.

For example, what many seeing us as narcissistic is also just a supreme confidence in our abilities. The kind of confidence that allows us to start our own company, become the CEO of that company, the kind of confidence that drives us and propels us to think we can create an app that will disrupt an entire industry. Another one, what many people see in us as entitled is also just a natural expectation for success. The natural expectation that we don't have to work in an office nine to five in order to make a living. And if we do, then we expect that office has three different lunch menus, video game breakrooms, and nap pods from we need to take a nap.

I'm confident I could assign each one of the negative characteristics that my generation's been given, such as more selfish, more arrogant, more entitled, as a direct result of a generation that's also more creative, more free thinking, and more innovative than any other generation before us. The wild thing is that this was released on YouTube just a few months before the Curvy Wife Post, and I find it fascinating, because Robbie is embracing and embodying what Millennials, are often criticized for, and what he would be criticized for just months later in the wake of the curvy wife moment, of centering himself, of seeking fame. And look, I respectfully refuse to enlist in the generational culture war. My response to being a millennial is an acceptance that no one will

ever like us, and maybe that will ultimately be easier than being a part of a generation that everyone insisted will save the world, and then they end up being, you know, people. But Robbie Trip is definitely fixated on this idea of being a millennial, meaning that you are selfish for good. Here's how the talk ends. I believe we live at a digital day and age where all you need to succeed is Wi-Fi and a dream. In the words of Grammy Award winning rapper MacLamore, we are a generation of kids choosing love over a desk. And that is the generation I'm proud to be a part of. That is what it means to be a millennial. But many times this is all ignorant.

because we're misunderstood, and because we're misunderstood by older generations, they vilify us to some degree. Oh, they're narcissistic, they can't be managed, they're entitled, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Their frustration and their confusion comes from one solid fact. They are holding us to expectations created for a world that no longer exists. My name is Robbie Tripp. You may think I'm a narcissist, but really, I'm a millennial, and you're damn right I'm changing the world.

Thank you. And while I can see his point, any generation that asks for more than their predecessors are made out to be ungrateful brads for pushing back on traditional bullshit bootstrap narratives, and it's never going to be the system that produced such uncertainty and discrimination on the chopping block. It will always be the individuals and their avocado toast or whatever. I'm on board for that. But again, the narrative of the haters and viewing himself and Sarah as a united front that is at the forefront of the revolution.

It's familiar. And in a world where the curvy wife post had never picked up any steam, maybe Robbie would have continued in this direction and tried to do more motivational speaking. But we'll never know, because on July 30th, 2017, everything changes.

Welcome to Pretty Private with Ebenei, the podcast where silence is broken and stories are set free. I'm Ebeney and every Tuesday I'll be sharing all new anonymous stories that would challenge your perceptions and give you new insight on the people around you. On Pretty Private, we'll explore the untold experiences of women of color who faced it all, childhood trauma, addiction, abuse, incarceration, grief, mental health struggles, and more, and found the shrimp to make it to the other side. My dad was shot and killed in his house.

he was a drug dealer. Yes, he was a confidential informant, but he wasn't shot on the street corner. He wasn't shot in the middle of a drug deal. He was shot in his house, unarmed. Pretty Private isn't just a podcast. It's your personal guide for turning storylines into lifelines. Every Tuesday, make sure you listen to Pretty Private from the Black Effect Podcast Network. Tune in on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. I Heart Radio Music Festival. Presented by Capital One is coming back to Las Vegas. Vegas.

September 19th and 20th. On your feet. Streaming live only on Hulu. Ladies and gentlemen. Brian Adams. Ed Sheeran. Fade. Glorilla.

Jelly Roll. John Fogarty. Lil Wayne. L.L. Coulche. Mariah Carey. Maroon 5. Sammy Hagar. Tate McCray.

The offspring. Tim McRaw. Tickets are on sale now at AXS.com. Get your tickets today. AXS. My name is Ed. Everyone say hello, Ed. From a very rural background myself, my dad is a farmer and my mom is a cousin, so like it's not like... What do you get when a true crime producer walks into a comedy club?

I know it sounds like the start of a bad joke, but that really was my reality nine years ago. I just normally do straight stand-up, but this is a bit different. Onstage stood a comedian with a story that no one expected to hear. Well, 22nd of July 2015, a 23-year-old man had killed his family. And then he came to my house. So what do you get when a true crime producer walks into a comedy club? A new podcast called Wisecrack, where stand-up comedy and murder takes center stage. Available now.

Listen to Wisecrack on the IHeart Radio app, podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. During the mid-2010s was jump-starting his own creative efforts, Sarah had had a lot of success building up sassy red lipstick. Her Instagram bio read at the time of the post, Always Overdressed, Kissing Lips emoji, Confident Style and Body Positivity. Hashtag honor your curves. And she'd recently celebrated reaching 100,000 followers on Instagram.

Instagram and had pretty consistent sponsored posts. Right up until the moment of the Curvy Wife Post, the couple seemed content, in love, and determined to make it together. But if we're talking follower numbers-wise and who was posting about the spouse and the marriage more, Sarah Tripp had a significantly larger audience and much more narrative control. Until the post. The Curvy Wife Post was made to Instagram and Facebook and quickly racked up over

80,000 shares. And you heard the full post at the beginning of the episode, but here's a reminder of how it wraps up. There's nothing sexier to me than a woman who is both curvy and confident. This gorgeous girl I married fills out every inch of her jeans and is still the most beautiful one in the room. Guys, rethink what society has told you that you should desire. A real woman is not a bikini mannequin or a movie character. She's real. She has beautiful stretch marks on her hips and cute little dimples on her booty. Girls, don't ever fool yourself by thinking you have to fit a certain mold to be loved and appreciated. There is a guy out there who is going to celebrate you for exactly who you are, someone who will love you like I love

my Sarah. Almost immediately, the Curvy Wife Post gets higher engagement than Robbie's normally did at this time, and he says that the reception was initially positive, and mainly from the audience he had already, which was around 20,000 followers on Instagram at the time. Comments like, this is the sweetest thing I've ever read. This gives me hope I'll find love someday. And, you are a real man. This is beautiful and inspiring. But something I didn't realize, because it was rarely, if ever, referenced in the stories that surrounded the curvy wife post is that Sarah Tripp posts a blog on sassy red lipstick around that same time to compliment Robbie's post.

She teases it on Instagram with a photo from the same shoot and the same bathing suit. Only in this picture, she's by herself. The caption says, Talking all about the F word on SRL tonight. You know the one I'm talking about, F-A-T. I'm getting personal about my lifelong journey of being a curvier girl, how it affected past relationships, and why we need to stop using this terrible word, especially when talking about ourselves.

I may have fat, but I am not fat. And neither are you. This is a post you don't want to miss. Click the link in my bio to read. And we'll circle back to some of those ideas next week. But the point is that Sarah is actively engaging with the curvy wife story from the jump. and because she has the larger audience is probably boosting the story.

In these early days, there is never a feeling that she is upset or thinks that her husband has overstepped by posting this. But I never knew that, because Sarah's participation and engagement with this story is barely commented on in both the widespread criticism and celebration. People are largely focused on Robbie's words

and Sarah's body. Sarah's words are rarely considered. But traffic doesn't really pick up until a few days later, when Aaliyah Fruman at the Today Show found the story, writing, husband pens body positive note to curvy wife, and everyone's swooning. And to her credit, she interviews Sarah, who says the following. He always makes me feel so loved and appreciated. As a body positive fashion blogger, I've been very open about my body love journey and my goal to help other curvy women learn to love their body. I just feel so lucky that I have a husband

who has loved every inch of me since the day we met. The next day, a day, a day, trend reporter at the Huffington Post named Dominique Mossberg and picks up on the story and she loves it too. The headline is Husband's love note to his curvy wife should be required reading. Then the Daily Mail picks up on it. And if you've used the internet for a single second, you know what is

about to happen. Backlash. Huge swift backlash toward Robbie specifically. And look, I want to be clear. Okay, Obama vibes. So let me be clear. That I don't think any one reaction to this post is right or wrong. The early reception from women who liked the post are just as valid as the reactions

to those who didn't. And with that in mind, I don't think there's ever been an internet story I've seen that was more destined to get a huge wave of backlash than the curvy wife story. Because, just throw on O'Fortuna. Saying that you like your wife,

even though she's chubby, doesn't make you brave. if it makes you a jerk, you're still objectifying her, dude. Strong contender for least fave type of male feminist is man who thinks liking a curvy woman is revolutionary. My mates think you are fat, but I still like you. I'm such a feminist. Hashtag I, hashtag love, hashtag curvy, hashtag women.

I love my idiot husband. I don't care what society says. I like how dumb he is. I like his very smooth brain. I love his hair he tried to cut himself. Has curvy wife written a blog post about why she's a martyr for marrying her gawky narcissist husband yet? Yeah, it was intense. This is how I learned about the story originally, which snowballed into response essays like New York magazines.

Some people are applauding this man for celebrating his wife's curves, but most are dragging him. And an essay I really liked from Sam Escobar for a lot of. called area man thinks he's brave for finding his wife hot. These essays do acknowledge that Sarah is on board with what her husband is saying, but make the counter argument that to fat or curvy women on the whole, Robbie's writing fits a condescending pattern that they had experienced in the past. I particularly want to share this passage from Escobar's essay. As someone who's ranged in sizes and been overweight,

I will anecdotally muse that the compliments become increasingly patronizing at larger sizes. You have such a pretty face. A family member might lament in a tone halfway between resigned and complimentary. A well-intentioned yet frustratingly oblivious friend might quip, you're lucky you have curves. They're so trendy right now. Well, no. Models with a specific hip-to-waist-bust ratio are who you're referring to.

And this does not mean our society is suddenly universally respectful towards fat people. For anyone skeptical of that word, please know I use it as a neutral adjective and never a pejorative. and that using the term curvy as a substitute is substantially more harmful. And then, there are the self-congratulatory men. Robbie Trips sticks to the path that he had in the past. He thanks the supporters, and the haters just didn't get it. Throughout this criticism, the trips were making appearances. They went on the Today Show.

They went on Good Morning America. But there wasn't much time for them to dwell on their overnight fame before the next stage of the 15-minute experience pulled into the station, unearthing offensive old tweets. And with Robbie and Sarah, these were posts from the early to mid-2010s that were casually and overtly racist and transphobic and bear no repeating here. But the posts were gross and ignorant.

And within a few days of the story going viral, they resurface. And there is a sudden, intense demand for Robbie and Sarah to acknowledge and apologize for these posts. This is a phenomenon called milkshake ducking where a newly prominent figure is revealed to have shitty or hateful views shortly after becoming relevant. The term, and I just think this is funny, comes from an all-timer tweet from 2016 by Ben Ward, aka Pixelated Boat.

It says, The whole internet loves milkshake duck, a lovely duck that drinks milkshakes. Five seconds later, we regret to inform you, the duck is racist. Robbie and Sarah are the ducks. And the posts were relatively recent, and this demand for accountability escalates by August 7th, just a week after the post had started gathering steam. Model Tess Holiday called bullshit on Robbie, both for his original Curvy Wife post and for a transphobic tweet from 2015.

Given that Holiday was one of the most prominent body positivity advocates of the day, she was and is a very popular model who had launched the hashtag F Your Beauty Standard Social Media Movement and openly embraced the term fat. And she had this to say about the Curvy Wife story. Stop giving men trophies for doing the bare minimum. Also, I'm not here for someone who says transphobic things. Hashtag F Your Beauty Standards. Hashtag trans women are women.

And apologies come from both trips in pretty short order. They both cite their naivete and having done work on themselves since. This is from Sarah's blog. Recently, old tweets were uncovered from years ago, and what was found were some things that we are ashamed of. My insensitive words were posted in 2012. Robbie's from 2015. Regardless of when they were said, they were never appropriate. Mortified, we quickly deleted these off-color, insensitive remarks that we had completely forgotten about

from so long ago. But it was too late. screenshots were taken and shared online. We want to own up to our mistakes. We want to express our deep regret and shame at those insensitive words. We are so incredibly sorry for them. We are so embarrassed. They are not at all representative of who we are. But by the time these apologies were released on August 12th, most of the internet had already made their minds up about the couple one way or another. Some maintained that Robbie's post had been well-intentioned and Sarah liked it. They're just human. Others were put off or offended by it, and even more so by the tweets.

But even with the scandal, both of their audiences continued to grow. Sarah's accounts remained more or less normal, with the focus being the continued growth of sassy red lipstick. Robbie, well, he kind of ditches his Tony Robbins' motivational speaking era and pivots to full-time wife guy. So by this time, you know, Robbie had posted plenty of supportive things about Sarah in the past, but after Curvy Wife, the volume of posts about Sarah's body increases significantly. And by the end of the year, he's back to thinking about the haters, posting hustle memes

like, A hater is someone who sees your success as their failure. And your failure as their success, Robbie Tripp. And while he's committing to this new direction, the wave of negative press from the curvy wife post seems to still be on his mind, all while continuing to share how much money the trips had made at their respective business endeavors after the post went viral. On New Year's Day in 2018, he posts a picture of himself and Sarah in front of one of those weird cars where the doors flip up? They scare me. Anyways, they're in front of one of those, and Robbie is bragging about how they've made six figures blogging in the year of the curvy wife. The couple then leaves San Francisco and moves to what Robbie keeps describing as, quote, our large desert home, unquote, in Arizona.

And he starts an LLC called Desert Money. By 2019, Sarah is pregnant with their first child, and Robbie takes the next logical step into a career as a viral guy. You guys chubby sexy Colour bonita Gordita She rockin that peach emoji Like ain't nice to meet you She got thick eyes

Stretch marks big booty You guys he starts rapping And yes The first single is called Chubby sexy Maybe this seems out of nowhere But it does kind of make sense If you have been observing

Robbie's posts over a course of years After all he was Maclemore's number one fan In the words of Grammy Award-winning rapper MacLamore, we are a generation of kids choosing love over a desk. And that is the generation I'm proud to be a part of. That is what it means to be a millennial. And Chubby Sexy comes complete with a pretty elaborate music video that starred fat and curvy women who reached out at the casting call. And of course, Sarah Tripp herself. And when Chubby Sexy drops, the launch throws people back to the original story from almost two.

years earlier. And while some writers took the opportunity to dunk on Robbie a second time, others were kind of into it. If nothing else, the song does seem to be pretty self-aware of its own goofiness. There was an extensive, fascinating profile of the couple written the weekend that the chubby sexy music video was shot by Rebecca Jennings in Vox that is already reflecting on the original rollout of the trips as an influencer couple. Jennings writes that the couple seems to love each other very much. And she also got a chance to speak with Sarah Tripp about how the social media moment had affected her back in 2017, something that most people hadn't really asked. Here's a passage from Jennings' piece. While the hate from the legions of so-called Twitter feminists and the more

private criticisms, Robbie has said they received from certain Mormon circles. Robbie and Sarah are Mormon but do not discuss their faith on their platforms and say they don't engage with the cultural aspect of the religion seem to have bolstered Robbie it was harder for Sarah her anxiety which she already struggled with got worse it makes me scared to do things now in my career because of backlash and because how people treat us she says Robbie's always like there's no such thing as bad press because it puts us in front of more eyes and hopefully those people can make their own opinion, Sarah says. I personally wish that people weren't writing articles about us all the time.

It never feels good to see people say hurtful things, and I think people forget we have feelings. He's really good about brushing off the hate, but internally, I'm like, this is so not fun. And so these days, Sarah doesn't really go on the record about this story anymore. I reached out to her for this episode, but she politely declined and said she was excited I'd be talking with Robbie. And fair enough, I'm glad she got the chance to speak about it publicly, and Jennings' piece is really fantastic.

One part that particularly stuck with me was her interview with Alex, one of the dancers in the chubby sexy music video, who identified as a curvy wife guy super fan. Here's a passage. I had never seen anyone talk about women the way that Robbie talks about Sarah, she says, her eyes beginning to water. And in that moment, full of self-doubt, dating people that were really shitty on Tinder, I felt that there was a little bit of hope. A little bit of light at the end of this tunnel. And Chubby Sexy does well enough for Robbie to be encouraged to forge ahead with his music career. And he does so with remarkable energy. The things he wraps about are, well, you won't be surprised. Big women. It's a big girl banger. Oh. It's a big girl banger. Banger. Telling off the haters and getting

a lot of money. And during the month of a rail that a skater made. And during the month, I interviewed him, Sarah specifically. Oh, got a hot wife. She'd be looking so good and smell it real nice. Sarah's very often in these music videos and even appears in sketches before and after the music video for 2021's Sickness for Thickness. Okay, fuck it.

I really need to read you the song titles because here they are. Chubby Sexy. Sickness for Thickness. Paterade. White chocolate. Big Girl Banger. Goody Goody Badi Alert. Desert baller, basic bro, desert money freestyle, money honey, vanilla thriller, and of course, hot wife.

And again, the songs are polarizing, but not unsuccessful. Big Girl Banger in particular took off on TikTok in 2020 in a pretty huge way, to the point where many of the writers who had criticized Robbie back in 2017 caught on. Curvy Wife Guy is thriving on TikTok. And that was true. Some people in Robbie's TikTok comments recognize him from the original Curvy Wife Guy scandal, but a lot of other people on TikTok just thought it was decent music for a TikTok. And there's always going to be questions that surround how bodies are discussed in general. Where does the line of celebration end and objectification begin?

How personal of a journey is it to decide when that matters to you? I can promise you we'll be talking about that in our episode. next week. And as long as the streaming numbers stay up, I'm pretty sure Robbie will keep rapping about them as well. Meanwhile, Sarah has continued to have success with sassy red lipstick and has collaborated on a few different lines of bathing suits that sell out instantly. The couple has moved to a different large desert home in Las Vegas. They had twins last year, and they remain very ambitious and active online. And so this past May, I reached out to Robbie Tripp for an interview. And when we come back, my interview with Curvy Wife.

Sky. Welcome to Pretty Private with Ebeney, the podcast where silence is broken and stories are set free. I'm Ebeney, and every Tuesday I'll be sharing all new anonymous stories that would challenge your perceptions and give you new insight on the people around you. On Pretty Private, we'll explore the untold experiences of women of color who faced it all. childhood trauma, addiction, abuse, incarceration, grief, mental health struggles, and more, and found the shrimp to make it to the other side. My dad was shot and killed in his house.

Yes, he was a drug dealer. Yes, he was a confidential informant, but he wasn't shot on the street corner. He wasn't shot in the middle of a drug deal. He was shot in his house, unarmed. Pretty private isn't just a podcast. It's your personal guide for turning storylines into lifeline. Every Tuesday, make sure you listen to Pretty Private from the Black Effect Podcast Network. Tune in on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

What would you do if one bad decision forced you to choose between a maximum security prison or the most brutal boot camp designed to be hell on earth? Unfortunately for Mark Lombardo, this was the choice he faced. He said, you are a number, a New York State number, and we, own you. Shock incarceration, also known as boot camps, are short-term, highly regimented correctional programs that mimic military basic training. These programs aimed to provide a shock of prison life, emphasizing strict discipline, physical training, hard labor, and rehabilitation programs. Mark had one chance to complete this program and had no idea of the hell awaiting

him the next six months. The first night was overwhelming. And you don't know who's next to you. And we didn't know what to expect in the morning. Nobody tells you anything. Listen to shock incarceration on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Sometimes it's hard to remember, but... Going through something like that is a traumatic experience, but it's also not the end of their life. That was my dad, reminding me and so many others who need to hear it, that our trauma is not our shame to carry.

And that we have big, bold, and beautiful lives to live after. what happened to us. I'm your host and co-president of this organization, Dr. Leitra Tate. On my new podcast, The Unwanted Sorority, we weighed through transformation to peel back healing and reveal what it actually looks like, and sounds like in real time. Each week, I sit down with people who live through harm, carried silence, and are now reshaping the systems that failed us. We're going to talk about the adultification of black girls, mothering as resistance, and the tools we use for healing. The unwanted sorority is a safe space, not a quiet space. So let's walk in. We're moving towards liberation together. Listen to the unwanted sorority, new episodes every

Thursday on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back to 16th Minute. I tried to get a dental cleaning this morning, and it turns out that my insurance provider upsold me dental insurance for a child. But of course, to escalate the humiliation factor, I was wearing overalls and a t-shirt with minions on them. And this week, we are talking with Robbie Tripp, the curvy wife guy. So I do want to say, Robbie was a very sweet person to communicate with. I had to reschedule our interview at one point because of a family emergency, and he was nothing but gracious with his time. And in the same token, from the time that Robbie agreed to the interview, there was an element of trying

to maintain his own narrative. So he sent along a few conditions within the confines of this interview, which I agreed to, but obviously did not agree to not mention these things at all in the full episode. But Robbie seemed a little concerned, and so he said that as long as the interview was fun and entertaining in tone and not snarky, he'd do it. You will notice that any time in this interview where my brain just shut down, I pause and then say, hell yeah. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. Here's my interview with Curvy Wife Guy.

How are you? I'm doing great. Yeah. It's always so interesting and fun to speak on the infamous and famous and famous 2017 Kirby Wife moment because it's like the genesis of everything. But it's... For all of us. I'm the pioneer of the wife guy movement.

There it is. I said it. A pioneer of the wife guy online. No, it's such an interesting topic to talk about because we've since branched into so many different things and live this whole life online as whatever you want to call us, influencers, creators, artists, you know what I mean?

And so entrepreneurs. And so it's just like taking on so many different forms since then. but yes, this was the genesis. It's really, I mean, I have so many questions. I want to go way back, but I want to start with you and your wife, Sarah, just announced that you're continuing the Curvy Wife saga just the other day. Can you walk me through what this continuation is? Curvy Wife Post in 2017 was the genesis of kind of people's awareness of us online.

And fast forward now, what is it, seven years, seven years in August, 2024. I mean, it's just been, yeah, it's been a whole, it's been a whole series of we can like, it's interesting. Within our relationship, we trace back moments to like corresponding with like what was going, like what era we were in. You know what I mean? Like what was going viral? Like we've lived and been married so long and our whole, our whole marriage and our whole

relationship has been posting and creating content. And what's crazy is that it was the thing that we weren't even creating as content. It was just one of my regular heartfelt post to my wife. Like people could go like, that's why it was really, I'll say, disappointing in the aftermath of the viral post that people were so distorting this narrative that we had somehow crafted a moment to go viral or as if that's something that you could even predict. But it was, I would always say, go back on my Instagram since the moment Sarah and I were dating in college. Like, it's just how I am. Like I love to write and that Sarah is my curvy muse and my love of my life and the woman I share my life with. And so I would write these tributes to her

on my Instagram as someone who, you know, loves their wife and wants to, you know, express that online. I would do that regularly. I'd post a photo from my wedding or post a photo from whatever and, you know, write kind of my feelings to her and attribute to her. So it was the, it would just so happen that it was the, I love my curvy wife on the beach in Miami in her swimsuit that really seemed to get people talking. Yeah, because I went back to like that era of your social media and yeah it's not out of step with what your existing social media is and so i feel like sometimes you have people presented kind of in a void and you're like but no this is like who they've been no that's a really good point yeah it's a people see one piece of viral content that exposes

them to a brand new audience of people and a lot of times you know introduces them to the internet or the you know the public at large i guess you could say um and that because comes their, yeah, their sole piece of context about who the creator or the artist is. And as, that's why I was, that's, yeah, this has been, this has been me since day one. And this is, this has been something that I've been doing since day one. And so obviously, over the years, I've heard it all. Oh, he's this, this whole, he's just into big girls as like, just a gimmick or, you know what I mean? Like, he's not sincere or he's, he's, he's objectify or he's fetishizing all these distorted narratives that truly all if you were to do an ounce of research

from day one through my marriage with Sarah, through our relationship, through the content I've been creating all the way back to college. It's all been within this lane of I'm expressing myself. I'm an artist and a creator of the highest order and I love making vibes that people can enjoy and talk about and that encourages people to chase their dreams and that empowers beautiful curvy plus size BBW Gordita gang ladies that's what we're all about they're rocking with me people are acting like people aren't rocking with me and the fact of the matter is it's like you're focusing on this very one specific distorted narrative of the naysayers and the haters when in reality there's also a whole following a whole global audience that i myself and sarah and then us together share

and it's like been wrapped into this really cool story you know i think there was a time where people or like the viral Kirby Wife post was negative, but come on. It was it was largely positive until there was a very like vocal subset of feminist Twitter of white millennial female internet snark blogger writer reporters in New York. They got a hold of this viral Kirby Wife story and started twisting it to like this very like dark place that it was like not never meant to be. And that's why I always brought it back to whatever interview I got was at the end of the day, if you're hating on this, you're just hating on a guy who loves his wife and is obsessed with her and posted a photo of them on the beach and wrote this incredible caption of Ward Smithery

that expressed his love for her, his adoration for her, and maybe trying to, you know, introduce society to the idea that, hey, big girls are sexy, curvy girls are sexy, let's think outside the box. Hell yeah. I was, so I did want to start with, you have a new single called Hot Wife. comes out at the time we're recording this next week yeah we just teased it we just teased it the other day and said a continuation or a new chapter in the curvy wife saga now it's like because of this incredible body positive gordita gang i call my gordita gang audience that listen to my music and my creative projects like chubby sexy and big girl banger like viral anthems certified bangers i was like okay i have an idea for a song called hot wine

And I was like, babe, so Sarah and I haven't been in a project together since my first debut single, Chubby Sexy in 2019. Right. And that did extremely well. It was in GQ's moment, men of the year issue. It was like crazy on TikTok. It was like really fun to see like people responding to it in a very body positive way. And after that, it was like, I just kind of kept going on my music and my creative endeavors. Sarah continued doing the amazing things she's doing with sass red lipstick and her fashion

blogging and her platform. And it's just now that I had the idea to do hot wife. And I was like, babe, I can't hire a model for this one. This one can't be a stand in. Like, it's got to be you. Like, it's got to be the OG curvy views. You're my hot wife. I can't have another woman in the music video.

So she was like, okay, and we had fun. We got all dressed up in pink. And so, yeah, that music video is coming out soon. That song is releasing soon. And by the time this comes out, maybe it'll already be out. and out into the world. Yeah. So yeah,

Hot Wife is like the next chapter in these just body positive bops, just confidence bangers that we're making. And I'm living a dream. I'm having a blast doing it and got some amazing people behind me on the music side, some amazing people behind me with my team,

Desert Money. I do all my own creative production. And so it's really just been this evolution of like, yeah, the curvy white viral post may have been the introduction to people. But like I said, like I've been doing this.

I'm a true I'm a true creator Hell yeah So I want to take it back Why I make this show is Because characters of the day Presented I mean Even if it is genuine to who they are

Which even that is You know It gets put in the box immediately Yeah Right and so you can You can know the same three things About someone that's published In a million places

But you don't actually know anything about them So just curious of like what your background is How did you get interested in art And I want to also talk about when you met Sarah and how your relationship started. Grew up in Utah, obsessed with my hoop dreams, slept, lived my basketball dreams, played basketball all throughout high school, graduated from high school, played basketball in junior college in California. At that time, my parents had moved to Las Vegas. So chapter, I consider my life kind of be like a chapter one.

And as soon as I graduated from high school in Utah, my dad had been working in Vegas. So he would commute. And so my parents moved to Vegas when I was a teenager. And then from there on is like where I met Sarah. She's born and raised in Las Vegas. We had mutual friends. I went to high school together. So that's like kind of my chapter where, you know, I grew up in Utah. Parents moved to Las Vegas when I was a teenager. When played junior college basketball in Central California, Sarah was going to school in Utah at the time, which is where I'm from. Yeah. So we met. So we met, we had a bunch of mutual friends. Friends from friends who went to high school in Vegas to friends who were going to school in Utah.

We kind of just were a part of a similar friend group. And so, yeah, we met and got married in Las Vegas. Then we moved to, in 2014, we got married in Las Vegas. We started her friends recently your 10-year anniversary. Oh, yeah, we just celebrated 10 years. Amazing, we're doing it. I know, it's crazy. We got a toddler.

We just had newborn twins. Sarah just had twins. So three kids now, 10 years. years down like it's it's amazing yeah we're living the dream um okay so 2013 we started dating started sarah's fashion blog sassy red lipstick i had my own brand at the time that was like my online uh creations it was under trip swag so trip swag was the thing i was like what is trip swag yeah the yeah this swag was like the the that early 2000s uh it defined the era and i just had this energy online of similar stuff to what I do today, but way just, you know, crazier. I'm like, just insane,

you know, doing stuff and creating YouTube videos in college and riding my bike around town and thrifting. And, you know, I've been, I've been on this content creation grind forever. I was always just very interested in writing and very talented at writing and word smithery. And I also love making music. I was the kid making garage band wraps in high school and selling my mixtape in, in the school hallways for $5. In Utah? In Utah? In Utah? Oh, yeah, uh-huh. Yeah. And then going to, and then going to college and, you know, making garage band raps in the dorms with my friends.

And so music was kind of always intertwined with my creations. And then it was just natural that as social media but got more popular, I just kind of became a social media content creator in a very early form. So I've got 10 plus years of, I mean, yeah, of doing this 11. And 11, if you're counting, 2013. 2012 is when I joined Instagram. That's when Sarah joined Instagram. So we've had this whole, again, like life online. And it's so fascinating to like look back at how we've evolved.

And I'm curious, what was your relationship to the internet like as a kid growing up in Utah, like prior to meeting Sarah, prior to moving to Vegas? it was always like a tool for creating and getting my art out into the world so it was always something that I was using to edit videos and burn CDs and I mean I I made I remember going with my brother to film a 60 second clip of my basketball highlights at our local playground when I was 13 and I submitted it to Nestle Crunch for a Shaquille O'Neal Hot Shots Camp. And I was one of 10 kids selected from across the country. And at 13 years old, I got flown to L.A., got to go to this exclusive Nestle Crunch Hot Shots Camp with Shaquille O'Neal, play one-on-one against him.

I scored. My mom has the videotape. It's in the books. It's proven. It's amazing. I scored on Shaquille O'Neal in one-on-one when I was 13 years old. And, yeah, so I was always just using Internet and technology. and like to just create and get my art onto the world.

I was releasing freestyle raps. They're long since gone. Thank goodness on my computer as soon as I like, you know, joined YouTube. So yeah, I mean, the internet, I feel like as a millennial kid, yes, I remember those times where we, you know, it wasn't a huge part of life. But also the majority of my of my come up has been using the internet to just create and have fun. And so it's only natural that it became, you know,

more than a lifestyle, but like a career, you know? Amazing. Yeah, it sounds like you both have adapted to the changes that have come with the internet every couple of years, the platform that everyone's using changes and creators that stick around for a long time have to be able to adapt to these algorithms, to these things. So at the time of Curvy Wife saga back in 2017, you had made posts like this before, it just happened to be, for whatever reason, this post that popped off.

So 2017. Yeah. So can you walk me through that moment a little bit? And I'm also curious, you know, because you and Sarah are both influencers, do you run captions by her before you post them or how did the curvy wife post come together, which sounds so silly. But I am curious. I mean, it's one of those moments that, like I said, I think I mentioned this earlier.

it is like we we literally in our in mine and sarah's like relationship and life together we almost have this like funny subconscious way of like separating our relationship before the viral post and after the viral post like we've been married for three years at the time got married in 2014 kirby wife post was in by i love how we just call it the kirby wife post now it's not like oh yeah my instagram pose it's just like it has its own title now like it was your first child in a way. No, really. It was an Instagram post and now it has a name. It's just, it's funny. Anyway, 2017, we're living in San Francisco at the time, full-time, blogging, um, influencer content creation. We're running sass red lipstick full-time, doing brand

partnerships all over the world. And it was still like it'd been running for, um, yeah, like since we were dating in college. So we were making a living full-time content creation, but very much like on the grind and like we still had to work other jobs and had part-time jobs to support us while we were like how do we continue building this early Utah fashion influencer mommy blogger like thing like we were just kind of we were early on that way then of course Sarah just being the beautiful like curvy woman that she is so stylish just beautiful is the body positive aspect of her fashion blog, of Sasserid lipstick, started to naturally take that tone. And that's when we really started to, again, we moved to San Francisco. We really were

investing our hustle and our time and our energy into her as a fashion blogger. It seemed like the body positivity of it really seemed to be like striking a court, like very authentically with Sarah sharing. Hey, here's what it's like being a size 12, size 14 fashion blogger in an industry where every blogger conference I go to in Dallas or every, you know, meetup I go to are the size zero, size two like women and is like a very particular figure that's showcased in the fashion industry, but also like this subset of like a fashion blogger influencer industry, which we were, again, heavily involved in. Right.

And Sarah is like an average sized American woman. So that's like I remember this sort of era of, of body positivity and, what accord it struck. And also, you know, just being a woman on the internet, people are looking to drag you for literally anything. I'll never forget it. Like I said, we naturally, it's so funny, we catch ourselves doing it. There's like we separate our marriage and our life together in between before the viral post and after the viral post because it's so, it was just such, everything just changed after that. So it was the end of July, July 30th, July 31st. We were like getting ready to go on a beach vacation the next morning.

which is why I remember this and I posted I had a photo Sarah and I'd been to Miami again we were traveling doing the travel blogging fashion blogging day we're in Miami we got we had photos on the beach of me holding her she was wearing like this tropical citrus uh like I think it was oranges swimsuit and I'm like holding her and then and so we got the photos back and I was like oh this is beautiful this is great like I love like I just love how she looks like I'm holding her and um I just And I feel like it just showed like how much I just find her attractive and how her sexy curvy bond really gets me going as her husband and soulmate and life partner. Okay.

So I was thinking about that, posted it, wrote a whole caption. I love my curvy wife. And did she, did she see it the post before you posted it? I can't remember. I wish I remembered that part because I think those tributes I would just write. And it would be like a fun surprise for her to find during the day or the next. morning you know what i mean so i kind of started writing them as like little like online love notes that were like a tribute to her and like i didn't want to like show her like hey look what i just wrote

about you you know what i mean like i'm kind of way for her to find them as she was scrolling her fee and then she's like oh you know what i mean because i guess it was like because you guys were already doing influencer work i'm like would you ask before yeah because it's like if my boyfriend is posting about me he wouldn't be like let me run this by you do you want to like weigh in on this like i totally get it tribute i just wrote for you do you do you You want to proofread it and did it. You know what I mean? Like it wasn't like that.

It was, it truly was just one of my regular, like, since the day we started dating, really, every so often, every week or so. I mean, I was posting a cute photo of us and just writing how much I love my beautiful wife, my beautiful girlfriend. You know what I mean? Whatever she was at the time. So posted it. Woke up the next morning. Go to Southern California, beach vacation. And very early, it seemed like, and again, okay.

So I had 20,000 followers at the time. Sarah probably had about 100,000 early, early days. So I posted it and we drove down to Southern California. By the time, the day was done about 24 hours. It was like maybe 5,000 likes or something. And like definitely like a few hundred comments. Like it definitely like showed that like people, at least the people who are following me or I thought were following me at the time was like, okay, this is doing better than like a

did it seem like the algorithm had kind of picked it up this was 2017 it that felt that feels like a pre algorithm conversation like it just felt like i just feel like everyone who everyone who saw it engaged with it commented on it right so yeah it was still like i think it was still explore page days and way different than it was now honestly like i do this for a living now right like digital marketing like content creation so no it was one of those moments where you knew you organically just were connecting with people. Like it just, it was unmistakable. It wasn't like, oh, a lot of people were seeing this.

That's not how it felt. It felt like, oh, whoa, people have a lot of love for this entirely positive first 24 hours. Okay. It's 48 hours. It's up to like 10,000 likes. And it's getting hundreds of more comments. So it's like already like in 48 hours, my best performing post, right? It's weird to think about because I don't like I think I'm talking about it in terms of how I think about it now.

But back then, it was still like, oh, how people are engaging with this and this is getting a lot of like comments and a lot of people are liking this photo that I posted doesn't feel the same as how in 2024 we're talking about it where we're like measuring analytics and metrics and insights for creators and all these things that we're just so naturally talking about now. So I don't want to make it sound like it was like, again, another piece of content because it truly was just like a photo I posted of my wife, which as we mentioned, several times. I can't stress this enough when people try to spin the narrative into some negative contrived thing. I had been doing this as just a loving boyfriend and husband for years. And then also the society about body positivity and showing love to the sexy curvy girls out there that are bigger than you see on billboards and magazines. And of course, like, amazing how times have changed since I posted that, but still not even there. And so again, I feel like I understand that. And of course, I'm always learning more.

But that was just another negative spin on the curvy white post that I really hated was that they just started to become like this man-hating energy that started to come towards me for commenting on body positivity and loving my wife. And I just didn't understand how it could have been taken so out of context. But I guess like you and I started by saying people see one little image and they see one caption and a lot of people don't read into it any further than that and then they form an opinion and unfortunately there was just like a side of it that in the i would say in like the week after the viral post because the first week again entirely positive then it starts to come like

all the news articles start coming out the pop sugar the huffington post the um e news and you start to get all these internet publications they're like man loves curvy wife curvy wife post heartwarming couple goals husband of the year they're so cute this is so nice everyone's responding how they see their own relationship and how their own body confidence issues in their own relationship between husbands and wives and boyfriends and girlfriends and just the the universal like truly global DMs and emails were being flooded with of this is how I feel in my relationship this I feel about my wife was so beautiful and then after that first week of positivity it did it started to turn into this thing that I didn't like because it was never meant to be that.

So this original run of press because I feel like it's a very unique story and it also sort of follows this template for how these internet stories go where it's like an initial way. Trust me, I've read I've read some of the articles that are like that yeah, this is like it truly follows the trajectory of a pretty standard like viral moment, which is crazy. It's like this everyone's obsessed with it and everyone's talking about. it. And then because so many people are talking about it, a very like vocal negative minority seems to come out of the woodwork and spin it or find something that people just then start to latch onto because the negative side of it is more clickbaity and more interesting to

post about an inflammatory than a positive spin. So people start to talk about that. Then it burns out and then it's like whatever whatever the creator or the viral personality or the viral moment chooses to do after that is up to them and there's a lot of amazing stories that have been birthed out of that and there's been a lot of just like crazy you're like wow what happened you know what I mean totally even when it does follow a pattern it's happening to your family so it is like a very yeah it felt a little personal yeah it's a little personal but then gaining a little bit of maturity in retrospect and looking back after seven years, you start to realize like, well, when you're creating anything and releasing it to be

viewed and consumed and you also have to, I don't know, it's a tough part of what a life online looks like. But there's a piece of you that has to remind yourself, it's not personal. People are just reacting. And they're saying what they think. And I think a lot of people are a little bit too comfortable paying what they think in a way that is considered bullying or harassment or trolling, right? But I think those are the impulses that people online maybe have gotten a little bit too comfortable with. But I think as a society we're doing better that and an internet culture that maybe it's because we've seen it so many times now or maybe it's because we truly are growing and evolving with this wonderful Gen Z we were talking about kind of attitude and philosophy online of

like live and let live. And we don't need to crucify everything. And we can just either let it be or we can choose whatever to do with it. But we don't need to do that. And it's been a very interesting, it was a very interesting like, it came in waves. It came in waves. Well, how was, I know, I mean, you can always speak for yourself, but how, how was Sarah doing throughout this time? Because it has to be a uniquely crazy-making experience for her as well. So yeah, what was going on? How is she feeling throughout that process as well? Yeah, it was a whirlwind. I mean, in the days, in the days and weeks following kind of that like, I guess you'll call a news cycle, right, of like we were kind of a viral hot topic. Like it was just, it's a surreal, like just

funny, weird experience when you're like doing your scroll. while you're on the toilet and you're just like seeing yourself on all your on all your apps you know what I mean like it's like I was literally just be like at the time 2017 I would scroll Facebook I think for articles from like complex news and high snobiety and and hype beast and like shoes and sneakers and sports and also just like the occasional thing that would come up in the Facebook whatever the algorithm was at that time that fed you the Huffington post articles or the you know what I mean the lad Bible or whatever it was at the time right and I would see I would just see myself it would be like curvy wife and so it just started to get to be everywhere and that was weird and so sarah and i had this weird like relationship to it whereas like again it was it was tremendously positive in the beginning so it was actually kind of fun because it was like we were getting a lot of just love and a lot of people messaging us to like express like a lot of positivity and appreciation and just like we really started to connect with like a global online community of people who loved it so sarah was like again being a fashion blogger being an influencer herself, but then also being just being, I mean, she's spoken

about this in many interviews, just being my wife who appreciated the heartfelt sentiment from her husband and really just, neither of us really thought more than that. It was just another post that was like heartfelt. But then it was clear and started to connect with people. We started to kind of want to foster that community. And it was just, with open arms, we welcomed them into what we were doing. Hey, here's Sarah, a body positive fashion blogger who's a size 12 in a. fashion industry. And here's Robbie. I'm writing. I'm giving, you know, presentations. I'm creating. I'm doing all these different online projects and sharing my creativity and my art with people. And so it just started to become a natural evolution that we welcomed and welcome to

everybody that connected with this viral curvy wife post with open arms. And then like I said, after that wave kind of came in, then it started to get this chatter in the periphery of the negativity. How did you as a couple deal with the negative wave? That was hard because then it was just like at a certain point we just like okay can everybody move on right it kind of the positivity had had been poured out and it was like clear that something that was just like truly connected with people and that's why it blew up like that's another thing that like people forget like these things there's a reason that people at the end of the day it's it's like anything that is it is viewed and shared and talked about that many times is because it strikes a chord with

people. So people had true genuine feelings toward it. And that's like just the truth with anything. And so the beauty that came from that was like this incredible new or I should say larger following of people on social media who tuned in to follow me and Sarah and follow our journey and our relationship and our marriage. And so yeah, then on the flip side of that, when it all got. I shouldn't say it all got negative because, again, there was still that large response.

And there was also that people are like, why are they even taking offense to that? That's how we felt. But then also like this truly negative backlash, I guess, to the Kirby White Post. There was a time where Sarah and I were just like, yeah, can this stop now? Like we were not interested in like, they just got a point where we weren't answering. We weren't answering the emails or doing the interviews anymore about it because it was just like, let's move on. We've got more to say and more to offer than what a lot of people online have their distorted narrative of this, you know, viral post to my wife. Did you ever come across a critical piece or opinion that resonated with you or made you think twice?

Or, I mean, was there anything that ever was like, oh, this actually seems like a more reasoned version? I'm sure I haven't even seen it at all the volume, you know? Yeah, totally. it was looking back on it again seven years seeing the positive seeing the negative looking back 20 20 hindsight you look back and think about it especially if i hope we've we've all grown we all grow with maturity and wisdom in seven years time i think i look back on it and i'm just like yeah it it definitely contained a lot of touch points of what people feel and think and care about It talked about body positivity.

It talked about women's bodies, which people seem to be fascinated by. I don't think anyone can disagree with that, right? And it touched on, but then it contained buzzwords like body positive, like feminism, like marketing and advertising, billboards, sexy, bikinis, society. It started to have all these buzzwords wrapped into it. And so looking back on it at the time, again, you don't post something thinking, that the entire world, truly, globally, internationally, in newspapers in Hungary and in tropical islands in the Caribbean where people are messaging us saying, oh, I saw your,

you know, your viral Kirby wife post. You don't think it's going to reach that far. So looking back on it, it's like, yeah, I would have, I would have just made it a little bit less about society or, but then again, at the same time, it's like I meant everything I said. So you look back on it and you're just like, this is how I'm feeling. This is truly still how I feel about body positivity and my wife and how society should view different body size, body types and body size. And so overall, I think, I think to answer your question, I've made peace with some of the criticisms thinking that, okay, everybody is entitled to their opinion. But then again, while still like having to stand by my truth, that it's like it was. what it was. And what it was was a husband's note to his wife on Instagram that was filled with

my true feelings and emotions. And I put it out there. And people really had something to say about it, whether it be positive or negative. And I understand that. At the end of the day, I feel like no matter how people feel about a curvy wife in retrospect, you guys have been happily married for 10 years. And most people do not pull that off. Like that's really cool. Most my friends are divorced. Most of my parents are divorced. Like it's just like that's the way I feel like it goes a lot of times. But yeah, that's the other thing.

It's so fun to create these fun creative projects and stories that people talk about and share and are kind of part of this team trip, Gordita gang community of these viral, you know, chubby sexy, big girl banger, now hot wife, like music projects is like, yeah, it's just like easy to get lost up in the fact. this conversation of like, at the end of the day, I pick up, I drop off my son at school every morning and I go and I pick him up and I come back home. We have two beautiful new twin babies and we hang out with them. And in the meantime, I'm running to a music video shoe and Sarah's launching a new swimsuit line that she's got to do a video shoe. We got our grand, you know,

grandparents here to help out and just a wonderful support staff. And it's like a huge team of love here that just is here to help us thrive. And it's just like, I'm really grateful for the fact that like at the end of the day I can turn it off online and I've got this support system and this family with me that it's easy to get caught up in the fact like we're not just like this viral moment like we're human beings and we live and we love and we've been married 10 years and we've got three beautiful children and we're living the dream and everything that we do is kind of a ripple effect from that and it comes out in very fun flamboyant ways in my creative projects, but it's all just kind of a part of what makes me Robbie Tripp.

Thank you so much to Robbie for his time. You can stream his music at the link in the description, and I'll be honest, Big Girl Banger is a hit. And as you can hear in the interview and going back well over a decade, Robbie is still determined to prove the haters wrong through his continued success in music. Because it is successful. Several of his tracks in music videos, have a couple million streams, and he's collaborated with increasingly big talent. And as I said before, Sarah turned down an interview with this show and wanted the focus to be on Robbie's project. They do seem happy together. They just celebrated 10 years being married, and if there's one thing on the internet, I've learned, it's that pathologizing someone

else's marriage is 10 miles of none of your fucking business. So all power to Sarah. I didn't get to ask Robbie everything I would have liked to because of the boundaries put around that conversation, but I hope it was helpful to hear from him. Like I said earlier, after this interview, I really felt the need to talk to other people. I wanted to hear from women and femmes who had worked within the Fat Liberation Movement and have a more political discussion

about what stories, like the Curvy Wife Saga, brought up in these activist communities. So there you have it. That's the story of Robbie and Sarah Tripp. But next week, we're going to talk about what this story means. What is the impact it left on the internet? I'll be speaking with Tigris Osborne of the National Association to Advanced Fat Acceptance

and Kate Navarette of the Body Positive Alliance. So Robbie and Sarah Tripp, your 16th Minute is stretching a little bit longer. We'll see you next week. 16th Minute is a production of Cool Zone Media and IHeart Radio. It is written, hosted, and produced by me, Jamie Loftus. Our executive producers are Sophie Lichten and Robert Evans, The Amazing Ian Johnson is our supervising producer and our editor. Our theme song is by Sad 13.

And pet shoutouts to our dog producer Anderson, My Cats Flea and Casper, and my pet rock bird. We'll out with us all. Bye. Welcome to Pretty Private with Ebeney. The podcast where silence is broken and stories are set free. I'm Ebeney. Tuesday, I'll be sharing all new anonymous stories that would challenge your perceptions and give

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