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Michael Hobbs
All I know about Richard Simmons is like, sad things, like melancholy things, but I'm trying not to have like a melancholy tagline.
Aubrey Gordon
Wow, you really got surprised by this podcast I've been planning for like a month.
Michael Hobbs
We keep pushing back. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. Well, this one's bad, but whatever. Uh, welcome to Maintenance Phase, the podcast that thinks tank tops and short shorts are appropriate for any weather.
Aubrey Gordon
Yeah, I like that one.
Michael Hobbs
It was not very clever, but it is accurate.
Aubrey Gordon
I'm Aubrey Gordon.
Michael Hobbs
I'm Michael Hopps.
Aubrey Gordon
If you would like to support the show, you can do that@patreon.com maintenancephase you can also get bonus episodes through Apple Podcasts. It's the same audio content.
Michael Hobbs
And if you live in Australia or New Zealand, you can see Aubrey in other ways.
Aubrey Gordon
Yes, Jeannie Finley's documentary your Fat Friend about yours truly is in 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 yrfatfriendfilm.com or there's a handy dandy link for you in the show. Notes.
Michael Hobbs
Aubrey downunder.
Aubrey Gordon
Something, something lesbian. Joe.
Michael Hobbs
Something, something.
Aubrey Gordon
Michael. Today we're talk about Richard Simmons.
Michael Hobbs
We haven't done a good old influencer episode in a while. Just like, here's a person.
Aubrey Gordon
How do you remember Richard Simmons?
Michael Hobbs
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 4,000 times. Him and like Sam Kinison 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.
Aubrey Gordon
Oh, baby.
Michael Hobbs
And then I listened to the podcast about him, Dan Tabersky'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.
Aubrey Gordon
Well, first of all, those appearances were not low key homophobic.
Michael Hobbs
Were they high key homophobic?
Aubrey Gordon
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 gonna be a guest on the show. And then they would hide cameras in his dressing room and do things to scare him.
Michael Hobbs
Oh, wow.
Aubrey Gordon
So that he would like scream and Jump up and down.
Michael Hobbs
Oh, in an effeminate way.
Aubrey Gordon
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 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.
Michael Hobbs
Yeah.
Aubrey Gordon
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.
Michael Hobbs
Oh, really?
Aubrey Gordon
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.
Michael Hobbs
Wait, I just thought of a better tagline.
Aubrey Gordon
What?
Michael Hobbs
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.
Aubrey Gordon
So many emails from people who are five to 10 years older than us.
Michael Hobbs
Look, I am 42, I can do this.
Aubrey Gordon
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.
Michael Hobbs
Yeah.
Aubrey Gordon
So we're gonna start out with Richard Simmons as you might remember him. So here's a little refresh. I'm gonna send you a link.
Michael Hobbs
Okay.
C
Wow, what a beautiful, healthy looking audience.
Michael Hobbs
His energy. Richard.
C
This is insane.
Aubrey Gordon
When I heard that this is your 59th video. 59 video.
C
59Th DVD. Wow, that's amazing. Swen to the Goldie's Five. I know, but hey, what are you sitting down for? They thought it was like you thought we were serving something.
Michael Hobbs
Yeah, yeah, that's right.
Aubrey Gordon
He's gonna. Well, first of all tell people. Everybody has, you know, I think aspirations to get in better shape.
C
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 that?
Aubrey Gordon
What?
C
Can I tell everyone?
Michael Hobbs
Mama.
Aubrey Gordon
Mama talking to see.
C
Mama wants to hear. Mama wants to see Mama. Gypsy. Anyway, it was from Gypsy.
Aubrey Gordon
I know, I know we can.
C
Do you know Gypsy?
Aubrey Gordon
Yes.
C
Anyway, everyone, the audience is getting my new sweat and fire.
Michael Hobbs
Okay.
Aubrey Gordon
This is the energy that Richard Simmons was operating with all of the time.
Michael Hobbs
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.
Aubrey Gordon
She hates it. She hates.
Michael Hobbs
Shut up, Richard.
Aubrey Gordon
So clearly she hates everything about it.
Michael Hobbs
I know.
Aubrey Gordon
And I think that's maybe the greatest indictment of her yet, is like, so you don't like Richard Simmons?
Michael Hobbs
I know the funny. He's such a ray of sunshine. But also because he's so loud, because it's sort of so schticky, you can find it grating. Yeah. This is projecting based on everything else I know about him. But people who act like this oftentimes are 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.
Aubrey Gordon
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. He's like, yeah, kind of.
Michael Hobbs
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 do something about this. And oftentimes establish patterns that then are very hard to break. 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.
Aubrey Gordon
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.
Michael Hobbs
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.
Aubrey Gordon
So Richard Simmons, for the uninitiated, built a fitness empire in the US he had a chain of gyms at one point.
Michael Hobbs
Oh, yeah.
Aubrey Gordon
He had 22 DVDs and 38 home videos, including Sit Tight, which I think is kind of a great name.
Michael Hobbs
Not going to make a gay joke. I'm not going to make a gay joke. Joke. I'm going to be. I'm going to be very mature on this podcast. I'm going to stay very classy.
Aubrey Gordon
Get ready, because he made Sit Tight dance your pants off, and no ifs, ands, or buts.
Michael Hobbs
Oh, that one's actually pretty wholesome. That's very. That's very wholesome.
Aubrey Gordon
He had one vinyl record with a bunch of ballads on it that he sang, and he was an okay singer.
Michael Hobbs
Okay, fair enough.
Aubrey Gordon
He also made one absolutely incredible music video, and you and I are going to watch it right now.
Michael Hobbs
Oh, no. Okay.
Aubrey Gordon
Short, long, straight up, curly.
Michael Hobbs
Oh, my God.
Aubrey Gordon
Get something cute. Get something girly. Short, long, straight up girly.
C
Get something cute.
Aubrey Gordon
Get something girly. Oh.
Michael Hobbs
Oh. Just look at you.
C
I think you need a new hair.
Michael Hobbs
Do something. An Afro Buzz.
C
Got a French twist. Pick out a sty that will give you a lift.
Michael Hobbs
All right. No, Shut it down. Shut it down. Shut it down. Shut it down. We're stopping this episode. We're done. We're done for the day. I'm not watching Richard Simmons rap.
Aubrey Gordon
Look, I don't know if you can tell. This was recorded in the 2010s.
Michael Hobbs
I don't want to make fun of this man, Aubrey. We just. Tragic figure.
Aubrey Gordon
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 gym to lead classes in drag. Oh, and he does some drag in this video.
Michael Hobbs
Okay.
Aubrey Gordon
To me, this feels like we're getting closer to how he saw himself.
Michael Hobbs
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.
Aubrey Gordon
Get something cute. Get something girly.
Michael Hobbs
The thing is, I have exactly the same hair as him. Any. Any jokes about his hair? Off limits.
Aubrey Gordon
Michael, are you ready for story time?
Michael Hobbs
I know this man, but I don't truly know this man. So let's do it.
Aubrey Gordon
Richard Simmons was actually born Milton Teagle Simmons.
Michael Hobbs
Okay.
Aubrey Gordon
In the French Quarter in New Orleans in 1948.
Michael Hobbs
Okay.
Aubrey Gordon
He was born to Leonard Simmons Senior and Shirley May Simmons. His father was actually a professional Emcee before he was born.
Michael Hobbs
So he has a background in rapping.
Aubrey Gordon
And his mother was a fan dancer.
Michael Hobbs
What does that mean?
Aubrey Gordon
You know, the ladies who would dance like burlesque with big feather fans to cover up their bodies, like, whoa, salacious.
Michael Hobbs
I know about that. Theoretically. Not personally, but yes.
Aubrey Gordon
Some sort of cracks started to emerge pretty early on in their marriage. So when Shirley 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.
Michael Hobbs
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. Awesome. 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.
Aubrey Gordon
So clearly this is like a third hand story. Right. Presumably his mother told him, and then he told his ghostwriter, 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.
Michael Hobbs
He's more of a rapper. He's more of a Sugar Hill Gang type of figure in America.
Aubrey Gordon
My guess here is that there is a kernel of truth to it or that it's just straightforwardly a real story. It's a really. It would be a weird one to make up for 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.
Michael Hobbs
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.
Aubrey Gordon
Yeah, absolutely. Things are sort of engineered toward. Don't make dad mad.
Michael Hobbs
Yeah.
Aubrey Gordon
So his dad quits his job as an emcee. 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.
Michael Hobbs
Right. That's also a cause of volatility often.
Aubrey Gordon
Yeah, totally. If you have weird stuff about masculinity, especially in this era.
Michael Hobbs
Right.
Aubrey Gordon
And you're not working and supporting your family, like, that's only going to make that stuff gnarlier.
Michael Hobbs
Dudes are weird about it.
Aubrey Gordon
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. Oh, first I was in burlesque, and then I started selling makeup. You're like, yeah, did you invent the bedazzler also?
Michael Hobbs
Right. We all become a combination of our parents. And I think Richard did too.
Aubrey Gordon
He had one older brother, Lenny, who Richard refers to as Mr. Perfect and Mr. Business.
Michael Hobbs
Those are like, guess who characters. Okay.
Aubrey Gordon
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.
Michael Hobbs
Does he talk in the memoir about realizing he was gay or is this all under the surface?
Aubrey Gordon
He never discusses his sexual orientation in the memoir.
Michael Hobbs
Oh, my God.
Aubrey Gordon
So, like, listen, the backdrop of this story is that Richard Simmons rise to fame almost exactly mirrors the onset of the AIDS epidemic.
Michael Hobbs
Yeah, yeah.
Aubrey Gordon
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.
Michael Hobbs
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?
Aubrey Gordon
I don't have any sense of any of it.
Michael Hobbs
Okay.
Aubrey Gordon
According to some reports, he did have a long term partner.
Michael Hobbs
Okay.
Aubrey Gordon
That is the person who was sort of like saying that his housekeeper had kidnapped him in the missing Richard Simmons era.
Michael Hobbs
Yeah.
Aubrey Gordon
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 Zimmons speaking for Richard Zimmons.
Michael Hobbs
There's no chance that he's actually just an effeminate heterosexual guy, is there?
Aubrey Gordon
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 long time.
Michael Hobbs
No, he hasn't.
Aubrey Gordon
And I was like, you have not.
Michael Hobbs
Yeah.
Aubrey Gordon
But also, you sort of like, I see what he's saying, right?
Michael Hobbs
Yeah.
Aubrey Gordon
Especially in the 80s, people were not being like, well, actually, he hasn't addressed it.
Michael Hobbs
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.
Aubrey Gordon
I mean, this brings us to the next point in the story, which is that he and his brother were raised Catholic.
Michael Hobbs
Oh, good. To add that layer in there, he.
Aubrey Gordon
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.
Michael Hobbs
Oh, so they're, like, culturally Catholic, but not, like, actually beliefs. They don't believe stuff.
Aubrey Gordon
So Richard sort of asked his parents and pressed about it and 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.
Michael Hobbs
Look, we want to instill in you a weird sense of constant shame.
Aubrey Gordon
Yeah, yeah. We can tell how gay you are, and we want you to feel bad about it forever.
Michael Hobbs
We are. This is a subsidy to your future.
Aubrey Gordon
Therapist in high school. Richard actually takes the plunge and fully converts to Catholicism. He gets baptized, he does the whole thing. He, at that point, strongly considers becoming a priest or even joining a monastery.
Michael Hobbs
Yeah, that's like a thing for gay.
Aubrey Gordon
People back then, 100%. In his memoir, he says that he thought about becoming a priest because he, quote, likes the outfits.
Michael Hobbs
God, Richard, you're not making this easy. We're trying to be sensitive to you and the way that you want it to be discussed, but it really seems like you want to tell the audience something and you're not telling them.
Aubrey Gordon
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.
Michael Hobbs
Wait, what?
Aubrey Gordon
You're Jewish?
Michael Hobbs
Wait, really? He's secretly Jewish and he didn't know.
Aubrey Gordon
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 he fascinating through the grapevine that they were Jewish. The title of the chapter where he tells this story is A Catholic. Oi. That's. That is in fact the chapter title.
Michael Hobbs
I like this man. I like this man.
Aubrey Gordon
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.
Michael Hobbs
Man, they really did lean into the Catholicism, didn't they?
Aubrey Gordon
It's a really odd and sort of cold sounding household. To wit, Richard had asthma.
Michael Hobbs
Oh.
Aubrey Gordon
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.
Michael Hobbs
Nice. So he didn't get like an inhaler and stuff.
Aubrey Gordon
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.
Michael Hobbs
Oh, my God. It's always the same thing.
Aubrey Gordon
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.
Michael Hobbs
Oh, no. Oh, no.
Aubrey Gordon
Camphor phenique, cod liver oil, calamine lotion or mercurochrome. Oh, that's all you needed?
Michael Hobbs
I thought he was going to say the carnivore diet. We'd really go full circle.
Aubrey Gordon
You didn't. You didn't think we go full circle on mercurochrome. 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.
Michael Hobbs
Yeah.
Aubrey Gordon
So I'm sending you another quote from his memoir.
Michael Hobbs
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.
Aubrey Gordon
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.
Michael Hobbs
Brutal.
Aubrey Gordon
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. Then I would go in and be like, what else can I get him to do? 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.
Michael Hobbs
Oh, man.
Aubrey Gordon
Until his father finally has to acknowledge him, even if it's just by being like, hey, stop it.
Michael Hobbs
That makes so much of his public Persona make sense. Yeah. Because it's like he's just trying to get your attention, and he's trying to get you to look at him.
Aubrey Gordon
He's trying to annoy his way into your heart. Yeah.
Michael Hobbs
And his dad probably gave him his first ever Ellen face.
Aubrey Gordon
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.
Michael Hobbs
Oh, God.
Aubrey Gordon
According to the memoir, he screamed at Richard, it's not Lenny. It's you. I'll spell it out for you. M, I, L, T, O, N. No way.
Michael Hobbs
Jesus Christ.
Aubrey Gordon
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.
Michael Hobbs
Choke on a C O, C K dad.
Aubrey Gordon
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.
Michael Hobbs
He's more of a Portland in the 2010s kind of guy. More than 20, 24.
Aubrey Gordon
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.
Michael Hobbs
What?
Aubrey Gordon
And he talks in the memoir about trying to correct every single one of those things.
Michael Hobbs
He's trying to be a silent mask Northpaw, 100%. He's looking for an extremely specific kind of conversion therapy.
Aubrey Gordon
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.
Michael Hobbs
Right, right, right.
Aubrey Gordon
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. That you'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, and they're reporting to your parent that your body is a failure.
Michael Hobbs
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. It's just like, so much for one little guy to deal with.
Aubrey Gordon
And again, this is all happening before he's like, 10.
Michael Hobbs
Yeah, yeah.
Aubrey Gordon
So at that doctor's visit, the doctor hands him a photocopied piece of paper that lays out a diet for him to follow.
Michael Hobbs
Oh, God, it's gonna be bad, isn't it?
Aubrey Gordon
You wanna hear the diet? Do you have any guesses about what the diet is?
Michael Hobbs
Isn't it gonna 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?
Aubrey Gordon
Salted ice cubes is too light, but three blueberries is too heavy.
Michael Hobbs
Oh, my God.
Aubrey Gordon
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 thing.
Michael Hobbs
That's kind of weird. Yeah, yeah. So milkshake is fine. Right.
Aubrey Gordon
Lunch is 3 ounces of tuna that's been packed in water, drained, and then dressed just with lemon juice.
Michael Hobbs
Oh, that's like the rocks diet. Ugh.
Aubrey Gordon
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.
Michael Hobbs
Yeah. God, it's like a YouTube challenge. It's like, for dinner, eat six saltines. And then afterwards, fold a piece of paper more than eight times.
Aubrey Gordon
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.
Michael Hobbs
That's like prisoner of war rations.
Aubrey Gordon
At this point. The Minnesota starvation study had already happened, and that was at 1570.
Michael Hobbs
Leaving it up to his parents to enforce this, I guess, which then just contributes to the bad relationship with his dad.
Aubrey Gordon
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.
Michael Hobbs
And he's got, like, a little bowl.
Aubrey Gordon
Of tuna 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.
Michael Hobbs
That just means he's eating even less.
Aubrey Gordon
Yes. And he starts just skipping meals. 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.
Michael Hobbs
I mean, it's bad for you at any age. But it's like, to be doing this at this important developmental time is so dangerous and scary. I have nothing to say throughout this whole episode other than, like, that's bad. Poor guy. I'm contributing nothing.
Aubrey Gordon
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.
Michael Hobbs
Oh, yeah.
Aubrey Gordon
He also talks about a kind of constant casual bullying of kids just being like, hey, fatso. And that kind of thing. He learns to deal with it by leaning into the fat joke. So when people are like, hey, Fatso, can you even make it to the end of the block? He'd, like, start wheezing, like, asthma style wheezing. And then he'd be like, no, I can't.
Michael Hobbs
I'm not okay.
Aubrey Gordon
Like, he would, like, be like, you're so right. This is how out of shape I am.
Michael Hobbs
God. So he's got the gay compensatory stuff and the fat compensatory stuff. So he's, like, establishing all these really harmful patterns.
Aubrey Gordon
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.
Michael Hobbs
I'm imagining, like, maintenance phase. Listeners who saw, like, oh, they're doing a Richard Simmons 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.
Aubrey Gordon
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. Which is like, rookie mistake. Right. So they all raid their mom's medicine cabinets and bring in various diet pills.
Michael Hobbs
Oh, no. Which was like fucking meth back then.
Aubrey Gordon
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.
Michael Hobbs
Oh.
Aubrey Gordon
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.
Michael Hobbs
Yeah.
Aubrey Gordon
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.
Michael Hobbs
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.
Aubrey Gordon
Oh, no.
Michael Hobbs
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 antidepressants. They were for his insomnia.
Aubrey Gordon
You just went to sleep.
Michael Hobbs
It was like some, like, nuclear level sleeping pill. And it was the day. It was the last day of school for seventh grade. We were all going to a roller skating rink.
Aubrey Gordon
Oh, no. And you wanted to be extra happy.
Michael Hobbs
I wanted to be extra happy. And so I sat down to lace up my skate, and I was like, I'm tired. I'm gonna lie down. And then I woke up at 3:15 when somebody was like, shaking me the whole thing, the whole day.
Aubrey Gordon
Baby, you took some Trazodone? There's none Question in My mind, I.
Michael Hobbs
Have no fucking idea what it was. But I was also a tiny child, and the dosage was also deranged. And then also there was. Speaking of bullying, there was a kid who had been bullying me all year, and that was his last chance to beat me up. And as I was sleeping, at some point during the day, he shook me awake, and he's like, come out back, bitch. I'm gonna 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's like, okay. And he just never fucked with me again.
Aubrey Gordon
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.
Michael Hobbs
So anyway, could have been worse.
Aubrey Gordon
You could have been on amphetamines.
Michael Hobbs
Well, yeah. I mean, that would have been way better. And also, I would have kicked the shit out of that guy.
Aubrey Gordon
So he keeps taking diet pills, and he realizes that if he takes. 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.
Michael Hobbs
Oh, God.
Aubrey Gordon
So he backs off of the diet pills. That freaks him out. And he's like, no, no, no, no, never mind. So he finds out that one of his friend's moms is going to Weight Watchers, and he begs her to take him with her.
Michael Hobbs
Oh, God.
Aubrey Gordon
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. More proud of him for going to Weight Watchers than most other things, which scans with the experiences of a lot of fat kids.
Michael Hobbs
Yeah, this is. I mean, some of these are parallels with your experience, right?
Aubrey Gordon
100%. I was reading this, and I was like, I'm in this picture.
Michael Hobbs
Just, like, from a very young age. This is, like, the overwhelming issue that people talk to you about and give you shit about.
Aubrey Gordon
Pretty much the only times he writes about his parents being proud of him are around weight loss.
Michael Hobbs
Oh, God.
Aubrey Gordon
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, whatever, into your shirt. And if your weight increases, Michael you get a fucking pig.
Michael Hobbs
Yeah. God. I was like, oh, it's not gonna be a pig, is it?
Aubrey Gordon
Oh, yeah, it was gonna be a pig or a cow or a hippo.
Michael Hobbs
Yeah.
Aubrey Gordon
Then the group leader announced everyone's weight loss or gain to the entire group and people clapped or did not clap. F. And his friend's mom, when he goes to the first meeting, gets the fucking pig pinned to her shirt.
Michael Hobbs
Oh, my God.
Aubrey Gordon
Here is what he writes about that moment.
Michael Hobbs
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 cheek, 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.
Aubrey Gordon
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 watch his videos or come to his classes, right? This is where you see the person who's just like, I just don't want you to get wrecked by this. Right.
Michael Hobbs
That's something I remember very vividly from the podcast, that he has it like a deep web well of empathy. He seems to really care about other people. But then he also has these weird blind spots where he sort of stops. It seems like he struggled to form relationships with people that weren't around, kind of rescuing them or being a support for them.
Aubrey Gordon
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 deep emotional support work. But he doesn't, he doesn't feel like a reciprocal relationship. He doesn't feel, you know, that's how I took that.
Michael Hobbs
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.
Aubrey Gordon
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 wringer. Right? So when it comes time for him to leave home, he is stoked.
Michael Hobbs
Yeah, I'll bet.
Aubrey Gordon
He started at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and then he transferred to to Florida State where he graduated, interestingly enough, with an art degree. We could have had a Richard Simmons. Bob Ross. That's very fun for me to think about.
Michael Hobbs
Maybe there's a happy little tank top. Maybe there's a happy little tank top right here.
Aubrey Gordon
He wanted to be a painter and he studied abroad in Italy.
Michael Hobbs
Okay.
Aubrey Gordon
And he loved it. 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.
Michael Hobbs
Oh, no.
Aubrey Gordon
All right. There you go.
Michael Hobbs
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. Yup, he's already Richard. One of the men came over and introduced himself, asking me if I knew Federico 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.
Aubrey Gordon
So Richard Simmons appears briefly in Fellini's Satyrica.
Michael Hobbs
Wait, this actually went through. This actually happened.
Aubrey Gordon
It is a blink and you'll miss it kind of appearance.
Michael Hobbs
No way. He is there, dude in his little overalls.
Aubrey Gordon
No, but he is a little fat guy.
Michael Hobbs
Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. YouTube has it. YouTube has it. YouTube has It. Richard Simmons. Infini's Satiricon. Exclamation point, exclamation point, exclamation point.
Aubrey Gordon
Send me the clip.
Michael Hobbs
Hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on. Okay, sending it to you.
Aubrey Gordon
This is fun. That is Richard Simmons.
Michael Hobbs
I would not in a million years have recognized that as him.
Aubrey Gordon
Full beard. Definitely like a fat dude.
Michael Hobbs
He looks like Jack Black.
Aubrey Gordon
He looks like a young Belushi.
Michael Hobbs
Yes, dude. One of the comments is, my God. The amount of people who think that's Richard Simmons is disturbing.
Aubrey Gordon
According to his memoir, it is him.
Michael Hobbs
I don't know. Somebody commenting without full context and information, I don't know.
Aubrey Gordon
That doesn't sound like the YouTube comment section that I know in a YouTube comment.
Michael Hobbs
I don't know.
Aubrey Gordon
So the Satyricon role leads to a bunch more acting work in Italy.
Michael Hobbs
What?
Aubrey Gordon
Mostly in commercials. Really? In one, he played a bunch of grapes for an Italian Fruit of the Loom commercial.
Michael Hobbs
Nice. Okay.
Aubrey Gordon
In another, he played a dancing meatball that sings a jingle.
Michael Hobbs
God, now I'm imagining a life for Richard Simmons where he just became a successful Italian actor.
Aubrey Gordon
Just only did commercials.
Michael Hobbs
Yeah, just like a fat, happy guy in Italy.
Aubrey Gordon
Totally. He did the skinny, sad guy in America version of, 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. 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.
Michael Hobbs
I know. It's like his Eat, Pray, Love era.
Aubrey Gordon
And I just love that he gets this sort of era of just being appreciated as he is and celebrated as he is in his true form as a dancing meatball.
Michael Hobbs
You know, you're like, yeah, stay there, Richard. Freeze frame. Keep Richard the happy meatball.
Aubrey Gordon
So good.
Michael Hobbs
This is what we want for you, Richard.
Aubrey Gordon
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. Love loves fat dude in a littler 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.
Michael Hobbs
Oh, no.
Aubrey Gordon
The note says, according to his memoir, richard, you're very funny, but fat people die young. Please don't die, dude.
Michael Hobbs
Leave the happy meatball alone.
Aubrey Gordon
Totally. Let him be a happy little meatball.
Michael Hobbs
God, that's awful. So then, like, this act of bullying becomes, like, this crucial part of his origin story.
Aubrey Gordon
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.
Michael Hobbs
Right.
Aubrey Gordon
So one of his big messages later on was like, you gotta tell fat people they're gonna die.
Michael Hobbs
God, that's so sad.
Aubrey Gordon
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?
Michael Hobbs
Say, to my face, motherfucker. Totally.
Aubrey Gordon
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.
Michael Hobbs
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.
Aubrey Gordon
Yeah. And he's like, now this is a strategy for my health.
Michael Hobbs
Yeah. Why can't people just be fat and you be fucking nice to them?
Aubrey Gordon
Good enough for Fellini.
Michael Hobbs
Yeah, I know.
Aubrey Gordon
Jesus Christ.
Michael Hobbs
Fat activist King Fredricko Fellini.
Aubrey Gordon
God. So that's exactly what he does. He stops eating, and in two and a half months, he loses over 100 pounds.
Michael Hobbs
No fucking way.
Aubrey Gordon
That fast, Michael. This is how Richard Simmons, quote, unquote, loses the weight. Is just straight up wild, unchecked, happily embraced anorexia.
Michael Hobbs
I hope he's, like, lying or exaggerating about that. I mean, that's like, so dangerous.
Aubrey Gordon
He talks about his nails breaking off because they're so brittle. He talks about his skin thinning out and turning gray.
Michael Hobbs
Oh, God.
Aubrey Gordon
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.
Michael Hobbs
Oh, God.
Aubrey Gordon
The nurses start refeeding him, and they explain to him that this is not the way to lose weight.
Michael Hobbs
Yeah.
Aubrey Gordon
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 a 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.
Michael Hobbs
And probably all kinds of still, like, guilt and shame about how much he's eating and when he's eating stuff like.
Aubrey Gordon
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.
Michael Hobbs
Oh, God, I forgot this was taking place in, like, history.
Aubrey Gordon
He's told to report to a center in New York City for duty. He shows up, but he is still very early in refeeding from his eating disorder.
Michael Hobbs
God.
Aubrey Gordon
So he's still losing hair. He still looks malnourished. And he's given a deferral and doesn't serve right.
Michael Hobbs
Okay.
Aubrey Gordon
And he decides from there to move to Los Angeles and start working in restaurants.
Michael Hobbs
Is he attempting to become an actor at this point? Is that why he goes to la?
Aubrey Gordon
He doesn't really say why he goes to la. It's odd. I sort of thought, oh, maybe he's gonna pursue acting out there. No, no. He just starts working in restaurants.
Michael Hobbs
Oh, okay.
Aubrey Gordon
His longest stint is in a restaurant called Derek's, which was a very CNBC restaurant. And its celebrity guests are like, peak 70s. He was like. The people who ate at Derek's were Dion Warwick, Tom Jones, Johnny Carson, and friend of the show, Ed McMahon.
Michael Hobbs
Aubry. We don't have time to tell all the youths who all these people are. We now take an hour long detour to describe the youths.
Aubrey Gordon
Already know who Dionne Warwick is from her excellent Twitter career.
Michael Hobbs
Oh, that's true. Actually, that is why we know her.
Aubrey Gordon
Yes. And Ed McMahon. Our listeners will know from a previous episode.
Michael Hobbs
Scroll back.
Aubrey Gordon
Our single least popular episode.
Michael Hobbs
You love bringing that up.
Aubrey Gordon
My number one favorite. I love it so much.
Michael Hobbs
It's your worm wars.
Aubrey Gordon
As you can imagine, Richard Simmons is the maitre d and he is built for front of housework.
Michael Hobbs
Yeah, he's an entj.
Aubrey Gordon
No. Fuck.
Michael Hobbs
We know this from the completely real categorization. We now can diagnose him with one of the 16 people.
Aubrey Gordon
Oh, so like you, he's an extrovert. All right, all right, all right, all right, all right. How dare you.
Michael Hobbs
Never bring that up again.
Aubrey Gordon
So he finds a way to supplement his income. He makes jewelry.
Michael Hobbs
Okay.
Aubrey Gordon
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.
Michael Hobbs
This is like early Instagram. This, like, is. He's like a little influencer.
Aubrey Gordon
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?
Michael Hobbs
I don't want to be mean. I don't want to be mean.
Aubrey Gordon
The theme of his jewelry is anatomy.
Michael Hobbs
Oh, what? Oh, is it just like dicks?
Aubrey Gordon
No, no, not that kind of anatomy. Boobs.
Michael Hobbs
Boobs. Boobs.
Aubrey Gordon
Kidney earrings.
Michael Hobbs
What? Wait, what?
Aubrey Gordon
Lever broaches.
Michael Hobbs
Wait.
Aubrey Gordon
Spleen hat pins.
Michael Hobbs
Are you sure you're not misreading? Are you having a stroke? Is this real?
Aubrey Gordon
A very special 24 karat gold uterus with opal ovaries.
Michael Hobbs
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.
Aubrey Gordon
I would. Well, famously, the Tiffany design, the classic Tiffany design is just a little gold bean. So, like, maybe it looks like knockoff Tiffany.
Michael Hobbs
A uterus I feel like I would recognize because it has little ears.
Aubrey Gordon
Anyway, I can't express to you how much I would wear, like, pancreas earrings.
Michael Hobbs
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.
Aubrey Gordon
The 24 karat gold uterus. Richard.
Michael Hobbs
One gallbladder, please. We want the best for all of these people. And we got this totally different Richard.
Aubrey Gordon
So while he's working in restaurants selling his wares, he picks up some more extremely maladaptive weight loss methods. Right? He's now working in restaurants. He is surrounded by food.
Michael Hobbs
And also he's in fucking LA where, like, everybody has disordered eating. So he's like, I'm sure he's getting all kinds of tips.
Aubrey Gordon
A server at one restaurant where he works gives him a tutorial on how to purge.
Michael Hobbs
Oh, God.
Aubrey Gordon
Another coworker introduces him to abusing laxatives for weight loss. And he was like, I like that they tasted like chocolate.
Michael Hobbs
Oh, my God.
Aubrey Gordon
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 LA and you work in the Restaurant industry with famous people in the 70s, you know, cocaine.
Michael Hobbs
I have no experience with LA or cocaine, but I do assume that it was basically a snow globe at that time.
Aubrey Gordon
Anyway, that is a point at which he's like, mm, I actually don't think I'm gonna do cocaine to lose weight.
Michael Hobbs
Good call, Richard. You should do cocaine because it makes you more fun to be around. You should do it for the good reasons.
Aubrey Gordon
While he's living in la, he starts experimenting with exercise, which is sort of a burgeoning leisure activity in LA at this point.
Michael Hobbs
That's right. Like, the industry is forming. Yeah, yeah.
Aubrey Gordon
This is the 70s. We're not even into the 80s. So this is like exercises for, like, Jack LaLanne and strongmen 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?
Michael Hobbs
Yeah.
Aubrey Gordon
So he tries out Bikram yoga and he's like, not for me.
Michael Hobbs
Yeah, that does seem a little low energy for Richard.
Aubrey Gordon
And then one day, a friend recommends exercise classes at a place called Body by Gilda.
Michael Hobbs
Okay.
Aubrey Gordon
By Gilda was a studio run by Gilda Marx. 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.
Michael Hobbs
Right.
Aubrey Gordon
So Body by Gilda is where Jane Fonda started working at.
Michael Hobbs
Okay.
Aubrey Gordon
Regular attendees also included Bette Midler and Barbra Streisand.
Michael Hobbs
Nice.
Aubrey Gordon
So Richard goes to Gilda's class in la 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.
Michael Hobbs
Yeah.
Aubrey Gordon
Gym. Look at you.
Michael Hobbs
That doesn't like. She looks like a Salvador Dali painting by the end, but I'm sure she was making it work.
Aubrey Gordon
It's exercise, but it's mostly about having fun. He feels like he 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 pre pays 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 Derek's 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.
Michael Hobbs
What?
Aubrey Gordon
And to tell him that he can't come back.
Michael Hobbs
What?
Aubrey Gordon
And that the women in the class weren't comfortable with having a man in the class. And he straightforwardly, in the memoir, is like, I don't believe her.
Michael Hobbs
So what do you think it was?
Aubrey Gordon
I think probably, like, if you're not accustomed, if you didn't sign on specifically for Richard Simmons level of energy.
Michael Hobbs
Yeah.
Aubrey Gordon
I could understand feeling like this is more than I'm up for.
Michael Hobbs
I'm just, like, marveling at how. How hurtful that must have been, because 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.
Aubrey Gordon
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.
Michael Hobbs
Yeah, it must be. Yeah.
Aubrey Gordon
Once again, he's getting the message that he's not wanted.
Michael Hobbs
Yeah. Yeah.
Aubrey Gordon
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.
Michael Hobbs
So that's what did it. He just, like, gets kicked out of one. He's like, I'm starting one.
Aubrey Gordon
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?
Michael Hobbs
I need to know how many public figures launch their careers out of pure spite. It has to be more than 50%.
Aubrey Gordon
According to Richard Simmons in this memoir. This strains credulity to me.
Michael Hobbs
Okay.
Aubrey Gordon
The customer at that dinner is like, what a great idea. I'll finance it.
Michael Hobbs
Yeah. Huh.
Aubrey Gordon
Like, it occurs to him and he has a, you know, a financing partner. Her. Just immediately. 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.
Michael Hobbs
Also, you wonder how much he was exploring the gay scene in LA at this time.
Aubrey Gordon
For sure.
Michael Hobbs
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 entirely 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.
Aubrey Gordon
Yeah. I will say I did find a clip of an interview where he's being interviewed by Huell Hauser. California listeners will be familiar with no idea. Huell Hauser.
Michael Hobbs
It's like Dionne Warwick to our young listeners.
Aubrey Gordon
For the entire interview, Richard Simmons is staring at Huell Hauser'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?
Michael Hobbs
Oh, my God.
Aubrey Gordon
Richard Simmons is working overtime to get laid. And it's in an interview for cnn.
Michael Hobbs
Control your meatballs, Richard.
Aubrey Gordon
It made me. It made me so happy. I was gonna show it. I was gonna play it on the show, and then I was like, do you know who huellhauser is? And you were like, I've never heard that name in my life. And I was like, well, then it's not fun.
Michael Hobbs
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.
Aubrey Gordon
Oh, you got a Jeremy Irons thing.
Michael Hobbs
Specifically, Jeremy Irons from Die Hard With a Vengeance, where he's all ropey and mean.
Aubrey Gordon
So regardless of the origins, that is when Richard Simmons opens his first exercise studio. This is the gym that is later known as Slimmings.
Michael Hobbs
Okay. It's pretty good.
Aubrey Gordon
So he opens his gym and he decides that it's going to be a gym that takes all comers, you know?
Michael Hobbs
Okay.
Aubrey Gordon
And it really takes off with two demographics in particular. Gay men and fat women.
Michael Hobbs
Just like this show.
Aubrey Gordon
Just like.
Michael Hobbs
Just like our podcast.
Aubrey Gordon
We are. The Richard Simmons demographic cannot talk shit.
Michael Hobbs
We cannot come for Richard Simmons lest someone come for us.
Aubrey Gordon
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.
Michael Hobbs
Like cruise.
Aubrey Gordon
Yeah, yeah. So it's not a everyone is welcome and you're here to exercise space.
Michael Hobbs
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. Just like everyone knows that's like the gay sex changing room. Even though there's like not a sign.
Aubrey Gordon
And the women's room is just like a tumbleweed.
Michael Hobbs
It's just storage. They keep like the paper towels in there. No one's ever been in there.
Aubrey Gordon
There are these nautilus gyms that are kind of like nightclubs. There are bodybuilding gyms, but if you're not a bodybuilder, you're gonna feel so weird there.
Michael Hobbs
Oh, right.
Aubrey Gordon
People use a particular phrase a lot when talking about the early years of Slimmins. 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 press 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.
Michael Hobbs
Okay.
Aubrey Gordon
And. And the classes were expensive in late 70s dollars. It was $100 for 10 classes. That's $650 in today's dollars.
Michael Hobbs
So like 65 bucks a class.
Aubrey Gordon
Yup.
Michael Hobbs
Dam.
Aubrey Gordon
He also starts getting press just for being in LA and being Richard Simmons.
Michael Hobbs
Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah.
Aubrey Gordon
There are a bunch of like little profiles of him that start to pop up. There's an LA Times him quote, a kind of freaked out Jack LaLanne, which Jack LaLanne did not love.
Michael Hobbs
Yeah, I'll bet. Yeah. Just say the gay version of me. This is taking forever.
Aubrey Gordon
The gym takes off and it becomes a chain. At this point, the gym is not yet called Slimmings. 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.
Michael Hobbs
What? That's garbage.
Aubrey Gordon
So we're gonna watch an ad, Richard, for the Anatomy Asylum that I found on YouTube.
Michael Hobbs
The man who brought us, I'm a Catholic OI also did a Catholic OI.
Aubrey Gordon
Yeah.
Michael Hobbs
The anatomy Asylum is so bad.
Aubrey Gordon
Wait until you hear the slogan, it gets better slash worse.
Michael Hobbs
Oh God. Okay.
C
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 in 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 and over 100,000 members all over the country. Isn't it time you were committed? Committed to the Anatomy Asylum.
Aubrey Gordon
Join the Anatomy Asylum now and get.
Michael Hobbs
Two people for the price of 1 or 50% off the enrollment of a VIP.
Aubrey Gordon
Do you see what I mean about both better and worse? So we are at the beginnings of the Richard Simmons fitness empire.
Michael Hobbs
It's happening.
Aubrey Gordon
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.
Michael Hobbs
Okay.
Aubrey Gordon
We start seeing what he decides to do with the platform that he builds, and it's really interesting.
Michael Hobbs
So what was your takeaway from this section of the book? Like, how did it change the way that you think about Richard Simmons?
Aubrey Gordon
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.
Michael Hobbs
Right, right.
Aubrey Gordon
It made me sad that I had to go back and read this book from 25 years ago.
Michael Hobbs
Right.
Aubrey Gordon
To hear from anyone, anywhere that he actually had a really rough time growing up and 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.
Michael Hobbs
Right.
Aubrey Gordon
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.
Michael Hobbs
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? Sa.
Maintenance Phase: Richard Simmons Episode Summary
Release Date: October 25, 2024
Hosts: Aubrey Gordon & Michael Hobbes
Podcast Description: Debunking the junk science behind health fads, wellness scams, and nonsensical nutrition advice.
In the October 25, 2024 episode of Maintenance Phase, hosts Aubrey Gordon and Michael Hobbes delve deep into the life and legacy of the beloved fitness guru Richard Simmons. Moving beyond his exuberant public persona, the hosts explore the more complex and often tragic aspects of Simmons's life, drawing from his memoir Still Hungry After All These Years and various interviews.
The episode begins with Michael Hobbes sharing his initial perception of Richard Simmons:
“All I know about Richard Simmons is like, sad things, like melancholy things...” [00:11]
Aubrey Gordon counters this by highlighting how Simmons was often perceived as a "manic pixie dream gay" figure, despite his never publicly addressing his sexual orientation. The hosts emphasize the contrast between the vibrant, high-energy Simmons seen on TV and the more vulnerable individual revealed through personal accounts.
A significant portion of the discussion focuses on Simmons's upbringing in New Orleans:
Parentage and Early Trauma: Richard Simmons, born Milton Teagle Simmons, faced a tumultuous childhood. His father, Leonard Simmons Sr., a former professional emcee, displayed volatile behavior, including burning family photo albums when Simmons's mother, Shirley May Simmons, announced her pregnancy. Aubrey shares a poignant excerpt from the memoir:
“My father made all the decisions in his house... Shirley quickly went out into the yard, picked up a stick, and poked through the fire. She managed to salvage some of the photos.” [11:56]
Religious Upbringing: Raised Catholic, Simmons attended Catholic school despite his parents' non-practicing stance. This cultural Catholicism instilled a sense of shame and conflict within him, particularly around his emerging identity:
“I think it was weird that he and his brother went to Catholic school...Why do we go to Mass but you don't go to Mass?” [17:03]
Struggles with Weight and Bullying: From a young age, Simmons grappled with his weight, facing harsh diets enforced by his parents and relentless bullying at school. Aubrey recounts Simmons's first Weight Watchers experience, marked by public shaming:
“I knew from past experience that the system and reward and punishment probably wasn't going to work for me.” [34:43]
Seeking an escape from his troubled home life, Simmons moved to Italy to pursue his passion for art. During his time abroad, he made a cameo in Federico Fellini's Satyricon and engaged in various acting roles, including quirky commercials:
Unexpected Opportunities: Aubrey reveals how Simmons stumbled into acting:
“He thought he was going to be cast for his personality, but ended up doing minor roles like a dancing meatball in commercials.” [37:03]
Cameo Appearances: The hosts discuss Simmons's brief and often unrecognizable roles, highlighting the stark contrast between his Italian persona and his later American image.
Upon returning to the United States, Simmons faced continued struggles with his weight and self-image. A pivotal moment occurred when he received a hurtful note:
“Richard, you're very funny, but fat people die young. Please don't die, dude.” [40:34]
This catalyzed his decision to create a supportive environment for others facing similar challenges. Despite initial setbacks, including being rejected from Gilda's exercise classes due to his gender, Simmons persevered:
Founding Slimming Clubs: Inspired by his own battles, Simmons launched his first gym, initially named the Anatomy Asylum. The gym emphasized inclusivity, welcoming both gay men and fat women, two demographics often marginalized in fitness spaces:
“The gym takes off and it becomes a chain...where people like you can lose weight, look good, and feel great.” [59:17]
Building the Empire: Through relentless energy and an empathetic approach, Simmons's fitness empire grew into 72 clubs across 13 cities. His message was clear:
“You don’t have to look like you already go to the gym to belong there.” [56:10]
Despite his outward positivity, Simmons grappled with deep-seated personal issues:
Eating Disorders: His memoir reveals Simmons engaged in extreme weight loss methods during his youth, including severe caloric restriction and diet pill abuse. Aubrey highlights the dangerous path Simmons took:
“He was just straight up wild, unchecked, happily embraced anorexia.” [42:45]
Isolation and Lack of Reciprocal Relationships: Simmons often felt isolated, unable to form meaningful, reciprocal relationships. Michael notes:
“He has this feeling that he can’t form relationships with people that aren't around, kind of rescuing them or being a support for them.” [35:19]
In reflecting on Simmons's journey, both hosts express a mix of empathy and sadness:
Cultural Oversight: Aubrey admits feeling embarrassed that such a prominent figure was largely misunderstood and that the culture at large failed to acknowledge his deeper struggles:
“It made me sad that I had to go back and read this book from 25 years ago to hear from anyone, anywhere that he actually had a really rough time growing up.” [60:28]
Unfulfilled Potential: There's a sense of loss over the person Simmons might have been had he received the support he needed during his formative years.
Michael Hobbs on Simmons's TV Persona:
“People who act like this oftentimes are covering up for something.” [06:30]
Aubrey Gordon on Family Dynamics:
“The way Simmons and his brother were treated by their parents created a storm cloud over his upbringing.” [14:15]
Richard’s Turning Point Note:
“Richard, you're very funny, but fat people die young. Please don't die, dude.” [40:34]
Hosts on Slimming Clubs' Inclusivity:
“You don’t have to look like you already go to the gym to belong there.” [56:10]
This episode of Maintenance Phase presents a multifaceted portrait of Richard Simmons, challenging the simplistic view of him as merely a cheerful fitness icon. Through detailed exploration of his early life, personal struggles, and the creation of his fitness empire, Aubrey Gordon and Michael Hobbes shed light on the complexities behind Simmons's enduring legacy. The hosts leave listeners with a profound understanding of the man behind the persona, urging a more compassionate and nuanced appreciation of public figures.
Note: This summary excludes advertisements, intros, outros, and non-content sections as per the request.