i love my curvy wife, pt. 1

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.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
All zone media 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 twenty tens,
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,

(00:22):
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 twenty nineteen, 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.

(00:43):
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.

(01:07):
Like many Internet terms, the age of the wife guy
has come and gone. Twenty nineteen 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

(01:27):
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.
So 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

(01:48):
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
twenty twenty two 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

(02:13):
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

(02:35):
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.

(02:59):
It's the summer of twenty seventeen and you're sweating your
ass off on a walk as the fiftieth chorus of
Desposito drifts out of the nearest CBS. 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

(03:20):
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.

Speaker 2 (03:31):
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

(03:52):
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 very specific standard of beauty,
then tall lean, I realized how many men have bought
into that lie. For me, there is nothing sexier than

(04:14):
this woman right here. Thick thighs, big booty, cute little
side roll, et cetera. 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

(04:36):
out every inch of her jeens 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 mannikin 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

(05:00):
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.

Speaker 1 (05:15):
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 curvywife Guy and curvywife
Robbie and Sarah trip.

Speaker 3 (05:34):
Your sixteenth minute starts now.

Speaker 1 (05:55):
Six Welcome back to sixteenth minute, the show, where we

(06:29):
revisit and check in with the Internet's main characters to
see what their moment says about the Internet and us.
And oh 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 Kruvy wife guy,

(06:52):
or as he's not shy about letting people know. For
the last seven years, a guy named Robbie Trip. 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

(07:13):
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 Sixteenth Minute, it's
originally unclear to the public how much Sarah is welcoming

(07:34):
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

(07:57):
that it did. Because the discourse around the Curvywife saga
went on per month, which even in twenty seventeen 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

(08:18):
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 Curvywife saga and sixteenth minute exclusive having
a post mortem with the Curvywife guy himself. So buckle in,
it's a it's a story, Come with me if you

(08:41):
dare to. July twenty seventeen, a Burundian team of teenage
robotics students vanish into thin air while traveling in Canada.
OJ Simpson is granted parole. The US government approves Elon
Musk's dumbass hyperloop. As we keep using Twitter like he'll
never run it into the ground. What all. Oh, We're
less than a year removed from Trump's election, and in

(09:03):
a few months, the me too movement will begin a
number of important conversations about 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 dot Com Instagram the Meta property, a man named
Robbie Tripp posts a photo of him and his wife

(09:24):
Sarah at the beach with an infamous caption.

Speaker 2 (09:28):
I love this woman and her curvy body as a teenager.

Speaker 1 (09:33):
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 Tripp were at
the time this was posted. By the summer of twenty seventeen,
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.

Speaker 4 (09:53):
So this puts.

Speaker 1 (09:54):
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 Curvey 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

(10:14):
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, and 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

(10:36):
up the cleats packing in the hoop. After a while
he stopped playing, and Sarah, who was 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,

(10:58):
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 twenty seventeen, Sarah had
been an influencer in the plus size space for over
four years. It was her who was the more successful

(11:19):
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 twenty thirteen. She'd had the idea

(11:42):
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 twenty fifteen post
from the blog where she explains what that means.

Speaker 5 (11:59):
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 towards the inexplainable reason that fashion
conscious women are quickly separated into one of two categories
regular size aka typical skinny and size zero to four,
or plus size aka heavy and size fourteen plus. But

(12:22):
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

(12:43):
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

(13:04):
into a gray area that at best creates a feeling
of ignorance and at worst creates feelings of judgment.

Speaker 1 (13:11):
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 Asia
sixteen and eighteen. Looking back at this blog was kind
of nostalgic. I'd never seen Sarah's work specifically before Kirby Wife,
but the style of posts is from a bygone era.
There's a leopard print font heading to the site that's

(13:33):
reminiscent of Like a Sex and 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 really is so.
Sarah's site starts in twenty thirteen, which is also the
year that she and Robbie start seeing each other after

(13:56):
being introduced by mutual friends in Vegas. They do some
long distance between New York, where her internship was in 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

(14:18):
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 What Influencer Radio from
twenty nineteen.

Speaker 6 (14:29):
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 hard working, and could care less about
brand names or status or anything like that. But the
parents of all these kids I went to school with,

(14:49):
it was very important to them, and so that's kind
of where I feel like I first was introduced to.

Speaker 1 (14:54):
It, and from the beginning. Robbie is mentioned on the
Sassy Red Lipstick website all the time, and he 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

(15:16):
Sarah to support her virgin and career. This is from
the Frequently Asked Questions section of Sassy Red Lipstick, shortly
before they got engaged. Question why did you start a
fashion blog?

Speaker 5 (15:28):
I've kept a lifestyle blog for the past couple of 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.

Speaker 1 (15:48):
The two get married at the Las Vegas Church of
Latter Day Saints in twenty fourteen. In twenty sixteen, 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. His posts start
as pretty innocuous. On Instagram, Robbie posted a picture of
himself and Sarah the day that Sassy Red Lipstick was

(16:10):
launched in twenty thirteen. They're holding hands and.

Speaker 2 (16:12):
It's captioned this morning, Sarah and I officially launched her
new fashion blog. I designed, photographed, and edited everything and
am super proud of how it came out. She fancy
check it out.

Speaker 1 (16:25):
But Robbie also has his own stuff going on, and
a few themes emerge 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 is a lot of hustle
mindset posts. I'm talking the kind of memes.

Speaker 2 (16:46):
That say, I have to be successful because WiFi really
likes shoes in handbags, hashtag tripswag, or it's natural for
some people to dislike you, not everyone has good taste.
Or if you're not made making enemies, you're not gaining fans.

Speaker 1 (17:02):
And spoiler alert. These posts really clarify why Robbie's endgame
is ultimately as a white wrapper. 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

(17:24):
an individual and with Sarah as a team. Then there's
his creative output, which included a self published book from
twenty fifteen called Create Rebellion, which he describes as a
quote abstract manifesto for disruptive creativity unquote. Here's a twenty
five year old Robbie talking about it on the local news.

Speaker 4 (17:43):
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 do your own thing, just
regarding 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.

Speaker 1 (17:58):
So what I'm hearing here is Robby was very influenced
by this twenty tens 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

(18:21):
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 twenty sixteen, he's focused on
doing his book tour and is trying to get a
Ted talk, which he does. By twenty seventeen, Robbie secures
a local TED talk in Salinas, California that is called

(18:42):
why Millennial Narcissists Are Changing the World. Here's a clip.

Speaker 4 (18:47):
This perception that millennials are selfish and defeat 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 what pass a surface to see
that will Millennials are actually changing the world for the
better because our positives are born from our perceived negatives.

(19:08):
Here's what I mean. For example, when many see in
US as narcissistic, is also just a supreme confidence in
our abilities. That 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,

(19:31):
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
for and we need to take a nap. I'm confident
I could assign each one of the negative characteristics that
my generation has been given, such as more selfish, more arrogant,
more entitled, as a direct result of a generation that's

(19:55):
also more creative, more free thinking, and more in than
any other generation before us.

Speaker 1 (20:03):
The wild thing is that this was released on YouTube
just a few months before the Curvywife 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.

(20:27):
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 Tripp is
definitely fixated on this idea of being a millennial meaning
that you are selfish for good. Here's how the talk ends.

Speaker 4 (20:48):
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.

(21:09):
But many times this is all ignored 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.

(21:31):
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.

Speaker 1 (21:40):
And while I can see his point, any generation that
asks for more than their predecessors are made out to
be ungrateful brats for pushing back on traditional, bullshit, bootstrapped 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

(22:02):
the haters and viewing himself and Sarah as a united
front that is at the forefront of the revolution. It's
familiar and inner world where the Curvywife 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 thirtieth, twenty seventeen, everything changes.

(22:23):
Maybe during the mid twenty tens, was jump starting his
own creative efforts. Sarah had had a lot of success
building up sassy red lipstick. Her Instagram bio read at

(22:44):
the time of the.

Speaker 5 (22:45):
Post always overdressed, kissing lips, emoji, confident style and body
positivity hashtag honor your curves, and.

Speaker 1 (22:52):
She'd recently celebrated reaching one hundred thousand followers on Instagram
and had pretty consistent sponsored posts right up until the
moment of the curvywife post. The couple seemed content and
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

(23:13):
larger audience and much more narrative control until the post.
The Curvywife post was made to Instagram and Facebook and
quickly racked up over eighty thousand shares, and you heard
the full post at the beginning of the episode, but
here's a reminder of how it wraps up.

Speaker 2 (23:33):
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 genes and is still the
most beautiful one in the room. Guys, rethink what society
has told you that you should desire. A real woman

(23:53):
is not a bikini mannekin or a movie character. She's real.
She has beautiful stretch 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,

(24:14):
someone who will love you like I love my Sarah.

Speaker 1 (24:19):
Almost immediately, the Curvy wife post gets higher engagement than
Robbie is normally dead at this time, and he says
that the reception was initially positive and mainly from the
audience he had already, which was around twenty thousand 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

(24:41):
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 in the same bathing stit,
only in this picture she's by herself.

Speaker 5 (25:02):
The caption says, talking all about the F word on
SRL tonight, you know the one I'm talking about fat.
I'm getting personal about my lifelong journey of being a
curve or 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

(25:24):
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.

Speaker 1 (25:32):
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 this story in these early days.
There is never a feeling that she's upset or thinks
that her husband has overstepped by posting this. But I
never knew that because Sarah's participation and engagement with this

(25:54):
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 a
Leah Fruman at the Today Show found the story writing
husband Pen's body positive note to Curvy Wife and everyone's swooning,

(26:18):
and to her credit, she interviews Sarah, who says the following.

Speaker 5 (26:21):
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.

Speaker 1 (26:38):
The next day, a trend reporter at the Huffington Post
named Dominique Mosbergen 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 back toward Robbie specifically. And look,

(27:03):
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 like 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's story, because

(27:26):
just throw on, oh Fortuna, Saying.

Speaker 2 (27:34):
That you like your wife even though she's chubby doesn't
make you brave, It makes you a jerk. You're still
objectifying her.

Speaker 5 (27:41):
Dude, strong contender for least fave type of male feminist
is man who thinks liking a curvy woman is revolutionary.

Speaker 2 (27:51):
My mates think you are fat, but I still like you.
I know I'm such a feminist. Hashtag I, hashtag love,
hashtag curvy, hashtag women.

Speaker 1 (28:02):
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.

Speaker 5 (28:12):
Has curvy wife written a blog post about why she's
a martyr for marrying her gawky, narcissist husband?

Speaker 1 (28:18):
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 Allure
called aria man thinks he's brave for finding his wife hot.

(28:42):
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 size and ben overweight,
I will anecdotally muse that the compliments become increasingly patronizing

(29:05):
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 waste a bust
ratio are who you're referring to. And this does not

(29:26):
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

(29:46):
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 fifteen
Minutes experience pulled into the station, unearthing offensive old tweets

(30:08):
and with Robby and Sarah. These were posts from the
early to mid twenty tens 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 Robby and Sarah to acknowledge
and apologize for these posts. This is a phenomenon called

(30:30):
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 twenty sixteen by Ben Ward
aka pixelated Boat.

Speaker 2 (30:46):
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.

Speaker 1 (30:56):
Robby and Sarah are the ducks, and the posts were
relatively recent and this demand for accountability escalates. By August seventh,
just a week after the post had started gathering steam,
model Test Holiday called bullshit on Robbie, both for his
original Curvywife post and for a transphobic tweet from twenty fifteen,
given that Holiday was one of the most prominent body

(31:18):
positivity advocates of the day. She was and is a
very popular model who had launched the hashtag f your
Beauty Standards social media movement and openly embraced the term fat.
And she had this to say about the curvywife story.
Stop giving men trophies for doing the bare minimum. Also,
I'm not here for someone who says transphobic things hashtag

(31:38):
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.

Speaker 5 (31:51):
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 twenty twelve. Robbie's from
twenty fifteen. 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,

(32:14):
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.

Speaker 1 (32:31):
But by the time these apologies were released on August twelve,
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, were offended by it,
and even more so by the tweets. But even with
the scandal, both of their audiences continued to grow. Sarah's

(32:52):
accounts remained more or less normal, with the focus being
the continued growth of Sassy Red Lipstick. Robbie, well, he
kind of did 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

(33:13):
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.

Speaker 2 (33:21):
A hater is someone who sees your success as their
failure and your failure as their success.

Speaker 1 (33:29):
Robbie trip, 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 twenty eighteen, he posts a picture
of himself and Sarah in front of one of those

(33:50):
weird cars where the doors flip up. They scare me. Anyways,
they're in front of those, and Robbie is bragging about
how they've made six figures blogging in the Year of
the Kirby 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

(34:11):
called Desert Money. By twenty nineteen, Sarah is pregnant with
their first child, and Robbie takes the next logical step
into a career as a viral guy.

Speaker 7 (34:23):
My girl Chubby Sexy Collezai nice of Miita, she got
think not stretch lark.

Speaker 1 (34:33):
Bi 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 Macilmore's number one fan.

Speaker 4 (34:51):
In the words of Grammy Award winning rapper Maclamore, we
are a generation of kids choosing love over a desk,
and that is the gen generation I'm proud to be
a part of. That is what it means to be
a millennial.

Speaker 1 (35:05):
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 Trip 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

(35:25):
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 box
that is already reflecting on the original rollout of the
trips as an influencer couple. Jennings writes that the couple

(35:48):
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 twenty seventeen,
something that most people hadn't really asked. Here's a passage
from Jennings peace.

Speaker 5 (36:02):
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.

(36:25):
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

(36:47):
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.

Speaker 1 (37:00):
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

(37:21):
the dancers in the Chubby Sexy music video, who identified
as a curview 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

(37:44):
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 as a big girl banger.
Oh it's a big girl beggar beggar telling off the
haters and getting a lot of money.

Speaker 4 (38:05):
On the ground like a roundness skater maid with this
bottle to you of this raid.

Speaker 1 (38:09):
And during the month I interviewed him, Sarah specifically.

Speaker 4 (38:15):
Oh got a hot white should be looking.

Speaker 2 (38:18):
So really nice.

Speaker 1 (38:19):
Sarah is very often in these music videos and even
appears in sketches before and after the music video for
twenty twenty one's Sickness for Thickness. Okay, fuck it, I
really need to read you the song titles because uh,
here they are Chubby Sexy Sickness for Thickness, Hater Raid,
White Chocolate, big girl banger, Goodie Goodie Baddy Alert Desert Baller,

(38:42):
Basic Bro, Desert Money, Free Style, Money, Honey, Vanilla Thriller,
and of course Hot Wife. And again the songs are
polarizing but not unsuccessful. Big Girl Bang in particular took
off on TikTok in twenty twenty two in a pretty

(39:03):
huge way, to the point where many of the writers
who had criticized Robbie back in twenty seventeen caught on
Curvywife Guy is thriving on TikTok, and that was true.
Some people in Robbie's TikTok comments recognize him from the
original Curvywife 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

(39:26):
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

(39:48):
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 were
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 Guy,

(40:24):
welcome back to sixteenth 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 curvew
Wife Guy. So I do want to say Robbie was

(40:45):
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 to maintain
his own narrative, so he sent along a few conditions
within the confines of this interview, which I agreed to,

(41:06):
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

(41:29):
for length and clarity. Here's my interview with Kirby Wife Guy.
How are you.

Speaker 4 (41:36):
I'm doing great. Yeah. It's always so interesting and fun.

Speaker 8 (41:40):
To speak on the infamous and famous twenty seventeen Kirby
Wife moment because it's like the genesis of everything.

Speaker 4 (41:51):
But it's uh for all of us. I'm the pioneer
of the life guy movement. There it is said it
a pioneered the wife Guy Online. Oh no, it's it's
such an interesting, interesting thing a topic to talk about
because we've since branched into so many different things that
lived this whole like life Online is whatever you want

(42:15):
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.

Speaker 1 (42:27):
It's really I mean, I have so many questions. I
want to go way back, but okay, I want to
start with you and your wife. Sarah just announced that
you're continuing the curvew wife saga just the other day.
Can you walk me through what this continuation is?

Speaker 4 (42:46):
Curry wife post in twenty seventeen was the genesis of
kind of people's awareness of us online and fast forward?
Now was it seven years? Seven years in hoget twenty
twenty four. I mean, it's just been Yeah, it's been
a whole it's been a whole series of we can

(43:06):
like it's interesting within our relationship, we traced 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 we've lived and been
married so long, and and our whole our whole marriage
and our whole relationship has been posting and creating content.

(43:27):
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 posts 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

(43:51):
a moment to go viral, or as if that's something
that you could even predict, but it was. 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

(44:12):
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, post a photo for my wedding or
post a photo from whatever, and you know, write kind
of my feelings to her and attribute to her. So

(44:32):
it was the It would just so happened that it
was the I love my curvy wife on the beach
in Miami in her swimsuit. They're really to get people talking.

Speaker 1 (44:42):
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.

Speaker 4 (44:59):
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, and
that becomes their Yeah, their sole piece of context about

(45:20):
who the creator or the artist is. And as that's
why I was that's yeah, that's 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, is
like just a gimmick or you know what I mean, Like,

(45:41):
he's not sincere, he's he's objectify er, 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. I'm expressing myself. I'm an artist

(46:02):
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 then empower.
Beautiful Kirby plus sized 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

(46:22):
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

(46:43):
where people are like, the viral Kirby white 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

(47:05):
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 word smith ory
that expressed his love for her, his adoration for her,

(47:27):
and maybe tried to, you know, introduce society to the
idea that hey, big girls are sexy, Kirby girls are sexy.
Let's speak outside the box.

Speaker 1 (47:36):
Hell Yeah, so I did want to start with, you
have a new single called Hot Wife that comes out
at the time we're recording this next year.

Speaker 4 (47:47):
Yeah, we just teased it. We just teased it the
other day and said a continuation or a new chapter
in the Kirby Wife saga. Now it's like because of
this incredible body positive Gordiica gang, I called my Gordita
Gang audience that listen to my music and my creative
projects like Chubby Sexy and Big Girl Banger like viral anthems,

(48:09):
certified bangers. I was like, Okay, I have an idea
for a song called Hot Wife, and I was like, babe,
So Sarah and I haven't been in a project together
since my first debut single, Chubby Sexy in twenty nineteen, right,
and that did extremely well on the It was in
GQ's Moment Men of the Year issue. It was like,

(48:29):
it went 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. Sarren continued doing the amazing thing she's doing
with sassa 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

(48:50):
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. I can't have another woman in
the US 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 able already be out and yeah, out into the world.

(49:11):
Yeah so uh yeah, Hot Wife is like the next
chapter in these uh just body positive bops, just confidence
bangers that we're making. And I'm living the 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 my all
my own creative production, and so it's really just been

(49:32):
this evolution of like, yeah, the Kirby White viral posts
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.

Speaker 1 (49:43):
Oh yeah, so I want to 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.

Speaker 4 (49:55):
In the box immediately.

Speaker 1 (49:56):
Yeah right, And so you can you can know the
same three things out someone that's published in a million places,
but you don't actually know anything about them. So just curious,
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.

Speaker 4 (50:13):
Grew up in Utah, obsessed with my hoop dreams, breed slept,
lived my basketball dreams, played basketball 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

(50:33):
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 who went
to high school together. So that's like kind of my
chapter where you know, I grew up in Utah, parents

(50:55):
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, and we, yeah, so we met, So we met.
We had a bunch of mutual 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,

(51:17):
we met and got married in Las Vegas. Then we
moved to in twenty fourteen. We got married in Las Vegas.

Speaker 1 (51:25):
We started it was recently your ten years old.

Speaker 4 (51:28):
Yeah, we just celebrated ten years. Amazing, we're doing it.
I know, it's crazy. We got toddler, we have we
just had newborn twins. Sarah just had twins. So three
kids now ten years down, Like it's it's amazing. Yeah,
we're living the dream. Okay. So twenty thirteen we started dating.
Started Sarah's fashion blog. Sassio had lipstick. I had my

(51:51):
own brand at the time that was like my online creations.
It was under trip Swag. So trip Swag was the
thing that it was like swag. Yeah, yeah, this is
slag was like the the that early two thousands. It
defined the era, and I just had this energy online
of similar that's what I do today, but way just

(52:11):
you know, crazier and like just insane, you know, doing
stuff in creating YouTube videos in college and riding my
bike around town and thrifting and you know, I just
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 smith ry, and I also
loved making music. I was the kid making garage band
wraps in high school and selling my mixtape in in

(52:34):
the school hallway for five dollars and going in Utah
oh yeah yeah, and then going to and then going
to college and you know, making garage band wraps in
the doors 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,

(52:55):
I just kind of became a social media content in
a very early form. So I've got ten plus years
of I mean, yeah, of doing this eleven eleven if
you're counting. Twenty thirteen. Twenty twelve 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 it's so fascinating to

(53:21):
look back at how we've evolved.

Speaker 1 (53:23):
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.

Speaker 4 (53:35):
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 made. I remember going with my
brother to film a sixty second clip of my basketball

(53:56):
highlights at our local playground when I was thirteen, and
I said, admitted it to Nesley Crunch for a Shaquille
O'Neill hot Shots camp, and I was one of ten
kids selected from across the country. And at thirteen years old,
I got phone to LA got to go to this
exclusive Nesting Crunch hot Shots camp with Shaquille O'Neil play
one on one against him. I scored. My mom has

(54:17):
the videotape. It's in the books, it's proven, it's amazing.
I scored on Shaquill O'Neil on one on one when
I was thirteen years old. And yeah, so I was
always just using internet and technology and like to just
create and give my art onto the world. I was
releasing freestyle wraps they're long since gone, thank goodness, on
my computer as soon as I, like, you know, joined YouTube.

(54:40):
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 of so it's only natural that it became, you know,
more than a life style by like a career you know.

Speaker 1 (55:03):
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 twenty seventeen,

(55:26):
you'd made posts like this before. It just happened to
be for whatever reason, this post that opt.

Speaker 4 (55:32):
Off, so twenty seventeen.

Speaker 1 (55:35):
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 Curvywife
post come together? Which sounds so silly, but I am curious.

Speaker 4 (55:53):
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 minus 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'd been married for three

(56:15):
years at the time got married in twenty fourteen. Kirby
Wife post was in I love how we just call
it the Kirby Wife post. Now it's not like, oh yeah,
my Instagram post, Like it's just like it has its
own title now, like it.

Speaker 1 (56:26):
Was first child.

Speaker 4 (56:28):
In a way, it was no, really, it was an
Instagram post and now it has a name. It's just
it's funny anyway. Twenty seventeen, we're living in San Francisco
at the time, full time blogging, influencer, content creation. We're
running Sassa read Lipstick full time doing brand partnerships all
over the world, and it was still like it'd been
running for yeah, like since we were dating in college.

(56:50):
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? You know, early Utah fashion influencer

(57:12):
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 stylist just beautiful. Is the body positive aspect of
her fashion blog of Sasialyptic started to naturally take that tone,
and that's when we really started to again we moved

(57:33):
to San Francisco. We really are 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 chord, like very authentically with
Sarah sharing, Hey, here's what it's like being a size twelve,
size fourteen fashion blogger in influence in an industry where

(57:53):
every blogger conference I go to in Dallas or every
you know meetup I go to are these size zero,
size too like women and is like a very particular
figure that 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.

Speaker 1 (58:13):
And Sarah is like an average sized American woman. So
that's like I remember this sort of era of yeah,
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.

Speaker 4 (58:30):
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 posts and after the Bible post, because it's
so it was just such everything just changed after that.
So it was then in July July thirtieth, July thirty first,
we were like getting ready to go on a beach

(58:50):
vacation the next morning, which is why I remember this,
and I posted I had a photosare and I'd been
to Miami again. We were traveling doing the travel blogging
fashion blogging ding. We're in Miami. We got we had
photos on the beach of me holding her. She was
wearing like this tropical citrus like I think it was

(59:12):
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 I just like I feel like it just showed
like how much I just find her attractive and how
her sexy Kirby bond really gets me going as her
husband and soulmate and life partner Okay, So I was

(59:33):
thinking about that posted it wrote a whole caption I
loved my Kirby wife.

Speaker 1 (59:38):
And did she see it the post before you posted it?

Speaker 4 (59:43):
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 like, hey, look what I just wrote about, you
know what I mean, Like I'm kind of way for

(01:00:04):
her to find them as she was scrolling her feet,
and then she'd like, oh, you know what I mean.

Speaker 1 (01:00:08):
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, yeah, way in on.

Speaker 4 (01:00:20):
This tribute I just wrote for you. Do you want
to proof read it and write? 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

(01:00:42):
wants at the time. So posted it. Woke up the
next morning, rode to southern California beach vacation, and very
early it seemed like and again, okay, so I had
twenty thousand followers at the time, Sarah probably had about
one hundred thousand early early day. So I posted it
and we drove down to southern California. By the time

(01:01:04):
we were the day was done in about twenty four hours.
It was like maybe five thousand likes or something, and
like definitely like a few hundred comments, Like it definitely
like showed that like people, at least the people who
were following me or I thought were following me at
the time, was like, Okay, this is doing better than
like a regular post.

Speaker 1 (01:01:23):
Did it seem like the algorithm had kind of picked
it up.

Speaker 4 (01:01:26):
This was twenty seventeen. That felt that feels like a
pre algorithm conversation. Like it just felt like I just
felt 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.

(01:01:48):
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 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 twenty four hours, Okay, forty
eight hours, it's up to like ten thousand likes and

(01:02:10):
it's getting hundreds of more comments. So it's like already,
like in forty eight 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

(01:02:32):
same as how in twenty twenty four 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
to my wife, which, as we mentioned several times, I
can't stress this enough when people try to spin the

(01:02:53):
narrative into some negative, contrived thing. I had been doing
this as a just a loving boyfriend 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,

(01:03:15):
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

(01:03:37):
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,

(01:03:59):
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 E News, and
you start to get all these internet publications that are
like man loves Kirby Wife, Curvy Wife post, Heartwarming, couple Goals,
husband of the Year, They're so cute, this is so nice.

(01:04:19):
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 how I feel about my wife was so beautiful.
And then after that first week of positivity it did

(01:04:42):
it started to turn into this thing that I didn't
like because it was never meant to be that.

Speaker 1 (01:04:47):
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.

Speaker 4 (01:04:56):
Totally, wait, trust me, I've I've read some of the
artic They're like, 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

(01:05:21):
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 the 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 the

(01:05:42):
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 burned out
of that, and there's been a lot of just like crazy,
You're like, wow, what happened? You know what I mean?

Speaker 1 (01:05:57):
Totally, even when it does far well a pattern, it's
happening to your family, So it is like a very
little personal.

Speaker 4 (01:06:07):
Yeah, a little personal. But then gaining a little bit
of maturity and retrospect and looking back after seven years,
you start to realize, like, well, when you're creating, 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

(01:06:28):
there's a piece of you asked 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 saying 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

(01:06:48):
maybe have gotten a little bit too comfortable with. But
I think as a society we're doing better that and
in that 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

(01:07:11):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:07:28):
Well how is I know, I mean you can always
speak for yourself, but how how is Sarah doing throughout
this time? Because it has to be, you know, a
uniquely crazy making experience for her as well, So yeah,
what was going on? How how is she feeling throughout
that process as well?

Speaker 4 (01:07:46):
Yeah, it was a whirlwind, I mean in the in
the days, in the days and weeks following kind of that,
like I guess you'll call it news cycle, right of,
like we were kind of a viral hot topic. Like
it was just you'll it's a surreal, like just funny,
weird experience when you're like doing your scrolls while you're
on the toilet and you're just like seeing yourself on

(01:08:10):
on all your apps, you know what I mean. It's
like I would literally just be like at the time
twenty seventeen, I would scroll Facebook, I think for articles
from like complex News and high Snubbiety and hype beasts
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 Latin viable or whatever it was at

(01:08:31):
the time, right, and I would see I would just
see myself. I would be like Kirby 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 where it's like again it was
it was tremendously positive in 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

(01:08:53):
messaging us to express like a lot of positivity and appreciation,
and just like we really started to connect with like
a global online 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

(01:09:14):
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 twelve in a fashion industry, And

(01:09:35):
here's Robbie. I'm writing, I'm giving you 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 everybody
that connected with this viral curry Wife post with open arms.
And then, like I said, after that wave kind of

(01:09:57):
came in, then it started to get this in the
periphery of the negativity.

Speaker 1 (01:10:02):
Kind did you as a couple deal with the negative waves?

Speaker 4 (01:10:06):
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 I 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,

(01:10:28):
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

(01:10:52):
people on social media who tuned in to follow me
in Sarah, and follow our journey and our relationship and
our marriage and so yeah, then on the 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 that 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

(01:11:14):
the Kirby White posts. There was a time where Sarah
and I were just like, yeah, can this stop now?
Like you, 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,

(01:11:39):
viral post to my wife.

Speaker 1 (01:11:40):
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 all the volume, you know.

Speaker 4 (01:11:56):
Yeah, totally. It was looking back on it again, seven years,
seeing the positive, seeing the negative, looking back twenty twenty hindsight,
you look back and think about it, especially if I
hope 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 definitely contained

(01:12:17):
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 can disagree with that, right,
And it touched on But then it started and then
it contained buzzwords like body positive, like feminism, like marketing

(01:12:42):
and advertising billboards, sexy bikinis, society. It started to have
all these buzzwords wrapped into it, and so looking back
on 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,

(01:13:04):
your your vible 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 it is feeling. This

(01:13:26):
is truly still how I feel about body positivity and
my wife and 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

(01:13:48):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:14:10):
The end of the day, I feel like, no matter
how people feel about curvy wife in retrospect, you guys
have been happily married for ten years, and most people
do not pull that off like that, that's really cool.

Speaker 4 (01:14:22):
Most my friends are divorced, most 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 Gordta Gang community of
these viral you know, chubby, sexy, big girl, banger now

(01:14:45):
hot wife like music projects. Is like, yeah, it's just
like easy to get lost caught up in the fact
in 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,
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

(01:15:07):
a new swim suit line. That she's got to do
a video shoe and we got our grand you know,
grandparents here to help out, and just a wonderful support
supp 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 in this
family with me that it's easy to get caught up

(01:15:31):
in the fact like we're not we're not just like
this viral moment. Like we're human beings and we live
and we love, and we've been married ten years and
we 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

(01:15:53):
kind of a part of what makes me. Robbie Tripp.

Speaker 1 (01:15:57):
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 as a hit
and as you can hear in the interview and going
back well over a decade, Robbie is still determined to
prove the hater's 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

(01:16:20):
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 ten years being married. And if there's
one thing on the Internet I've learned, it's that pathologizing
someone else's marriage is ten miles of none of your
fucking business. So all power to Sarah. I didn't get

(01:16:42):
to ask Robbi 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
fems who had worked within the fat liberation movement and
have a more political discussion about what stories like the
curviw Wife saga brought up in these activist communities. So

(01:17:05):
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 Advance Fat Acceptance and Kate Navarett
of the Body Positive Alliance. So Robby and Sarah Tripp,
your sixteenth Minute is stretching a little bit longer. We'll

(01:17:27):
see you next week.

Speaker 9 (01:17:32):
Sixteenth Minute is a production of fool Zone Media and iHeartRadio.
It is written, hosted, and produced by me Jamie Loftus.
Our executive producers are Sophie Lichtterman and Robert Evans. The
amazing Ian Johnson is our supervising producer and our editor.
Our theme song is by Sad thirteen and Pet.

Speaker 3 (01:17:52):
Shout outs to our dog producer Anderson, my Kat's Flee
and Casper and by pet Rockbird, who will outlive us all.

Speaker 1 (01:17:58):
Bye, Beat My Head.