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Dear friends,
A couple weeks ago, NY Magazine writer Madison Malone Kircher received a late night DM from a surprising source. When she woke, the message was gone.
The message was from Robbie Tripp, the controversial influencer who rose to viral fame when he posted about loving his curvy wife Sarah (@sassyredlipstick) last year. Many saw him as objectifying his wife for personal profit. We’ve written about him here here and here.
Then, Madison received an email from Robbie with the subject line, “Opportunity of a Lifetime!!!!!!!!!” What happens next you can read in her recap of their meetup in NY Mag (which has been updated several times to reflect how, in an extremely chill way, Robbie continues to block and unblock her). Robbie (thin man) is now further inserting himself into the body-positive women’s discourse by releasing a “curvy girl anthem.”
Madison was kind enough to talk with us on the phone about being a woman covering influencers; dealing with backlash from the Tripp family (Robbie accused her of lying!); monetizing your unborn “seed” (Robbie’s word, not ours); and which Curvy anthemists we should really be listening to. This interview has been edited and condensed!
MEATSPACE: Thanks for speaking with us about The Curvy Wife drama -- the never-ending Curvy Wife drama.
MADISON: I know, I updated the story this morning [May 14] and I kind of wondered if he's just going to continue to block and unblock me ad nauseum because he knows I’ll update the story. Which is kind of funny.
Can you walk us through the blowback from him?
[During the interview], I had asked him if he’d seen “Shrill” on Hulu yet, and he said they hadn’t seen it but they’d been really busy, which I imagine they are — we talked a lot about hustling and grinding, and I truly believe that they are working constantly, because this is an industry where you just have to be on 24/7. They said we don’t really have time to see it, but we really have been getting a lot of great feedback from people in our body positivity industry sphere.
Over the weekend he emailed me and said hey, [my wife] Sarah and I watched “Shrill” this weekend. Thanks for being the kick we needed to watch it, we loved it, so forth and so on. And I at this point had filed my piece, and on Monday morning I emailed saying “Hey, glad you liked Shrill and that you enjoyed our conversation, my piece is linked below, all the best, Madison.”
Obviously it started to get picked up on Twitter because people really enjoy Curvy Wife Guy. And then he started tweeting at me.
And initially it was just a tweet about how he was disappointed but not surprised that I had decided to “go negative” or something to that effect. “An interesting yet all-too-predictable read, Madison! A stark contrast from the smiling, hugging, and visibly nervous reporter I shared an enjoyable conversation with. Unfortunate you still chose to go with the “negative reviews get clicks” philosophy we spoke about! Enjoy!” Winky emoji.
And from there he just started tweeting screen caps of our email exchanges. He also ends all these tweets, “enjoy, Madison.” Like yes, I will enjoy the article I wrote, thank you. And then when I finally added a clarification — because he was sending me these big long emails about releasing the tapes and accusing me of basically lying in this piece — I didn't change a single word I wrote. I truly added one parenthetical sentence based on an email. And then to him it was like, your editor made you update your article because you are this Internet snark blogger who’s twisting people's words, and I’m sorry your lying wasn’t allowed to continue to help your angle. All of these tweets. And at that point I just kind of stepped away.
It’s one of those things where Curvy Wife Guy can say whatever Curvy Wife Guy wants but you start lobbing words like “lie” around a journalist and that becomes something that you feel the need to want to address.
Another thing you mentioned in the piece was how this whole exchange highlighted the kind of symbiotic relationship between influencer and pop culture writer.
Yeah, I thought this was kind of a funny, low-stakes environment to take a look at an issue journalists have faced forever.
The thing that makes me laugh most of all is when [he calls me] lyin media, dishonest journalism, and then on the other hand, he’s saying, “quick, quick, let’s get it to number one!!” I don't know that the Venn diagram of overlap between Robbie Tripp fans and NY Magazine readers has a terribly large middle section, but now he’s saying to all of his followers, go read this piece.
It really just encapsulates what I was arguing: Robbie Tripp needs me as much as I need Robbie Tripp.
Why were you drawn to him in the first place?
Well it’s funny, I was thinking back to when we first met Curvy Wife Guy, when he first appeared on the scene. I was working remotely that Friday. I had gone home - it was the summer - and I was actually with my mother, and I remember waking up and my editors Slacking me like “Hey, you seein’ this?” and I was like, “yes I’m seein’ this,” and then thinking, let me just fire off like a 20 minute blog post on this.
This is insane, but I reread the blog post in light of this week's interview, and it was so straightforward, it was something like: Some people are dragging this guy for loving his wife’s curves but other people are applauding it. It was not a drag.
I followed them like I follow a lot of influencer types, and didn't really think anything of it again until the pregnancy announcement.
The sacred vessel announcement.
Right. Which just made me cringe in ways they didn't know I was capable of cringing.
Do you think some sort of switch happened with Robbie where he got this fame and influence and the money that comes with it after Curvy Wife Post 1.0 and then he started creating content for that purpose? Or do you think that was always his game?
I think that was always his game. When the Curvy Wife post first went viral Robbie Tripp had about 20,000 followers which means he’s already somebody who's trying to be internet famous, who’s trying to be an influencer, and doing it fairly successfully — it’s not micro-influence by any standard. And I think from there he just realized that this post — which, from my conversation with him, that OG Curvy Wife, “this is what a real woman looks like” post, was very much genuine. That's not Robbie Tripp putting on an act. That's how he talks and that’s how he lives his life. I think he just realized, this facet of my social personality is what clicks and what works so why not keep repeating that.
You said in your piece that he reached out to a lot of other journalists for a one on one interview. Why do you think everyone else said no to him?
I think they're all significantly better adjusted than I am. I honestly couldn't tell you, he listed a few of them — the ones he named to me were all women, which I thought was interesting.
I will say we had a really friendly and polite civil conversation, there was no anger. Which is why I think Robbie was so angry and upset [last week] when I published this piece that was honest and critical and he said this woman was smiling and friendly and hugging me and all of these things. But we could be all of those things and also have a real conversation.
So it sounds like, very understandably, you’re done with Curvy Wife Guy. But obviously he doesn't exist in a vacuum, and he's going to continue doing his thing — making his Curvy Girl anthem, or whatever. So I’m curious where you envision him going next?
I think about my Instagram stories for the past few days, which have been everyone and their mother at the Lizzo show in Brooklyn, and I really regret not asking him if he was familiar with the works of all these great female artists who are doing the Curvy Girl Anthem their own way, for themselves, in really incredible and powerful ways and why he feels the need to take up space in that.
He will release the song and I do not know if I will write about it or not, but people certainly will. Because I told him he was good for clicks and that’s absolutely true. But I think he’ll just continue business as usual. They have some really loyal fans — I had a teenager (from what I discerned from her Instagram account) slide into my DMs yesterday. And she was very upset with me and my “lack of character.” She accused me of acting! “You went into this interview smiling and pretending to be nervous.” And I was like, you really picked a team here.
I think Curvy Wife Guy and [Sarah], they're going to be just fine. They built a small empire and they are getting that money. He talks a lot about that, and it's not lost on me that this guy is laughing all the way to the bank.
In light of the pregnancy announcement, what are your thoughts on monetizing a pregnancy in general? We’re curious what you think of building content off an unborn “seed.”
That’s something I think about a lot given what I write about, and it’s twofold. Because these are people who have made made their living telling people everything about their lives. And it seems understandable and even something you can't fault a person for to be like this is my business, this is just what we do. I personally — I’m not a parent, I can’t totally fathom what that is like, and I’m not an influencer making truckloads of money for my Instagram posts either. But I think about being 6 years old and having my mom and dad take pictures of me and my mom being like oh, it's just for family or it’s just for me, don’t worry. You're so attuned to that at such a young age, and on such a small scale.
I also do worry about a generation of influencer-children who don’t know that a private life is a reality. I would love nothing more than just a roundtable situation with a dozen kids who’ve been raised in influencer/YouTube type families to just tell us how they feel.
Thank you, Madison! Check out her archive of great/funny pieces about this topic, other niche beefs, and internet culture here. And follow her on Twitter here.
RELATED LINKIES
If u are wondering why everyone is at the Lizzo concert in Brooklyn, read the definitive Lizzo profile (The Cut)
Amanda Mull on why body positivity is a scam propagated by capitalism!! (Vox)
What happens when a kid finds out her mom has been posting about her life (Washington Post)
When internet celebs respond to legitimate criticism by calling detractors “haters” and “trolls” (Washington Post)
Peace and love,
Sarah and Lora