Food Psych Podcast with Christy Harrison · Christy Harrison, MPH, RD, CEDS

Secrets of the Notorious "Camp Shame," a Hotbed of Disordered Eating and Deception

·1 hr 13 min·4 clips

Kelsey says Camp Shane felt cult-like because lifers knew it was unsafe but kept returning anyway.

Christy Harrison talks with filmmaker and podcaster Kelsey Snelling about Camp Shane and her new podcast, Camp Shame. The conversation treats the camp as a place built on deprivation, starvation, and control, where the message was that the smaller your body was, the more respect, applause, and value you got. Harrison asks how a camp like that could last for so many years. Snelling points to a closed culture with return campers, counselors who had once been campers, and limited contact with parents that helped the place feel sealed off from the outside world. The story also gets into the disordered eating and dieting behaviors that the camp normalized, along with the low self-worth and low self-esteem those rules reinforced instead of challenging. The conversation turns to abuse as well. Snelling describes sexual assaults and other harms that emerged inside the camp, showing how a system built around restriction and body hierarchy could also make deeper violations possible. Harrison keeps coming back to the logic underneath it all. The episode repeatedly invokes the camp's cult-like quality, connecting starvation, isolation, and pressure to conform. Snelling also talks about being an outsider there. Because she was only at Camp Shane for one summer, she had a different perspective from the lifers who moved from camper to counselor over many years. The podcast does not stop at the scandals. It asks whether any camp for larger-bodied kids can ever be weight-inclusive or ethical, and it leaves that question open. Harrison also asks how Snelling made the podcast, adding another layer to the conversation as Snelling reflects on telling a story this dense without losing sight of the people inside it.

As heard by us

A camp story that shows how weight stigma turns care into control.

Food Psych looks at Camp Shane as a system built on shame and scarcity. Christy Harrison and Kelsey Snelling keep the focus on the camp's rules: deprivation, starvation, limited contact with parents, a lifer culture, and the way smaller bodies earned more praise and more value.

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Why you'd press play

If you want weight-loss culture unpacked through a serious Camp Shane conversation, start here.

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