Wednesday, September 18, 2024
In 2017, Robbie Tripp posted an over-the-top message on Instagram about how much he loves his “curvy wife,” Sarah. “There is nothing sexier than this woman right here. Thick thighs, big booty, cute little side roll, et cetera,” he wrote.
Podcaster Jamie Loftus tells the story of the post and the wave of Internet discourse that followed.
Loftus explains that Robbie is an example of an Internet character called “the wife guy”—someone who doesn’t just proclaim his love for his wife online, but someone for whom “telling people how much he loves his wife appeared to be part of his job.”
The Tripps are both Internet influencers and content creators, and Robbie, at least, has built a little media business on the “curvy wife” meme.
My thoughts about this are complicated. It’s very hard for me to avoid judging the Tripps harshly — which is wrong of me. Loftus sums it up: “Pathologizing someone else’s marriage is 10 miles of none of your fucking business.”
Loftus does wonderful podcasts on odd corners of culture. This episode is part of a series about people who become Internet-famous — the “main character” of social media — for a short time, and lived with the repercussions for years, for better or worse. Loftus tells their human stories. The series is called “Sixteenth Minute of Fame.”
Another Loftus podcast, “The Lolita Podcast,” looks at the Nabokov novel, which she describes as basically a horror novel about a pedophile who destroys a young girl’s life. But the novel lives on as creepy erotica, with the girl portrayed as predator rather than victim, turning us all into Humbert Humbert.
Another great podcast by Loftus: “My Year in Mensa.”