A woman who once told a UK tabloid that she wanted to be the “fattest woman in the world” after tipping the scales at 600 lbs has changed her tune in recent months, abandoning her lucrative service where she allowed subscribers to watch her eat on a webcam and losing 80 pounds. She’s also experienced a series of pretty profound epiphanies.
Donna Simspon used to charge subscribers $19 per month to watch her eat on a webcam. She was part of a subculture known as “feeders;” heavy women who would eat to the point of medically dangerous obesity and the men who were aroused by watching them eat. After Simpson told a news service she was proud of her size and wanted to be bigger in spite of the health risks, she received death threats from people who accused her of being an unfit mother to her 4 year old child. At the time, she’d been engaged for 5 years to a businessman who enjoyed feeding her, but she’s since broken that relationship off, moved to a different state, and started trying to lose weight.
She spoke to a newspaper in New Jersey, where she once lived and operated her webcam business, and it seems that while she’s worked to lose weight, she’s done an awful lot of thinking. She says,
The bottom line is that it was a fantasy created for men. Men wanted me to be their fantasy, regardless of my quality of life…
Of her ex-fiance, she recalls,
(He) bathed me and took care of me. He knew that all I could do was sit at home. Some men, their fantasy is to have you bed-bound. They don’t just want a big girl. They want to have you locked at their house. It’s about control.
Of her future health goals, she says,
I like being heavy, but it’s not a normal state for me to be as big as I am now. My weight loss is not about trying to fit into a size 4. It’s about trying to get into the bathtub so I can bathe myself. I want to have more energy and be able to go to the park and push my daughter on the swing.
Best of luck to her in continuing to remove herself from a lifestyle that clearly wasn’t making her happy.
Once 600 pounds, mom from Old Bridge puts down the fork and turns off the webcam [The Star-Ledger]