After a short meeting with the fictional character of Deborah Blumenthal's Fat Camp, namely Cam Phillips, I found some answers to the questions that I raised after reading about her life. She's from Manhattan, her mother is a famous writer and her father is a lawyer (tough family). She was sent to Camp Calliope, which is a fat camp. Her mother wanted Cam to stop her "self-destructive" cycle, her father wanted to keep the family peace, and Cam... oh, well, Cam didn't seem to have any choice. Let's find out what she has to say about that now.
Q: You seemed to like writing quizzes for the camp's magazine. Share with us your answers to these questions:
1) Is the fat that embarrassing?
2) Was going to this camp so horrible an idea?
3) Was the fat the real issue there (in the camp)?
Cam: 1) Firstly, you are happy. You don't care about your genes because when you’re five, six, or seven you don’t think about how you look or compare yourself to other kids. Mirrors are things that decorate the walls. You don’t spend time studying yourself. You don’t go to department stores and try on whisper-light thongs and then look in the three-way mirrors to see how fat your ass looks from the back and find out that it looks like the back of a bus.... But then you’re thirteen, fourteen, or fifteen and everything changes. Your friends buy bikinis, but you can’t— they don’t fit—and if they do, you hate the repulsive way you look anyway. Other girls hook up with guys or at least get asked to the movies or to hang out, but you don’t. You’re “fat” and unpopular and have thunder thighs. When you hear guys whistle, you never turn around—it’s not for you; in fact, you pray that they don’t yell out something that would make you die of embarrassment.
So how do I deal with it? Sometimes I just sleep to feel better, or hide in the bathroom and cry with the water running so that nobody hears. Other times I eat because it tastes good and makes me feel better and calmer, and screw it, why not just finish the quart of vanilla mint chip that goes down so easy, because it’s all pretty hopeless anyway—I am the way I am—and at least pleasure comes in a carton. So yes, it is nasty and embarrassing...
2) Not the camp, the idea of this camp and its apparently well intented message: improving our health, raise our self-confidence and self-image and teach us healthy life skills.
But check this out: a fat camp is supposed to be a place where you not only lose weight but also are with other people who are like you so that you feel comfortable. I don’t buy it. There are a few kids here who are seriously overweight—like over 300 pounds—and whether we admit it or not, none of us wants to look like them and we don’t go out of our way to be their friends. It doesn’t matter who they are inside, we fixate on their size, and first impressions die hard. Even among ourselves, I wouldn’t use the word “comfortable.” We know what we look like and what we weigh, but we’re not okay with it, and being here doesn’t make us comfortable, especially when it’s time to be weighed in. 
So tell me what other group that’s discriminated against is asked to change like this? For instance, could we ask African Americans to change the way they dress, act, and even speak? It's not fair! That's the point.
We punish ourselves for being fat. Our families punish us for being fat. Friends punish us for being fat. Strangers punish us for being fat, either by dissing us with clichéd remarks (i.e., “fat pig”) or simply pretending that we don’t exist. This is too much! Going to this camp is nothing but make them believe that they are right and we are pigs and we need to work hard to go straight back to a "normal" sized human being.
3) After being in that camp for some time, the things changed. At first, you feel totally invisible, a complete nerd, an alien from another planet who doesn’t fit in anywhere and you want to end this as soon as possible. Then you ask yourself is it my weight that’s making me feel like a total misfit? No, it can't be. Everybody here has the same issue. Then why don’t I fit in? Is it just me?. Of course it is me. Exactly where should I put the blame for my total misery? Nobody, there's just me. The internalized eye of everyone turned against me. But you feel that way until you find someone who sees you beyond this ugly suit called "appearance." Then you find out that others suffer a lot more than you do. Eating disorders, bulimia, taking pills are not so comfortable. Then you see your friends sent away to a hospital and taken care of. You stop whining about your stupid parent problems and thank God it's just the fat you cry about and not something worse.
Honestly, you feel bad that you don't fall into the "sexy and outgoing" category after you have a quizz. But I would rather be natural than a walking identity crisis who can't seem to make up her mind who she is. I'm not talking about Evie, who showed me that being skinny means a bigger stress. So I decided to eat less, stay in shape, run two or three times a week. I don't feel sad, resigned and hopeless anymore.
Once I was happy because the waiter was a hottie and the bacon avocado Swiss cheeseburger, medium-rare, sweet potato fries, salad with blue cheese dressing, and a cherry Coke were meant to be brought to me by him. Now, thanks to my bunk mates, I learned how to change my hair and wear make-up. And most of all, I spent two months at camp with people who taught me that there are lots of reasons why people gain weight, lots of reasons why they lose it, and lots of reasons why they can or can’t keep it off.
