Original subtitles

As a photojournalist,

I love a good story.

I'm behind a lens.

I get to explore something within myself.

I work regularly for "The Washington Post,"

"The Wall Street Journal," "The New York Times,"

but the stories are not about women who look like me.

As a fat woman, there is a way that the world treats you.

This is something that I have been told was shameful

since I was eight years old.

One day, early 2020, I was scrolling on TikTok.

I saw a video of this guy.

He holds up a pair of bathing suit bottoms,

and he says, "If you can fit in these,

I want you in my pool."

Fascinated. It was called Pearadise.

It's like, back-roll Disney World,

This body-positive, safe space where you can be yourself,

you can be comfortable.

And I had never seen anything like that.

Hey, you. Party at Pearadise.

It's run by a man named Stefan Wilhelmy.

He's living in this mansion in Vegas.

And he really loves plus-size women.

Everybody deserves to be treated with respect.

That is what Pearadise is about.

I wanted to go there. I wanted to document it.

And I also wanted to experience it, too.

You never know what's going on

inside somebody's house 'til you're in there.

When it was good, it was [bleep] great.

Woo!

But you're giving up a lot to engage in the sisterhood.

Pearadise was being advertised as a safe space,

but it never was.

I've seen it firsthand.

That guy loves to watch big girls eat.

Even if you're 500 pounds,

you're still not big enough for him.

He's easing you into his fetish.

Stick it in your mouth.

It's dangerous.

You need to be careful. Like, it can kill you.

He's selling a fantasy.

"You'll be loved here.

You'll be worshiped like a goddess."

But they don't tell you the price that you pay.

As a photojournalist, I love intimacy,

I crave it in my photos.

The important thing to me to really capture was

moments that just defined what Pearadise was, like right here.

My name is Emily Kask.

I'm 31 years old, and I am a freelance photojournalist

who documented Pearadise.

When you're on TikTok, if you're a plus-size woman,

Stefan's videos will start popping up.

Over the course of 2020, I'd get the notification

on my phone that Pearadise is live.

It's like, "Oh, my soap is on," you know?

Well, hello. Hi, hi, hi.

I like pear-shaped girls, and I live in Paradise, Nevada.

So I came up with Pearadise.

All the videos are of these bigger women

just having fun together.

I had no fat friends growing up.

Like super heroine chic era

where everyone was thin as a rail.

And there was a long time that I felt really

ashamed of my body.

Over the past few years, the body positivity movement

really helped me start to feel comfortable in my skin again.

This is OK. This is OK.

This is OK.

I started following all these plus-size influencers,

and I got to see these women who were my size,

and they're doing all these incredible things.

Instagram, TikTok, social media in general.

We got to see people swapping tips and tricks about how

to feel more confident in your body.

Yeah!

It was a call to action saying, "Stop hiding,

wear what you wanna wear, life is too short."

Can you please show me how amazing you look today?

The body-positive movement changed a lot of people's lives.

- Tess Holliday... - Myself included.

...she's at the forefront of the body-positive movement,

has been credited with transforming

the modeling world.

It was millions and millions of people on social media

sharing our experiences across the world to shed light

on some of the stigmas that plus-size folks face.

Hello, my little dreamers.

There's a magnet effect for these women

who's been told their body isn't desired or wanted.

Finding a space of community is really self-esteem building.

I messaged Stefan. I said, "This is who I am.

"I wanna meet y'all.

I wanna photograph." He responded back instantly.

And by the end of the week, I was on my way to Vegas.

I roughly planned on being there for about a month.

The end goal always seemed

like, "how do I get this story in 'The New York Times'?"

But that was the goal that I would tell people.

The real goal is just to see inside this house

where I was the beauty standard.

I'm 10 minutes away from the house right now.

I'm not really worried that the girls are gonna like me.

I think we're gonna get along.

I'm a little nervous about this, like, dude, though.

When I walked into the house for the first time,

He introduced me,

and I was just another fat girl in that moment.

And that in itself was a little shocking,

but it was, like, liberating.

I knew that I looked like them, but these women were

just really open and really did accept me.

The person who stood out to me the most was Kass.

What is going on?

There was something really magnetic about her.

Can you give us a house tour? I can give you a Kass tour.

Kass really loved Stefan.

Him and Kass were in a committed relationship,

and they got along really well.

Kass helped build the following of Pearadise on social media.

Give yourself a compliment,

and eventually you start believing it.

People really liked what she was putting out

on the internet.

Women were starting to see the house and visit.

I don't know who needs to hear this message today,

but here you go.

Sis,

quit waiting to live your life until you're skinny.

Live your life today.

I looked at Kass and saw someone who I wanted

to learn from.

By the way, the brunette loves the blonde.

- Oh, my God. - Just gonna put that out there.

Oh, my God.

- Just gonna... - I love you too.

Late one night, we were up, and she was like,

"Nobody tells you that you're pretty, huh?"

And I was like, "They'll tell me I have,

like, a pretty face."

She's like, "No, you're beautiful."

And I just...

Nobody had ever said that to me in such earnestness before.

As a woman, you can do more things in the world

if you know that somebody feels that way about you, you know?

I mean, at the end of the day, everybody just wants to feel

heard and loved and seen.

And that's a lot of what happens in Pearadise.

We're our own utopia.

It's crazy to say it like that, but that's what it is.

You don't have to hide who you are.

We are the body positivity community.

I am an SSBBW, which means Super Size Big Beautiful Woman.

I was bullied 24/7 for being a fat girl.

I didn't finish school because of it.

That's why a place like Pearadise feels

like a paradise.

Plus-size people should have a place where they can come

and not worry about what they're wearing.

Stefan, that man is everything.

He gave me somewhere to call home, and I love it.

I'm never leaving.

He can't get rid of me.

He genuinely loves women.

Our bodies are celebrated

in a way that a lot of people don't understand.

Stefan is Pearadise.

He is the reason that we all have it.

Come meet Stefan. Come meet me.

Come meet the girls. Come to Pearadise.

♪ Happy birthday to you Happy birthday to you ♪

During the course of my stay there,

it became very clear to me who the main players were.

Stefan would refer to the people who were there

frequently as the inner circle.

There were certain roles that people took on,

and Heather was like the Kris Jenner of the house.

Hey.

My name is Heather Edmonds,

and I was at Pearadise for three years.

I was definitely part of the inner circle.

When you live in the house,

you are expected to take on responsibilities.

I haven't eaten properly in days.

He will expect you to clean.

He will expect you to cook.

He will expect you to order groceries.

He'll have you fold boxes and label boxes

to help him with his business.

There was a herd mentality that we all had.

You do your part.

You do what's needed as a collective.

- You're cooking. - I'm crooked.

You're cooking.

There we go. Hi, Sue.

I'm making bacon.

He would put us on camera doing videos

for the Pearadise TikTok.

Those drew people in.

And it absolutely exploded.

We're getting kind of close.

Stefan and the other women have gained mass following.

Keep going, keep it going, keep it going.

Because of that house.

Here's the link. Come to our Discord.

The link is in the bio.

Stefan is posting the women from pretty much the minute

he wakes up to the minute that he goes to bed.

You have people that started questioning what he's doing

for his own personal satisfaction.

This man has created a farm of fat ladies.

The name Pearadise is a red flag.

Pearadise was constantly described as a cult.

It appears that we may have a BBW cult on our hands.

Like, all these enormous women hanging out with this one,

like, sort of skinny, rich dude in a compound.

That's a [bleep] cult, mate.

We call it the Pearadise effect.

That people don't wanna leave.

- Are you ready? - Yep.

No, absolutely not.

Like, I couldn't be a cult leader if I wanted to.

Manipulating people is not my thing.

Welcome to Pearadise!

Hey, my name is Stefan,

and I'm just a normal guy.

You know, that's my tagline on Instagram.

I created Pearadise.

My ideal type has always been very tall and very big.

She would be six foot or taller,

and she would definitely be 500 plus.

What'd she say?

Hey, we're putting food in that.

Part of my mission with Pearadise is

to teach people it is completely normal

and completely acceptable

to have an attraction to plus-size women.

You know the song, "I like big butts and I cannot lie."

It literally just is there.

Or Motto Motto, ♪ I like 'em round, I like 'em chunky ♪

You guys ready for a swimsuit check?

Hell yeah!

Yes, we got one, the next one right here.

Like, basically go all in a row.

Like ducks in a row.

Everybody, everybody, everybody, yes.

Pearadise is a place of acceptance and love

for plus-size people to visit.

Three, two, one, walk.

Yes, keep going, keep going.

We have six bedrooms.

I always tell people, like, you know, "Send me a DM.

Get in contact with me, tell me about yourself,"

because it's not an open invite.

- Your turn, Stefan. - All right, let's see if we get

another 16 million views, right?

plus-size people in a swimsuit can let loose

without ever feeling judged.

Can't do that at a public beach, sadly.

The privacy that we have makes Pearadise paradise,

that you can...

be yourself

and not feel watched.

People love to compare me to, like, Hugh Hefner

of plus-size women.

I kind of, like, don't really wanna be.

I want to be unique.

This is Stefan. This is Pearadise.

I'm originally from Berlin.

Growing up in Germany, my mom was a home Ec teacher,

so my parents are health nuts.

I was interested in plus-size women before,

and when I brought one home, I immediately got judged.

It was one of the reasons why I moved out when I did.

America just fit and worked, and it was just

the land of the free

where there's big, beautiful women everywhere.

2004, I came here with two suitcases

and started a new life.

All right, so, this right here

is the chip that I invented.

I invented a piece of electronics

for high-end convertibles that allows you to put the top

up and down while you're driving,

and I sell it directly and worldwide.

This right here

was my ticket to freedom.

I lived in that house all by myself.

It's like American dream.

In 2020, when COVID happened and everything got locked down,

I went on TikTok and just put myself out there.

I said, "Hey, guys, I'm Stefan, and I like plus-size women."

Three days later, I had 1,000 followers.

10 days later, I had 5,000 followers.

Within a month or so, I started inviting people over.

Swimsuit change!

And we made so many videos.

I never really had financial interest in it.

Like, I don't benefit from it other than making people happy.

Stefan finds a lot of purpose in creating this space.

And he definitely had the most plus-size-friendly house

that I've ever seen.

He had these lawn chairs that could hold

several hundred pounds.

There was ramps coming into the pool.

The beds were like extra sturdy.

So he really did want everyone to feel welcome.

This is our Pearadise living room.

Cooking central,

because there's always good food in this house.

Everybody here loves to cook.

There are girls living in his house,

and there were people who come visit.

They'll fly in, and they'll stay

for a couple days, a week, and then they'll go home.

A lot of locals would come by.

They will spend nights sometimes in one of the empty bedrooms.

Ivy lived locally, and she was there probably every day.

Oh, damn! Now there's an Ivy in my spot.

- That sucks. - That was pretty comfortable.

My name is Ivy,

and I was there basically every day for several months.

The first time I saw Pearadise, I was like, "Damn,

that looks like fun."

- There's a request for your makeup. - Hi.

I went overboard, but it's cool.

The community, it was almost magical.

- You're my new best friend. - Honestly, I'm down.

Here are all these other women

who not only like me for who I am,

but see me for who I am, not what I look like.

Pearadise gave me the sisterhood that I needed.

It was pretty obvious that he was very interested in me.

I do like attention, and I was eaten up.

Stefan is physically attracted to a plus-size body.

Well, right here.

I wanna feel loved. I wanna feel desired.

And that's not something that happens very often

to a fat girl.

You might be led to believe that this is your only chance.

If you don't think that you deserve better,

you're gonna settle for something less.

The scale, arch enemy of most people,

especially plus-size,

is a common household item here that nobody is afraid of.

And people regularly just step on it just for fun.

And they make their own decisions

if they're happy with the number or not.

The first night that I went to the house,

he asked me to stand on the scale in front of him.

He was very slick about the way that he asked me.

He said normally he can like pinpoint

within five to 10 pounds of how much

somebody weighs just by looking at them.

With Stefan, it felt incredibly comfortable

when I probably wouldn't have even stood on a scale

in front of my ex boyfriend who I had been with for 10 years.

The scale will go to about 700 pounds.

It was just so commonplace.

They would weigh themselves, and he would be like,

"Oh, you gained five pounds!" And there was a bit of joy.

Stefan would, like, run in with the camera and be like,

"Well, how much do you weigh?"

Like, out of nowhere, Stefan just appeared.

Ooh! 489.

I win. I win.

He says, "This is just a body positive space

and I just love fat women and it's totally innocent"

when it's totally not.

At Pearadise,

I remember feeling so viscerally uncomfortable

with having a camera right in my [bleep] face

as I'm just trying to eat.

Mm. Look at all this deliciousness.

That's part of his fetish,

knowing what I know now, he's what's called a feeder.

He gets off sexually

on watching people eat and gain weight.

We are getting ready to approach Las Vegas Boulevard.

One of his favorite places to take everybody at night.

If you come to Pearadise, it's always the same routine.

He's gonna drive them down the street at some point,

probably take them to Heart Attack Grill.

Are you ready to break the Pearadise house record?

- For what? - For burgers.

I'm Nurse Ricky, I'll be taking you home.

We have nothing green.

No lettuce, no pickles, no relish.

It's healthy, and we don't like it.

I mean, it doesn't get any more American

and any more Vegas than this.

Going to the Heart Attack Grill is like, it's a show.

You step on that scale in front of everybody.

If you're over 350, they ring a cowbell,

and you get free food.

Looks like everybody is eating for free!

- Besides you. - I know.

I'm used to that, though.

People love to see people eat.

It's a phenomenon.

We can see the viewer numbers spike up.

It's double the viewers.

Stick it in your mouth.

The Heart Attack Grill, its feederism content.

Stick it all in there, Sarah.

Oh, my God! Why do you put it on me,

without telling me?

We're all Heart Attack Grill!

There are so many TikToks of them going and weighing

themselves outside of the restaurant.

Come on, girl.

Get on the scale.

- 2,642. - Oh, my God.

If you're someone who's turned on by feederism,

You're tiny, you're tiny.

you have an arousal that's tied to watching other people

consume food

and or have their body change as a result.

And that's where you might see the social media account

or a TikTok dedicated to the eroticization of food.

For someone who has a really traumatized relationship

to their body or food, there's a powerful draw

to finding someone who actually says to you,

"I'm turned on and enjoying watching you eat."

At Pearadise, he's easing you into his fetish.

When I was at the house, he introduced me to Feabie

pretty quickly on

and was like, "You could have people buy you food."

And I was like, "OK.

I don't know how I feel about it."

Feabie is a fetish website for feeders and feedees,

so people who like to watch people eat

and watch people gain weight,

and people who they themselves like to eat and gain weight.

Women would be on these fetish websites, dating websites.

They would post videos of themselves eating.

I get really self-conscious about eating in front of people

personally, so I'm not into that.

It felt like a lot of the people who were into it, like Stefan,

they don't really see fat women as people.

They see them as sexual objects.

Feederism can be deadly.

You need to be careful.

Like, it can kill you.

People come and they use the word feeder as a negative.

Yes, there's health concerns. Absolutely.

But I always found it interesting.

Keep coming that thing. You've got this.

Because one thing I cannot lie about is, like,

I like big girls, so why wouldn't I like

a big girl to voluntarily want to gain some weight?

Like, I would never say no to that.

Yeah, like, curiosity is what kills the cat.

But, like, you know, I...yeah.

I try everything.

Technically, between two consenting adults,

they can do anything.

Hi! It's my place.

The real Pearadise is what's happening live at the house

real time, when the live streams are off.

Thank you guys for watching. I'm gonna have to--

I'm gonna have to get off of live because, um...

you know how it is.

The live stream turns off once it's hot-tub time.

It takes a lot to surprise me.

One night, I remember standing in that pool room...

and seeing everyone take their clothes off.

And that little voice came in the back of my head

and I said,

"Well, shit, they get naked, I get naked too."

A lot of the photos that I took,

I'm clearly inside the pool.

That's my bathing suit top right there.

I was the second oldest woman in the house.

These women are young.

If you are naive, maybe you lived in a small town

your whole life, you don't understand

what's being presented on social media

is not the whole story.

For the young girls who are coming in that don't really

have a lot of experience,

you learn quite a bit when you come to Pearadise.

I was 19 or 20,

and I joined the Pearadise Discord.

My name is Savy,

and I'm a survivor of the Pearadise House.

On the Discord, I flirted with Stefan.

He told me that I'm his type.

Nobody's ever said this to me before.

I decided to plan this trip to go to Vegas.

Right before I went, I told him,

"Hey, I don't want there to be any expectations.

"I'm not really the type of person to, like,

give my body up to anybody."

That's the rough part of being a big girl

is people think you're desperate.

The first night, we get into the pool,

and I take my swimsuit off under the water.

And next thing I know,

he's taking a picture of everybody.

All in the name of body positivity, right?

And then I was lying on the couch

in the living room.

Unprovoked, he just comes up and kind of grabs my butt.

But I remember laying there, just being like,

"Oh, this doesn't-- this doesn't keep going."

The whole time, Stefan was pushing my boundaries,

chipping away at them.

Any opportunity he could, he was touching somebody.

I was laying down on the bed in my room,

and he just comes in and sits on the bed next to me,

doesn't really say anything.

Stefan lifts up my shirt

and just, like, grabbed my stomach.

Kind of just like nervously laughed.

I was afraid that it would lead to something else.

What if he gets up and closes the door?

Now I don't feel safe, like, at all.

After I told him he was making me uncomfortable,

he kind of stopped.

But it all seemed like he was mad at me after that,

like he didn't want me there anymore.

Stefan is many things.

He is a very brilliant mind.

He's also a piece of shit.

If you're in his house,

you kind of have to let him grab you.

For me specifically, do not touch my belly.

Do not [bleep] touch my belly.

The little meat right here. Little belly meat.

With social media,

a lot of people are eroticized.

There are sometimes parts of our bodies that carry

a lot of shame.

And to have that area seen or touched

can really put us in a trauma response.

It's not an innocent touch.

It's the same as somebody grabbing your boobs.

He is sexually gratified from it, and that's a problem.

Existing as a bigger person,

people react to you in one of three ways.

They will shame you,

they will sexualize you

or they will ignore your existence entirely.

And there is very rarely an in-between.

I was 25, 26,

and I believe at the time, Stefan was like 43, 44.

It was the very first night I was there.

One of the other girls pointed at me and said,

"She should be worried because she's his type."

Everybody took their clothes off and got in the pool.

There was definitely a sense of like,

"If you don't want to be here, you can go home."

But not removing his hands from me at all.

And it felt very like,

"I'm gonna continue to do what I want to you anyway."

Having sex with Stefan wasn't required,

but it felt like an unspoken rule.

When I was there, he had romantic or physical

encounters with many of the women in the house.

As far as I know, I was the only woman in the house

at that time who was not having a relationship with Stefan.

We all wanna fit in.

And so, if everyone around you is telling you

to drink that Kool Aid,

it's gonna be something that's really hard to push back on.

Stefan wants a harem of fat women

that he can pick and choose from on a day-to-day basis.

He felt very entitled to people that would

stay in his house.

He sees it as loyalty.

My name is Pao,

and I am Kass' best friend.

Stefan would always talk about this kind of

sister-wife situation.

Kass, she was embracing it, but it definitely was not

the dynamic that she wanted.

Kass loves Stefan so much.

She would have done anything for him, for sure.

He knew that.

And seeing the way that Stefan treats people,

it was very clear to me the level of manipulation

that happens is out of this world.

There's a lot of conditioning, and there's so much going on.

You have that feeling of, like,

"Right now, I can't say no."

At Pearadise, he basically had all the women in the house

wrapped around his finger.

Despite him doing what he did,

I was scared of hurting his feelings.

I was scared of making everybody else

feel uncomfortable because I was upset.

After I left the house,

I had to decompress.

I was just thinking, like, "I'm not the only person

he's done this to."

And then I saw a video saying that Pearadise isn't safe.

I'm gonna just rip this bandaid off.

Pearadise is not a safe and positive place.

That's literally like her punchline.

All the videos I ever see seem to be fetishizing bigger girls.

The friends said,

"I think you should tell that girl your story."

You do not owe any man

who makes you uncomfortable anything.

And I am done being nice.

Done. Be afraid.

I've never hated anyone in my life.

But I physically cannot stomach this man.

My name is Kimmi Hauder. I'm 38.

I used to go by Piggy Stardust when I was a content creator.

I had about 30,000 followers.

So the first time I saw Pearadise was on TikTok.

Stefan was constantly getting a lot of hate,

just because he supported plus-size people.

And I felt really bad for him. And so I jumped in.

I even made a video in support of Pearadise.

It's just like a, "Hey, we're all in this together"

type situation.

If you're watching this and you're not Stefan,

please go follow him. He's [bleep] awesome.

My heart breaks for him right now 'cause he just--

And I joined the Discord to make friends

with other plus-size girls.

Go follow him, go tappity-tap that love on his page.

I wanted to be included in the community.

The issue for me really became the fact that he was

begging women to come to his private house.

There's no safety or guide rails for that situation.

I realized, "Hey, guess what? I was wrong."

I'm gonna just rip this bandaid off.

BBW Pearadise is not a safe and positive place.

This was just going off my gut and wanting to fix

what I thought that I had done wrong.

And then women were coming out in my comments about how

they felt validated that someone with a plus-size

community was finally speaking out about this guy.

There's so much I can't say, but he's not a good guy.

What really shocked me was instantly having the validation

that my gut instinct was right.

Savy told me that they were touched without consent.

I think it took a lot of courage.

And so my first real question was,

"What do you want me to do?"

I'm so thankful for these strong women.

They need to be heard.

I was just gonna be quiet

until I talked to Kimmi.

And Kimmi's like, "I'll be in your corner

no matter what happens."

I said, "Full speed ahead.

Talk."

Stefan, you barked up the wrong [bleep] tree.

You have sexually assaulted people.

I am done being nice.

Done. Be afraid.

I remember being in the office

with Stefan and Kass and Heather

when he watched Piggy's video for the first time.

My journalist instincts just kicked in immediately,

and then I was like, "I have to document this."

It can.

What do I [bleep] do right now?

What the [bleep] do I do?

The vibe in the house absolutely shifted,

and it went into a dark spot

that I had not witnessed my entire time there.

There became a witch hunt to figure out who this woman is.

You need to go after this girl.

The main objective was to shut it down.

Hello, everybody.

There are a few individuals that are publishing false

and defamatory information about me,

and are alleging very egregious false allegations about me.

It was like a whole world collapsing to me.

Things that were said about me that I absolutely despise.

I was literally just here sitting like,

"What the [bleep] is happening?

This can't be real."

I want to state with 100% clarity

that the accusation of sexual assault is

absolutely false.

And that was only the beginning.

There was no consent. We were sexually assaulted.

Stefan is lying.

No one deserves to feel that way.

No one deserves to be another victim to him.

I am a victim.

I'm telling my story now.

Eventually you will get caught.

This man is going to go down

and I will be the last person

to put the dirt on his grave.