Original subtitles

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.

We don't have tomorrow promised.

Life is short. Do it.

Kass wanted other women

to feel beautiful about themselves.

I lost so much of my life

to being so obsessed about being fat

until I met Kass.

One day, I opened my phone, and I just was, like,

watching her Instagram story.

I started seeing all these RIP posts.

We're just gonna have a moment of silence for Kass.

I called Stefan,

and I said, "What the [bleep] happened to Kass?"

And I found out that she died in my city.

Kass is dead because

of the harm that was put on her body

through death feederism.

Having this rapid weight gain, she had pretty bad sleep apnea.

People told me she fell out of bed and stopped breathing.

Kass found freedom in feederism.

It was financial freedom.

It was freedom from the chains of fatphobia.

That was false freedom.

She was 29 years old.

She had so many things

that she could have done, and...

This is very difficult.

Stefan doesn't take accountability for what he does

and how he affects other people.

It definitely is a matter of time before it happens again.

Before she passed, I feel like Pearadise had already

killed a part of her.

She lost a lot of herself in that house.

Makes me really sad for her.

Stefan was trying to replace her.

She just gave up on herself.

That's not the Kass I knew.

She didn't deserve how he treated her.

She felt powerless.

I told him this was gonna happen.

Had it not been for Stefan,

had it not been for Pearadise,

Kass would be alive today.

Being accused of having something to do with her

not being around anymore is

the ultimate dagger in the heart.

She had been a big part of my life.

Wow!

The whole Pearadise circle,

everybody loved her.

We miss her.

Oh, I'm not a feeder.

Kass is a feeder.

If I was in charge of feeding anybody here,

they would all stomp.

I would absolutely say feederism can be dangerous.

The two years that she was away from Pearadise,

she put on 100 pounds, which was like a lot.

While she was at the house, while she was with me,

she was never into feederism.

If somebody is

going out

insinuating that I had anything to do with Kass's weight gain,

it is purely to make me look bad because of what happened.

She was engaged in feederism at the house.

Stefan knew what Kass was up to.

500.4 pounds.

When you are engaged in feederism,

you're just trying to put on weight

and put on this show of how much bigger can I get.

- Time for another... - Crumble review.

You might not recognize it,

but that's what a lot of the Pearadise content is.

Ready? Go.

Blueberry cheesecake cookie.

It's feederism content.

Oh, my God!

He knows, like, what he's doing,

but I don't think he sees

the nuances behind what's happening.

It is more than the feederism, too.

All of that back and forth and Kass in the middle of it.

Don't. Don't get emotional now.

No, no, no.

She felt powerless.

The world that Kass was living in killed Kass.

Kass doesn't care about women.

She cares about herself, her money, and her fame.

And the one thing that I hate more than a man

who wants to prey on big women is a big woman

who is helping that man prey on women.

No, I never met Kass.

I never wanna force a woman to relive her trauma.

In my opinion, Kass is--

And if there's any collateral damage,

that does still fall on me.

There's several truths to the story.

All I can do is be honest about what I saw,

experienced, and felt.

I started to see my own humanity more there.

I didn't come home and immediately

pour over every photo.

I did it in doses.

It became very clear to me that I came across something

that was so much more than a personal project.

So I sent the story to an editor

at one of the papers that I work for.

They weren't interested in running it.

And for some reason, I just heard the first no

at this and just stopped digging.

I don't know, nothing ever felt right.

This project felt unfinished for me.

Yeah.

I never really closed the door on it.

If I'm scrolling on TikTok, and they're live,

I'll click in and I'll watch.

To start the storytime of--

It's still a lot of the same anger about betrayal,

that was over four years ago now.

At the end of the day, they all used to be friends.

And it's like, how did we get here?

Where does that switch flip?

For a very long time, I believed the girls were

blowing it out of proportion

with sexual assault allegations.

It's really easy to minimize someone else's experience

until you go through something yourself.

One night, I was at Stefan's, and one of his friends,

she had decided to reach out to a bunch of men on Tinder

and tell them that there was a bunch of plus size women

that were all looking to hook up.

Her response was basically,

"Well, I'm gonna pick the one that I want,

and then you guys can figure out what to do with the rest."

And all of them showed up at the house.

One guy was in the pool,

and he kept reaching over and, like, trying to grab at me.

And I made it very clear that I wasn't OK with it.

Later that night, I was in the hot tub,

and one of the girls pulled me into her lap.

I was just kind of in the moment.

I wasn't paying full attention.

And it took me a minute for my brain to kind of process

what was going on.

And I realized that girl was gone,

yet I was still being groped by someone.

The same guy who had been trying to grope me before,

he was touching me.

I was being fingered.

I didn't say anything.

I literally just got out of the hot tub.

And the next morning, I got up and I told Stefan,

and Stefan's response was, "Oh, wow, I'm sorry."

He didn't know the guys that were there.

That would be like going to the strip and just grabbing

four random guys and bringing them back to the house.

So to this day, I don't know this person's name.

I couldn't press charges if I wanted to.

It changed my perspective, not just

on...

sexual assault.

It was more than just what happened with Ally and Savy.

With Stefan, there is no remorse.

There is no, "Oh, damn. This needs to change."

And that was when I realized that

I was done.

That house is not safe.

I wanted to go to the girls and say, "You know what?

"I am so sorry

that I played a part."

I messaged Kimmi.

And the first words out of my mouth were,

"What do you wanna know? I'm an open book."

Heather was the big dog.

It's gonna be on with Heather check.

This is the woman who was his right-hand man.

When the women are fighting for him,

they're not our enemy.

Just remember, you tried to sweep things under the rug.

The problem is, I remember where you keep all your dirt.

One of the things Heather had

brought to my attention was

he was talking to minors.

In most instances, he would tell them

they had to wait until they were 18 to join the Discord.

But Stefan definitely encourages them

to send pictures, to continue to communicate with him,

to know that he's a safe space.

And in reality, what he's waiting for is them to turn 18.

He's gonna create enough of a connection

that they will come.

He will get to have sex with them

and rinse and repeat for however long it lasts.

You're a terrible person.

And a horrible friend.

When I left the house, he called me a traitor.

The solution to people leaving is to just delete them.

If you were to look through this, I don't exist.

I'm just some random person that's talking crap about...

Pearadise.

We were all put in the same position.

His sweet spot is 22, I've learned.

He was in his mid-40s at the time when I met him.

I was 21, 22.

24-year age gap.

When we're that age,

we think we know what we're doing.

His relationship with the boys

depended on how well I treated him.

It eventually got to the point where I decided

there's nothing here for me.

I just packed up my stuff

and I didn't turn back.

That's when a lot of people were coming to me with stories.

And I found out what was going on behind my back.

After I found out I was pregnant,

apparently he wanted to...

have women in the house go to the doctors

and say that they were pregnant

to get abortion pills.

The plan was to...

crush them up and put them in a drink.

The story that I heard

from someone within the house was,

Stefan was likely trying to get somebody to slip her

Plan B in her drink

so that she would have a spontaneous miscarriage

and lose the twins.

I was absolutely astounded.

She decided to go through with the pregnancy,

so I made a joke.

I said, like, "Oh, this bitch,

"like, she did this and this and this.

She should not keep those kids."

You know? You can say things

as a joke in private,

and, of course, somebody decided to take a joke

and say, like, "Oh, he was planning to do it."

No, I never did.

Why is all the attention on me right now?

Currently, my relationship with the boys is non-existent,

but that's because I need to protect my own mental health.

I have to live with the fact that there's two kids

that were conceived against my consent.

There's nothing you can do as a man.

I have to live with it.

I'm telling my story now, because

I have two little boys that depend on me.

My biggest fear is that they'll hate me.

One day they'll ask me,

"Mom, why weren't you better to him?

'Cause then we could've had a dad."

I'll be honest with them, and I know so many other women

who were there at the time will also be there to help

share what kind of man he is.

He's done everything that he can possibly

do to villainize her.

And in reality, he's chaos personified.

I can't watch it anymore.

Now there's a whole new set of people.

I have no idea who they are.

All I know is there's always somebody that's young.

One of the girls is like 22.

It gives me the ick in the worst way.

Who wouldn't love Rissa, right? Rissa is the sweetest.

My name is Krissia Stroupe.

I'm 22, and I'm from North Carolina.

And I'm currently indefinitely visiting Pearadise.

You're cooking.

There we go.

I'm making bacon to go on the sandwiches.

I'm from a small town in North Carolina.

I'm used to a two-bedroom trailer with one bathroom.

Stefan's house is gigantic.

It was insane to me.

I love to cook. I love to cook.

I like to make southern dishes.

Finding Stefan and finding Pearadise has changed my life.

Yeah, these are my snacks. You wanna watch me eat 'em?

Nom, nom, nom--

I had just gotten out of my relationship with my ex.

He was an extreme feeder.

At one point, my ex had told me that I was

the weakest bitch he had ever met.

He had wanted me to eat a whole sheet cake,

a whole, like, you know, sheet cake for a birthday.

I would stuff myself, force-feed, run to the bathroom

and throw up.

I still have appetite issues to this day because of that.

Yeah.

Stefan has been my biggest supporter,

to be honest with you.

Stefan plays a role of cameraman for me.

I post, like, belly videos, just full body pics,

embracing me in my own skin.

I do do Only Fans, so I do a lot of fetishized content.

I'm not into hardcore feederism.

I eat my regular food and I put it up for sale,

and people just happen to buy it,

so that makes me some money.

Every chance that I get, I give that man the money he deserves.

He's never asked me for a dime. It's all out of my own heart.

Stefan confessed his feelings first.

I definitely feel special.

When we first met,

she had, like, this sweet innocence about her.

Right now, at this moment, like, I keep telling them,

like, I am currently single.

And I'm very close with everybody.

And Rissa is cool with it.

The girls just do their own thing.

And what I get back,

maybe like a home cooked meal, you know?

He gets the thrill out of watching me do what I do.

Like, he's very kinky, very,

um, hands on.

And I mean, I'm perfectly OK with it.

I'm going on 23K followers.

I get a million views on my account in a month.

Like, I built that myself,

and it's all from body positivity.

The body positive movement gave people permission to feel

sexy and to feel seen.

And then, of course, you're gonna get people

that are like, "You're disgusting,

and I can't bear to look at you."

It really has everything to do with mainstream media.

Sick of feeling fat, ugly, and tired?

You know what? You're not alone.

This is what body fat is on your daughter.

This is what 67 pounds of fat looks like.

Plus sized bodies have always been portrayed as something

that needs to be fixed on TV, and it has serious implications

for how society treats us.

Do it now, OK?

Everyone goes for 30 [bleep] seconds.

The fact that "The Biggest Loser" got to exist

is truly diabolical.

We're here today at Xiomara's High School.

Today is the first day that is gonna change her life.

When I look in the mirror, I see disappointment.

I feel disgusting.

Whether it's a choice to be fat or whether they are

desperately trying to lose weight,

that kind of narrative is extremely damaging.

This takes a while.

This is a long process.

Not something that happens in a day.

Even if you wanted to change,

it's dehumanizing,

it's exhausting.

Any of those shows,

looking back, you realize at the end of the day,

it does have real impact.

Xiomara, today we are gonna help you change your life.

Now, I'm at Pearadise in Vegas.

Xiomara is an influencer

and a friend of Pearadise.

I met her on TikTok.

We invited her to Pearadise.

She's funny.

She's original.

She makes TikToks that make you laugh.

What should we [bleep] dah? I don't [bleep] nah.

Ya didn't know yesterdah. And I don't know todah.

When she was at the house, she gained followers

from Pearadise, and I gained followers from her.

I'm about to comment, guys, so you guys can follow me.

When I wanted to do, like, a mukbang,

don't come for me.

Oops.

A mukbang is internet slang

for eating on camera.

Walmart hall at 5:22 AM.

I got jerky.

I mean, Xi is still mukbanging.

As a guy that absolutely loves fat girls,

I always want them happy and healthy, too.

There's a red line in the sand.

You don't wanna go across that line.

Kass was across that line.

I also saw Xi on the other side of the line.

I was there when Xiomara came to visit Pearadise.

We made TikToks. We had family dinners.

- Xi! - Hi!

And then she got sick.

We had noticed that, like, the vibe was off.

She was very quiet.

She didn't come out of her room for multiple days.

And, like, you know, eventually it got to a point

people in the house got concerned.

We had checked on her, and she was kind of incoherent.

She was crying, and she just was not in good shape at all.

Her skin didn't look good.

I ran out to get an oxygen meter,

and we clipped it on her finger, and the reading was

like 60, and it was immediately 911.

911 Emergency.

We didn't know if she was gonna make it.

She was freaking out. She didn't wanna go.

And I had to tell her,

"You're choosing to die."

Xiomara ended up in the hospital here in Las Vegas,

and we were all heartbroken.

She had contracted pneumonia and flu.

I'm mad at myself.

I didn't really see how bad she was until it was that bad.

She disappeared for a few months.

People within plus-size communities were like,

"Is she alive? Is she dead?

Is she alive? Is she dead?"

She's doing all right, and hopefully

um, she can get out sometime soon.

She went into a coma, and when she came out of it,

she started trying to document more of her health journey.

I feel like I never really got to live my life, and it's sad.

She's been in rehab to regain her mobility.

In the beginning, she was sharing her journey

day after day after day, once or twice a day.

Happy 400K!

Wow, tacos .

Let's go, Arizona.

No mames, güey.

But then she started going live on TikTok and mukbanging,

basically, from DoorDash in the hospital bed.

Look at the cheese at the bottom.

Oh, my gosh.

That's what I got.

This is really delicious.

Her pastime was like, going live

talking to people, eating food or whatever.

But, like, you know, as a friend, like...

I was worried about her.

Being bedridden for that amount of time would be killing me.

Guys, my Pearadise friends are about to be here.

I told her, like, "Xi,

when you're ready for visitors, let me know."

And we went to see her. We made a couple of TikToks.

One of them actually went viral right now, 1.4 million views.

Guys, look who just got here!

All right, we're gonna go eat food now.

We ate dinner with her. We hung out.

We spent the whole day with her.

Finally trying a Mici pizza.

This is a Supreme, a Caesar, Mozz.

They're good.

I've had people quite literally say, like, you know,

I'm the reason why Xi is in the hospital.

We brought her that because she asked for it.

She's an adult.

I think they knew we were fat

and wanted big-ass pieces.

I'm not her parent. I'm her friend.

There are people claiming that

I send her DoorDash every day and feed her.

Xi herself responded to that and said, like,

"What an utter amount of bullshit."

Her being at this house really

contributed to things getting so much worse.

So you tell me how I have to have it.

She's gonna get on for the TikTok.

Can you guys hear me?

Us humans, we can eroticize anything.

And that's both good and that's bad.

And when you pair arousal or pleasure with something,

that gets hardwired.

So for someone who has had pleasure associated

with being fed, it is nearly impossible to turn off.

Content creation is almost a trifecta of risk.

It's financially beneficial,

your ego gets validation...

Oh, my God.

...and if I have nothing else to feel good about,

that is where I find my worth.

You crack me up--

To finally feel wanted and desired

is gonna make it very hard to back away from something,

even if it's life-threatening and dangerous.

Say "Bye."

Bye.

- I love you. - Bye.

I did not think I'd be going

to the hospital again.

I turn 30 in a couple of hours, and I'm gonna be having

surgery for the first time in my life ever.

It's my gallbladder.

There's a lot of risks,

obviously, with a person my size,

and I am worried.

I just had my first, surgery, ever.

With everything that I go through, I just learned to

love myself a little more.

This battle between us and Pearadise,

it's not this black-and-white situation.

It's not cut-and-dry.

At the end of the day,

all I cared about was those girls.

We were in this fight for your life

for a whole year and a half.

We were being sued for a million dollars,

and he didn't really wanna win a million dollars.

He wanted to scare us.

Stefan benefits off of silencing people.

Early January, I was in the process of making

a TikTok video and this little, like,

notification pops up from our lawyer.

So I click on the email, and it's the judge saying that

they're throwing out the defamation lawsuit.

And I literally felt in my knees and just cry

because it felt like this weight had been taken off.

I remember just thinking, "Oh, my God, we made it."

Yesterday, we got word that the court is siding

in our favor and has dismissed the case.

Because we won the lawsuit,

I can keep speaking out about this.

But now I really do feel trapped because I don't think

this is something that's ever gonna be done

because he's never going to be done.

- Ow! - I missed you.

From the jump, you were like the rock.

You kept me going. You kept everybody going.

I would go into battle with you,

no matter where you go. - Yeah.

- Always and forever. - Yeah.

I wish more people knew because I know there are

women going into that house.

Audrey! Audrey! Audrey! Audrey!

I want people to understand that Pearadise is like

a safe haven for me. It always has been.

It always will be.

No skinny Pearadise!

He's getting all the good angles!

I'm not a victim,

and nobody at the house is a victim.

People should be asking us why we want to be there.

Living in this world that doesn't want me to be here,

Pearadise will always be a part of my life.

It'll always be a part of who I am.

Looking back at the girl that I was,

it's just, like,

super unbelievable being comfortable in my skin.

I'm still alive today because of it.

I still believe in the mission of Pearadise.

It's very important for people

to understand that, like, we need it.

I believe in treating everybody like I wanna be treated.

For anybody that's ever been in my presence,

like, you know, if I ever said anything or did anything,

if you ever felt uneasy about me, like, I'm sorry.

Like, that was never-- that was never my intention.

I'm a completely different person totally.

I've grown so much since then.

Eventually, I'm gonna get to the point where

I can forgive these girls.

And telling my story has to be the closure,

because otherwise I'm gonna carry this around me

till the end of my days, and I don't want to.

- Cut. - Great.

I'm really curious to see what comes out.

You know, sometimes people just don't wanna hear my story.

They just don't wanna hear it.

That's where we are right now.

We're trying to move past it, but he never does.

What I had to deal with,

I don't have words for it.

He continues to hurt me.

And he has a platform to do it.

Not only did he take advantage of me,

he put my naked body on the internet.

Stefan has security camera footage of her

undressing in his living room where she was nude

that he posted to TikTok.

Like, that was vile. You don't do that.

Because at the end of the day, everything--

You know, he's grasping at

trying to prove innocence rather than take accountability

for anything he's done.

It never stops. It just never stops.

If Pearadise is a safe space for big girls,

the world has failed the big girls.

Oh, my God, you look so pretty!

- Look at you guys! - Forever.

Oh, my God, stop it! Hi, Cece!

I want to think that we're all intelligent people

and that we would have never expected that we would've

end up in the situations that we did.

- Not in a million years. - Oh, no.

Empathy would make the world a lot safer of a place.

There's a lot that's happened over the last couple of years.

We've seen a lot, done a lot,

hurt a lot of people,

and I'm sorry.

I cannot begin to put into words

how [bleep] proud I am of you.

You look at peace.

It's good to see you,

to see you, if you know what I mean.

- I feel like me again. - That's good.

- That's awesome. - That man [bleep] me up.

I know.

You are worth so much more than that.

You have always been worth so much more than that.

I think the culture that we live in

will push fat women so far that a place like Pearadise,

that is the better option.

Pearadise is the backdrop.

But really, it's a conversation about

how we're [bleep] treating each other.

If you have not lived in a fat body,

I hope that people will watch this

and do wanna make a change.

You have the power to live your life fearlessly,

to experience joy and happiness and love and passion.

And I would hope that one day we are seen as more

than just our bodies.

♪ The road you're on is unpaved but the gravel is worth it ♪

♪ It has to be ♪

♪ Time hasn't failed you just derailed you ♪

♪ Keep breathing I know you'll see ♪

♪ what I see, what I see ♪

I would tell younger me that she's gonna be OK.

You deserve better.

You deserve to feel better about yourself, and you deserve

all the love and all the good things in the world,

and you deserve friends,

people who see you and who love you unconditionally.

♪ Sure, it's heavy ♪

♪ Sure, it's hard ♪

♪ Sometimes you've gotta go back to the start ♪

♪ But you're still in there despite the fall ♪

♪ Despite it all ♪

We're gonna get through it.

Right?

We're gonna we're gonna do it.