Fat Camp
Mr. Prince: We'll see you when you get back from image enhancement camp.
Mr. Prince: You promised you wouldn't make a scene.
Martin Prince: Spare me your euphemisms! It's fat camp, for Daddy's chubby little secret!—The Simpsons episode 4.1 "Kamp Krusty"
A summer camp where overweight and obese children are sent to lose weight. Of course to children's parents are oblivious to what actually goes on in fat camp.
Drill Sergeant Nasties are everywhere, pushing the kids to their limit. The children constantly have to run up hills and the food is so scarce it could starve the kids to death, provided that they don't sneak candy into their rooms.
Treatment is so bad that the kids will eventually plan a Great Escape, in which the camp councillors will use the same methods that prison guards will use to recapture escapees.
This is not true of real fat camps of course, which always use positive reenforcement, and attempt to teach the children healthy eating habits, instead of starving them. They are called, the more politically correct, fitness and weight loss camps, and now also allow teens and adults to attend.
Some of the stereotypes of fat camp is Truth in Television however. Especally the running up the hill part.
- South Park: Cartman was sent to a fat camp, and came back skinny but it was really another kid he paid to show up
- The Simpsons: When Bart went to Kamp Krusty, Martin and others went to "Image Enhancement Camp."
For you fat kids, my exclusive program of diet and ridicule will really get results!
- Another Simpsons episode had Bart sent to a fat camp, alongside other Springfielders like Rainier Wolfcastle, Apu and Kent Brockman.
- And then Homer himself went to fat camp as a teenager, managing to escape despite the ultimate obstacle- a slight incline.
- In The Goonies, one of the things Chunk confesses to when caught by the Fratellis was being sent to a fat camp and getting kicked out for pigging out.
- Family Guy: After Lois lost her memory from Stewie's attempt at matricide, she works at a fat camp and tries to keep the kids from eating each other.
- In Killer Queen, Peter and Chris are sent to a fat camp and soon discover that someone is killing the campers.
- Many a Reality Show has been built around this.
- MTV had a show called "Fat Camp."
- Short-lived teen show Huge.
- One of the short stories in E.L. Konigsburg's Altogether, One At A Time is about a girl who's sent to fat camp.
- An episode of The Critic has Jay's son sent to Exercise Camp. Its right next to the Exorcise Camp.
- Disney movie Heavyweights. The camp is actually quite fun, until it's taken over by an overbearing fitness trainer played by Ben Stiller.
- An adult example is The Biggest Loser.
- Inverted in several African countries, where an engaged woman is sent to camp to gain weight and come back as a Big Beautiful Woman.
- About half of Robert Kimmel Smith's Jelly Belly takes place at one. While it's not the sadistic kind, and protagonist Ned would actually like to be thinner, he hates the place and befriends kids who have no intention of losing weight or keeping it off if they do.
- Hey Arnold!: Harold gets sent to one in one episode.
- The Well Farm project in Fat that Grenville attends towards the end of the book. It becomes the victim of one of his rampages.
- On Frasier Daphne visited one of these off-screen. In Real Life Jane Leeves was on pregnancy leave.