LuLaRoe’s gastric sleeve pressure group is next level creepy
While I’m aware of the common association of cultish tendencies within MLM companies, it’s not something I tend to dwell on.
Extreme fans can be found cheering anything on, so I think definitively drawing a line between fanaticism and a cult is pretty difficult. And it’s not made any easier by those inside or who have left often not willing or feeling unable to speak up.
A recent VICE documentary on LuLaRoe has shed light on a gastric sleeve pressure group within the company.
With compelling testimony from someone on the inside, this is some of the creepiest MLM related behavior I’ve ever come across.
For those unfamiliar with gastric sleeve surgery, ‘the stomach is reduced to about 15% of its original size, by surgical removal of a large portion of the stomach‘.
This reduces food consumption, with weight loss being the intended goal.
According to former consultant Courtney Harwood, she became aware of LuLaRoe’s gastric sleeve group at a hotel dinner with co-owner DeAnne Stidham.
At the time Harwood was ranked Mentor, the highest obtainable LuLaRoe consultant rank.
According to Harwood, Stidham and her son were discussing splitting a meal.
Sensing confusion on Harwood’s part, DeAnne purportedly explained;
The reason we split meals is because our stomachs are really small, because we’ve all had the gastric sleeve.
Then came the pitch.
As recounted by Harwood;
She goes, “You know my sister Lynnae coordinates it all.
Me and her will work with you. And you go to Tijuana, you have the gastric sleeve and then you can come back to my house the next day in California. Then we’ll fly you home.
VICE’s documentary includes bizarre footage of DeAnne Stidham appearing in what seems to be a testimonial video for the Mexican clinic.
Further research reveals the clinic is named Obesity Not 4 Me and run by Dr. Alberto Michel.
In the testimonial video, DeAnne boasts about having “lovingly and excitedly brought down” eighteen surgery referrals.
After the hotel dinner, Stidham added Harwood to a private “Tijuana Skinnies” group chat.
According to Harwood, the group consisted of LuLaRoe consultant who had either gone down to the Mexican clinic, or were thinking of doing so.
Upon joining the group, Harwood states Lynnae Knapp began texting her every day.
Recalls Harwood;
Lynnae, I mean she was texting me everyday;
“Courtney we’ve got to get you on the schedule. I’m taking six people down there, we have room for one more… let’s go and get (you) on the schedule.
Apparently Stidham and her sister referred to taking LuLaRoe consultants down for surgery as “the schedule”.
A tearful Harwood recounts that having been otherwise comfortable with her appearance, the pressure on her to have the surgery left her feeling betrayed.
They had hyped me up to feel so beautiful, and I was looking in the mirror going “they’re looking at me, and I’m fat… and I need to have this surgery to be like them”.
Harwood eventually opted to try a weight loss balloon over the gastric sleeve.
Following an adverse reaction to insertion of the balloon however, it had to be taken out.
After disclosing removal of the balloon in the Tijuana Skinnies group, pressure from Lynnae resumed immediately.
I get a text from Lynnae … who said, “See I told you it wasn’t gonna work. When can we get you down to Tijuana to have the gastric sleeve?”
And I was thinking to myself, “lady, I just about died.”
But you don’t say no. You do not say no.
Harwood fobbed Lynnae off for a few weeks by claiming she needed to heal.
Eventually however Lynnae stopped pestering her. Harwood was removed from the Tijuana Skinnies group shortly after that.
Harwood quit LuLaRoe in October 2017. She was the first Mentor ranked consultant to do so.
I… honestly… you have MLM company owners pushing gastric surgery onto their consultants – and for what?
I know LuLaRoe are big on social media marketing… but surely the surgery pressure couldn’t have just been to enhance LuLaRoe consultants’ marketing appeal? My god.
In a 2018 interview with Bloomberg, LuLaRoe consultant Stacy Kristina stated she
was told by DeAnne herself that she likes her leaders to be a size small or medium.
Another consultant revealed to Bloomberg that the surgeries cost $4000 but were booked for $5000. Lynnae purportedly pocketed the difference.
Whether or not LuLaRoe’s Tijuana Skinnies group chat still exists is unclear.
Dr. Michel’s Obesity Not 4 Me clinic appears to still be operational.
Note that there is no suggestion or implication of professional misconduct on their part.
VICE’s documentary is titled “Why Women Are Quitting Their Side Hustle: Leaving LuLaRoe”.
It was uploaded to VICE’s official YouTube channel on May 22nd, 2019.
I recommend watching the whole thing, but if you want to skip to the gastric sleeve group stuff it starts 20 minutes in.
Tangentially, I don’t think it is.
A cult is where you have nothing but extreme fans. There are billions of moderate Christians, there is no such thing as a moderate Jonestown member or moderate Scientologist.
You can celebrate Christmas and Easter and drink, smoke and fornicate the rest of the year, and no-one will bat an eyelid.
You can’t celebrate Xenu’s birthday and do nothing for the Church of Scientology the rest of the year, because whatever friends or family members you have in the cult will have something to say about your lack of commitment.
You also cannot have a “moderate” MLM participant because a moderate MLMer is someone who “isn’t trying hard enough” and “wants to fail”.
They will be constantly badgered and pressured to pass more money up the pyramid, until they either comply (becoming more extreme) or become disillusioned and leave (ceasing to be an MLMer).
From an upline perspective, a not-fully-committed member is a resource that hasn’t been fully tapped out yet, and the relentless economics of MLM means that an untapped resource cannot be tolerated. They must be squeezed until the pips squeak.
Taking a high-level view of cults generally, the purpose of a cult is to have control and power over its members. Moderates can walk away at any time. That’s not control. That’s not acceptable to the cult.
Not only does the cult not have power over them personally, but they set a bad example to other cult members.
If I am vicar of a common-or-garden Anglican church, and I start ranting that everyone who wears blue is going to hell and should be beaten with farm implements, 99% of the congregation is going to get up and walk out. It’s not a cult and I have no control.
But once the church door bangs behind them, and there’s me and two people remaining in their seats, glassy- and wide-eyed, now we have the beginnings of a cult.
Back to MLM. It is impossible to be a now-and-then MLMer, partly because of the aforementioned creepy and annoying pressure, and partly because it is so damned expensive.
There is literally no-one who has a little bit of Younique in their makeup bag alongside a range of other makeups, because that implies they make rational purchasing decisions, which means zero overpriced clownface in their bag. (Unless they made a pity purchase from a friend/family member.)
Spending lots of money on overpriced crap in a hopeless dream of getting rich quick is an extreme act. All MLMers are extreme, barring a very small transient section who haven’t yet realised what they’ve got into, and will be out of the door in the next month.
It is therefore correct to classify all MLMs as cults.
The constant examples of cultish behaviour within MLMs, like this, merely confirm the theory.
Perhaps layering is one way I can explain my thoughts.
The upper layers of any MLM opportunity? Sure. Cult away.
The majority of affiliates/distributors however never make it that far. So I don’t typically pay much attention to the cult side of industry.
When it does shine through though it certainly makes for interesting (if not alarming) reading.
I can join Scientology tomorrow and be pretty confident they’re not gonna hit me with Xenu off the bat. I can celebrate his birthday if I want but it’s not till I get higher up the cult stuff begins.
One could argue that I’m being groomed up until that point, but I’m still free to walk away at any time prior to full-blown indoctrination.
I think for the most part MLM works the same way. Harwood as a Mentor consultant is certainly what I’d consider top-tier within LuLaRoe.
When reporting if I spent all my time focusing on cult behavior I think I’d alienate a lot readers. The MLM cult aspects are something to keep in mind but not necessary a focal point.
That focal point is a line I have to draw in my reporting anytime I come across cult like behavior in an MLM company and its affiliates. Admittedly this behavior is also probably far too familiar to me by now than I’d like to think about.
If you take OneCoin for example, we can widely agree the investors left are of the glassy and wide eyed variety. That said I think I’ve managed to not focus on the cult aspect of their investor-base in my reporting (although I might have mentioned it once or twice in the hundreds of articles I’ve written).
And most people who attend the meetings of non-MLM cults go to one or two, think “holy crap, this is a cult” and leave.
You can’t describe such people as moderate members of the cult with a straight face. They’re too transitory to be considered members, even if at any one time there will be a significant number of them in the meetings. There’s a constant turnover of failed recruitment efforts in all cults.
Non-cult religions have a large body of moderates who start as moderates and stay moderates, often for life. Cults have none. They either leave or succumb to the constant pressure to give up more of their lives.
The fact that the majority of people who attend the meetings don’t become cult members doesn’t stop it being a cult.
MLM survivors have reported that the lovebombing and other cult-like behaviour starts as soon as they’ve signed up.
Strongly disagree. Scientology is a cult from day one. Going softly-softly with new members is standard cult tactics.
You’re just as free to walk away after you’re Operating Thetan XVIII, it’s just less likely. By then you’re too mentally and financially invested in it.
But I have no issue with the direction of your reporting. After a while most cultish activities are just same old, same old. There’s only so many times you can rubberneck at people being mean to each other.
Unnecessary gastric band surgery rings on the other hand are a new one, which is why it’s a good story.
Perhaps indoctrination itself then is the line. I haven’t given it this level of thought in a while.
I just know that when I come across cult like behavior in MLM, I’m more likely to roll my eyes then think it newsworthy.
MLM in Jay Van Andel and Richard De Vos’s early days……….no problem, never been done before, moved (and stored) product.
MLM 2019 definitely Cultish………. better things to do in life.
Not newsworthy because it is the usual, accepted practice. Cult tactics are the very core of the MLM operation. Belief, faith, vision must be the focus or the whole thing collapses with “companies” unable to retain recruits/customers.
If one bothers to look at the math and practical application of MLM, instead of getting brainwashed, they don’t stand a chance – unless you’re a seasoned con man willing to participate in the ruse.
Until “buy from yourself and teach others to do the same” was figured out by authorities and it became a disallowed mantra.
Also, women in skirts, religion, tapes, retreats, no negative products, and weekly meetings sure sounds like a cult to me from day one.
Just a clarification: Your quote, “For those unfamiliar with gastric bypass surgery, essentially an adjustable band is placed towards the top of the stomach” contains three factual errors:
– They didn’t discuss gastric bypass surgery, but gastric sleeve (or sleeve gastrectomy) surgery.
– Your description of gastric bypass surgery is completely wrong and not even remotely close.
– The procedure you describe is the LapBand, a third weight-loss procedure.
The documentary discussed “gastric sleeve” surgery, which is a considerably different procedure than the “gastric bypass” you linked to. The former makes your stomach smaller, whereas the bypass reroutes your small intestines for greater weight loss via malabsorption.
The “adjustable band” which your refer to, is a procedure using the LapBand, a patented product that is yet an entirely different procedure than the gastric bypass or gastric sleeve.
Thanks for the clarification. I thought they were interchangeable as it’s all the same to me, shrinking the stomach one way or another.
I’ll edit the article with the correct description.