Talk:Richard Simmons

Sexuality

The sentence saying that Richard Simmons' sexuality is a subject of speculation has been an interesting info. But now, I believe the sentence has served its purpose. Because Simmons died, the speculations regarding his sexuality will remain being only speculations. And because speculations are not facts, there's does not seem to be any need to have the sentence in the article. Hirameki (talk) 04:04, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

While the verb tense should be updated, the sentence continues to reflect the publicly confirmed status quo and comes with helpful sources. The status might change, as it did with Sally Ride and Rip Taylor upon their deaths, or it might not. 2601:642:4600:D3B0:39E7:2447:F0C0:95B2 (talk) 05:57, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

Claimed to be vegetarian

Richard Simmons claimed to be vegetarian. Based ENTIRELY upon his own statement(s) about this (if we COULD do this), the burden of proof should be on 'denialists' to exclude this claim from this article.

The sources you have cited are generally not reliable, they would not pass WP:RS. The Washington Post have a professional obituary and it does not mention him being a vegetarian [1]. If we go by his own cookbooks, interviews, and videos he wasn't a vegetarian as he ate chicken, fish and pork. Here he is cooking and eating it on his own YouTube channel [2] [3], [4]. His cookbooks also contain many animal-based foods. For example he talks about liver pate here in one of his books [5]. Here he is promoting a chicken and salad recipe with "fresh chunks of chicken" [6]. Psychologist Guy (talk) 00:54, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

No doubt, they are sources that say that Richard Simmons said that he was vegetarian. The digital and printed evidence - cookbooks, YouTube and other videos, are clear evidence that he was not TEACHING vegetarianism. He should not be included in the WikiProject for veganism and vegetarianism, despite his verbal and/or printed claims (though evidently erroneous). But IMO they are 'evidence' that Simmons stated (though erroneously) that he was vegetarian - yet another instance of modern disinformation. MaynardClark (talk) 01:16, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

I have checked Simmon's public Facebook page - if you go back to 2022 he was still eating chicken. If he did become a vegetarian it was in the last year or few months of his life. He definitely had no involvement with vegetarianism throughout the majority of his life as he was cooking and eating meat for decades. I have never seen him promote vegetarianism. The websites you cite all trace back to this source [7] for a quote for People (magazine) in July 2024, where he said “You know, I'm a vegetarian.” Unfortunately he gives no details about this, maybe you could enquire about it. If he became a vegetarian a few months before he died, this is not significant. It is notable and significant if someone was vegetarian for 10, 20, 30 or 40 years and we have good sources, but that is obviously not the case with Simmons. I am not convinced such trivial information is warranted for inclusion on the article. I agree that it is also possible that he was mistaken in claiming he was vegetarian. Based on what I have read he was in a bad state of mind for the last few months before his death. He wrote a lot of odd stuff on Facebook, he sounded very confused about life. Psychologist Guy (talk) 01:53, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

References