The People's Champ

He is, of course, more complex than the "velvet teddy bear" image created by American Idol. He's a church boy who keeps in his head a list of his favorite nightclubs in L.A., Miami, Washington, D.C., and New York. He's a member of Phi Mu Alpha, one of the premier music fraternities in the world. He rebounded from his parents' painful divorce when he was eighteen. He's unsure of exactly why he won American Idol and sometimes feels exploited by the show, but he's headlining the thirty-nine-city Pop-Tarts Presents American Idols Live Tour and getting $5,000 a show. He's paid not just for singing each night but also for spending his days sitting around hotels, interacting with fans at mandatory meet-and-greets, doing interviews and living out of his Louis Vuitton suitcases for weeks on end with very little private time. "I look at it like a job," he says. "I get up and go to work every day -- just bein' Ruben is my job. It's a good job, but it's a job."

It's a little after 3 p.m., and the twenty-five-year-old Studdard is waddling through the back hallways of Pittsburgh's Mellon Arena, his feet always three feet apart, their orbits never coming anywhere near each other. He finds the Idol boys' dressing room, opens a bag of potato chips, slides onto the couch and hunkers down sideways. Studdard is six feet four and, he says, currently three hundred and sixty pounds. His thighs are the size of infants, and his stomach bulges like there's a keg inside him. Whenever Idol Kimberly Caldwell jumps atop him, which she does quite often, it looks as if she's trying to hug a hill. He may be nearing an unhealthy state, but he's unconcerned. "I am what I am," he says with a shrug.

He may soon be even more. He consumes potato chips constantly, eats Taco Bell beef chalupas with hot sauce plus a couple of Taco Supremes at midnight and never misses a dessert. When it's time to eat, he says, "Let's graze." His mother is worried. "I'm concerned about his weight," says Emily Studdard. "But it's gonna take Ruben to do it." She pauses, a bit sad. "I just wanna see him healthy."