Anna-Rexia ‘Adult’ Costume – A strongly worded letter…

I feel too sick to write an introduction. See it for yourselves and if you feel as riled as I do, please email: asktrt@gmail.com

Dear Sir/Madam,

I am writing to you to complain on behalf of myself and I am sure that I speak for thousands, even millions of others who will be equally shocked and appalled by the ‘Anna Rexia Adult Costume’.

I was sickened and actually thought, and hoped, it was a joke when a friend sent me a link to your website. I could hardly believe my eyes when I saw this absolutely digusting, tasteless outfit.

A skeleton costume is understandable – traditional even – but attempting to turn Anorexia into something sexy by throwing it on a plastic, fake boobed, airbrushed, blonde sex bomb? There are no words.

Anorexia, as I am sure you are aware (or at least I hope you are – but if that’s the case, it makes this even worse as you cannot blame naivity), is an illness, a disease. It is a disease that affects millions of people worldwide. It is a disease that destroys lives. It is a disease that kills.

Tell me how sexy a starved corpse is. How would you feel if your son or daughter died after years battling with Anorexia. It’s Halloween and some kid turns up on your doorstep wearing this outfit. How sexy is it then?

I cannot get my head around why you would ever have somebody show you this design and think that it would be ok to paste it on your website and sell it. I’d appreciate it if you could forward this email on to whichever mindless person was responsible for designing and selling this to you.

Your website proudly states that you have been in the retail Halloween Business for 20 years. I would expect much more from such a well established company. A bit of respect.

Before you write me off as someone who just doesn’t have a sense of humour about this, believe me, I can joke about it – because I have been through Anorexia and I know that you sometimes HAVE to joke about it to get through.

But this is not that kind of ‘in’ joke. This is blatant, audacious, mindless, irresponsible and a disgrace to you and your company.

I do have a sense of humour but it goes out of the window when somebody tries to sexualise and belittle something that has killed too many people that I know.

If you have one decent bone in your body (see, even when I’m this angry I can still do puns), you will take this costume off your website, refuse to sell it, pass this email on to anybody else who does sell it and in its place, give a written apology to those who have been offended. I am sure that I am not alone.

I will be contacting several Eating Disorder Charities and if I do not get a response from you I will not hesitate in taking this to the Better Business Bureaux.

Yours Sincerely,

Ilona Catherine Burton

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• julianzzz

  Halloween, didn’t exist for me as a child, it was bonfire night and then Christmas. Halloween is an American import designed to plug a gap in the tat sales between summer and Christmas, as for insensitivity and danger to children, I’d suggest that the bloated array of calorie pumping “food” at motorway service stations, shops and all other retail outlets is the real obscenity.

• http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1218488927 Rachel Jane Lloyd

  Go girl !!! Bloody ridiculous!
  Keep us posted.
  I was mortified when I found out about this the other day xxx

• http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=681706918 Jennifer Schmidt

  If you go to a bar on Halloween and see a chick wearing this, you aren’t going to associate it with anorexia. You’re just going to notice a chick dressed like a slutty skeleton. She’s going to loose that tape measure when she starts flirting with the guys, anyway.

• http://twitter.com/ilonacatherine ilona burton

  Whatever the comments… this worked and the outfit had been taken off the website.

  Thaks to anyone who supported this. To the others, you can get on with your lives now.

  x

• http://www.facebook.com/people/Alm-McLean/654525386 Alm McLean

  That is rather tasteless.

• http://twitter.com/sanabituranima Sanabitur Anima Mea

  @stonedwolf:disqus Can’t reply for some reason but:1. Yes it is
  2. Nobody said it wasn’t
  3. People don’t generally think that its victims’ fault when they get killed by serial killers.
  4. People don’t generally think that people get themselves murdered by serial killers for attention.
  6. People don’t generally think that protecting people from serial killers is a waste of taxpayers’ money, because they don’t think that the victims brought it on themselves
  7. More people die from eating disorders than from being killed by serial killers
  8. If someone’s child is killed by a serial killer, people tend not to blame the parents (unless the parents actually did the murdering)

• http://twitter.com/KileyHeartsDTNG Kiley

  For all of you who can’t see how this is offensive: would you take
  offense to a costume made to look like a cancer patient? A bald cap,
  IV, hospital gown, pale makeup perhaps. What about an aids patient
  wearing a heart badge saying “HIV positive”?! Anorexia is a disease,
  like cancer and AIDs. All 3 kill many MANY people every year. That’s
  what makes this so wrong. I find it disturbing that more people can’t
  understand that. This isn’t about censorship or “policing” halloween,
  it’s about not belittling and making comical a disease that kills
  millions. More important it’s about respecting the human condition
  (clearly something that our society is doing less and less these
  days….)