I’m usually always very excited about Halloween, it’s my favorite Holiday and time of year, but about a week ago, while shopping for Halloween costumes, I was extremely disturbed by what I was seeing. Over the years, costumes for women have gotten progressively more revealing, leaving less and less conservative options and over sexualizing even the most ridiculous things, such as food items and cartoon characters. While these things were never a huge issue to me, one costume in particular crosses a very inappropriate line with me. While browsing costumes online, I came across an “Anna Rexia” costume, depicting a girl in a skeleton dress with a tape measurer around her waist. As someone who’s battled eating disorders in the past and having seen friends and family hospitalized for such disorders, I was extremely offended. Not only was the girl in the image extremely thin, but the costume was also very overly sexy and revealing.  Eating disorders are not in any way glamorous or something to be poked fun at, given that anorexia is the third most prevalent disease among young girls age 12-25 and 95% of college age girls admit to dieting or restricting as a weight loss method, with 45% of them doing it on a regular basis.

Anorexia and eating disorders in general are categorized as mental illnesses and have the highest mortality rates of said illnesses. Roughly 20% of people suffering from anorexia will die prematurely from complications relating to their disease.

The glamorization and attitude towards eating disorders absolutely needs to change. Costumes such as these need to be taken down immediately as they are inappropriate and insensitive.