Walmart Labels Plus-Size Halloween Outfits as ‘Fat Girl Costumes’

It looks like someone on the payroll of the world’s largest retailer might be into body-shaming customers. The Walmart.com website had been calling the section of Halloween outfits for plus-size women “Fat Girl Costumes” until sometime on Monday morning.

The costume section includes the usual selection of outfits that are available to women at this time of year. Each of the individual costume descriptions uses the label “plus size,” but the page as a whole was described with the rude language. What a way to suck the fun out of dressing up as a sexy flapper, a devil, or a witch.

Twitter user Kristyn Washburn may have been the first to call out the offensive description on social media. On Oct. 21 she tweeted, “.@Walmart Not sure labeling these as ‘Fat Girl Costumes’ is the best approach,” and included a screenshot of the website page and a link to it. The phrase fat girl was also in the URL.

A company representative tweeted a stock response to Washburn: “Your comments and suggestions are important to us and help make Walmart even better. Thank you. —Nao.”

Apparently, making Walmart even better didn’t include immediately changing the insulting words. On Monday morning, Walmart finally stepped up to swap “Fat Girl” for “Plus Size.”

The company’s Facebook page has been bombarded by comments from customers outraged over the terminology.

“Wonder where your company would be if all ‘fat girls’ stopped shopping for themselves and their families at your stores? You owe your customers a big time apology!” wrote a Facebook user named Shannon Cusack.

Alienating larger customers could end up hurting Walmart’s bottom line: American women who wear plus-size clothing are now 67 percent of the population. A study published in the Journal of Health Psychology in July detailed what life is like for overweight or obese women. The 50 participants documented every single incident of body shaming they experienced for an entire week. They recorded incidents such as being mooed at by teenagers and family members refusing to give them food. But in a society where it’s all right for comedian Joel McHale to tell jokes about Chris Christie’s weight at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner and reporters endlessly wonder how actor Gabourey Sidibe can be confident, the Walmart.com language is just another example of folks thinking it’s no big deal to mock plus-size people.

Another Facebook commenter, Megan Nicole Tilley, connected Walmart’s wording with bullying.

“In today’s society we are having [an] extremely hard time with bullying and your labeling does not help any. What if young children were to read your description, what would that say [to] them. I am extremely offended by your choice of words. Sometimes sorry does not fix everything,” wrote Tilley.

So far a stock apology is all consumers are getting from the company.

“This never should have been on our site” is the response from the Walmart Facebook account to each complaint on the page about the label. “It is unacceptable, and we apologize. We are working to remove it as soon as possible and ensure this never happens again.”