Product Hub October 05, 2017
“Anorexia” Sweatshirt Sold on Amazon Spurs Outrage
An Amazon vendor is selling a sweatshirt that makes light of anorexia, but despite complaints, the online retail giant has not asked the vendor to remove the item. Described on the site as the “Anorexia Styling Hoody Women Cotton For Black,” the hooded sweatshirt bears a fake dictionary-style definition of the eating disorder in pink across the front: “Anorexia: Like Bulimia, except with self-control.” It’s being sold for about $25 by vendor ArturoBuch and has been available on Amazon since 2015.
The sweatshirt has more than 170 reviews, most of them negative, and a rating of one-and-a-half stars out of five. “No one who understands the first thing about anorexia would want it or wish it on their worst enemy,” wrote one reviewer. “Selling this is completely irresponsible.” Another called the item “ignorant and offensive,” adding that “it is completely unacceptable to shame those who suffer with life threatening eating disorders. Anorexia is not ‘self-control’ but rather a compulsive behavior and mental illness just like bulimia.”
A slew of Twitter users have also responded to the shirt’s flippant message with outrage, calling on Amazon to pull the item from its site. As of Wednesday, the sweatshirt was still available for purchase.
According to the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders, eating disorders have the highest mortality rate of any mental illness, and every 62 minutes, at least one person dies as a direct result of an eating disorder. At least 30 million people in the U.S. suffer from an eating disorder.
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